[Rerun]

I've been rafting twice on the Kicking Horse and had two somewhat scary experiences. The first was when there were 2 groups of us in two rafts. It was the Aug long weekend. We were floating down the river in a fairly calm area and I heard this loud cracking noise. I looked where the noise was coming from and it was coming from the river bank where this huge pine tree (maybe 50' high) was toppling over into the river (the high water from spring runoff had under cut the bank where the tree was standing). The tree slowly fell towards the water, but unfortunately the lead raft was directly in its path. People dove from the raft to get to safety but not everybody could get out in time. Two people were severely injured and had to be helicoptered out.

The second time was with my wife on a July long weekend. The guide decided it would be fun to surf the swale cause by the river rushing over this huge bolder in the middle of the river. Unfortunately our raft got caught in the depression and the water flowing over the boulder started pouring into the raft. Within seconds the raft was completely filled. My wife was on the side of the raft that was closest to the boulder and the water was pouring over her like a waterfall. She thought she was going to drown. It was all I could do to pull her out of the waterfall, and at the same time try and paddle as hard as we could to get us out of there. Our efforts were futile though. Even with all of us paddling we couldn't escape. Fortunately another raft headed for shore and the guide jumped out and ran along the bank til she was even with us and threw us a line. Between her and her crew pulling on the line and us paddling, we escaped.

Needless to say, my wife will never go whitewater rafting again. I on the other hand must be stupid though because I'd do it again.