Rafting and Staying in Teepee's

Searching through some of the old photos I came across one from the first few years of Otter Rafting. This photo dates back to the early 1980's.

In the beginning we offered two day trips on the weekends. We had a campsite on the south side of the river where we could set up our teepee's for the weekend and make it a camping and rafting outing. There were many late nights around the campfire and then cooking breakfast on it in the morning. It was roughing it.

Access to the campground was by the Burnt Timber Gas Plant road. This road was nearly impossible to drive on once it was wet and bad at the best of times. We ran our trips on those back woods, gravel roads and they took there toll on the vehicles. Driving your car out to Mountain Aire Lodge was a real adventure - with all the hills, trucks and dust you could get a real surprise coming around any corner. It was an adventure to suddenly see wild horses, bears or moose ambling along as you crested a rise in the road.

The campsite was located at a half way point on the length of the section were there is whitewater on the Red Deer River. We would drive up toward Mountain Aire Lodge or farther west to start the whitewater trip. Here we would launch our day trip, rafting down to end at the campsite. It was nice to lay in the teepee and look out through the smoke flaps at the starlit Sky's at night. On the second day, after packing up, we launched our rafts from the campsite and continued on down the river to Coal Camp. This way we offered two different sections of the river on a two day trip.

Looking back at this photo I see that every summer has been a real adventure. Here it looks like everyone was in the sauna finally warming up.

Throw Back Thursday April 23

I hope everyone got a chance to do something to support Earth Day yesterday. It only comes once a year but we can make it happen everyday.

Otter Rafting has been in operation for more than 31 years. What a wonderful life it has been to work outdoors and live a life that is shaped by excitement and adventure activities.

Today's throw back is a picture that was taken in the mid 90's.

We had just purchased the land for the future location of what is now the Otter Rafting building in Sundre so we were temporarily setting up a camp out on the river's edge every weekend. It was a lot of work to pack everything up on Friday - all the rafting gear, camping gear, lunch gear and do the grocery shop for the weekend meals for everyone and be out at the river's edge and hope there was an available campsite. Everything fit on the bus and trailer and it was usually after 9pm  that I pulled into the camping area. Then it was a couple hours getting everything ready and set up for Saturday morning's guests out for their special rafting trip for the day.

Eventually a routine got setup to layout the camp, getting prepared and slowly everything began to go like clock work. Everyone new what to do and when they had to have everything done by. I knew we could get through the season with this temporary working situation and could overcome the hurdles along the way.

June is an unpredictable month in Central Alberta and even more so in the foothills. The weather forecast was for rain over the weekend and we were prepared to be slogging about through a wet campsite all weekend.

So eventually everything was done to set up camp and finally everyone got off to their tents for the night. That night I didn't have time to set up a tent so I slept on the bus - which eventually became a habit.

As I was snoozing off in the bus after another rushed day the rain slowly stopped and it became a very quiet night in spite of the forecast. That was a relief, it would make things easier in the morning.

Well morning came and we woke up to a beautiful carpet of  several inches of snow. There was a layer of  excellent sound proofing on everything including the bus. This wasn't in the plan for getting ready for the paddlers in a few hours. Breakfast was slow since we had to clear away the snow from the campsite, fire pit, fire wood and coolers before we could get down to bacon and eggs - and of course porridge. Finally getting the breakfast done we got the necessary gear unpacked and loaded onto the trailer.

To gain access to our camping area we had to drive off the main road through the ditch down to a side road that was no more than a cart trail through the bush. This ditch was deep and always had mud and water in it. There were several large rocks strewn about with some deep ruts that you slid in and out of on the trail. These rocks were mainly congregated at the bottom of the ditch. You had to  maneuver the bus and trailer at just the correct angle to be able to climb the ditch without bottoming out the bus or the trailer.

Could we get out of the side road through the snow, up and down through the ditch all the while hauling snow filled rafts mounted on top of the trailer with this long bus? Could we see the contours of the path amongst the rocks, ruts and mud to drive through with it being under all this snow?

We had one chance to make it up out of the ditch unto the road. We made a run for it. There was gear and guides flying everywhere inside that bus as we bounced down the cart track hitting every rock and rut at the necessary high speed to increase our chances of getting up out of there. A don't know if we stayed on the usual track. I doubt it. Somehow we made it! There was gear and astonished faced guides littering the inside of the bus.

Everything was going smoothly. With a sigh of relief we drove through the snow down to meet our eager rafters for the day.

Not Yet!

With these nice days I am getting inquires from people wanting to get out on the river.

What about this weekend?

Sorry - it is a little early yet. The river is opening up in the lowest sections. Just a bar of ice on each bank with open water flowing in the middle of the river. It is still quite low yet. If we went on the river it wouldn't be any fun now. We would have to put wheels on the raft!

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Notice the ice on the rock in the middle of the picture!! That says cold.

It will be a bit of time yet before we are on the river.

Nice Weather Ahead - Book Now!

Time is ticking away getting closer to the start of the rafting season. It will be here before we know it. I'm really looking forward to it just like every spring. Nothing beats the feeling of freedom floating down the river. Add some rapids and your senses are heightened to what it is like to be out in nature.

With the next week full of sunny, warmish days the phone is starting to ring with people making their reservations for their day rafting on the river. We have plenty of openings left - as of today! Remember we have limited seating - Saturdays are our busiest days so you should be booking soon. But there is also Sunday and midweek trips available.

Have you thought of a midweek trip? We have some discounted rates. The perfect team building outing for corporations.

Here is a great picture. Makes you wonder what happened next? Bet they had tons of FUN!

When do we start rafting?

How soon? The answer is always – that depends.

The Red Deer River is a wonderful river for rafting on. It is called a “wild river” which is a river which is not dam controlled. In the quest for cheap energy these types of rivers are at risk of being lost.

The amount of water in the river varies with the depth of the snow pack as well as rainfall. When it warms up in the mountains the melt occurs and the rivers start to swell.

Here in the parkland of Alberta we have lost all our snow but we can see it west of Sundre on the mountains. Depending on when it warms up at those higher altitudes we will get our stream flow.

Usually the river is flowing by the long weekend in May or the weekend after. At this time we have enough water in the river to float our rafts and there can be some sizable rapids. From this time on the flow rate of the river builds up until about the third week in June. Then we are melting the snow in the wide mountain valleys and passes where there is a lot of expanse of land, and snow.

As the day temperatures continue to warm up, snow is disappearing in the lower regions and the snow melts at higher and higher elevations. Here the total land area decreases as we climb up toward the narrowing peaks such that the flow rate of the river is slowly dropping.

Along with this process of melt contributing toward the amount of water in the river add on the rainfall. Whether it be cold or warm temperatures, a good rain in May or June can be a heavy wet snowfall that accumulates in the colder mountains or if it is warm rain it speeds up the snow melting process. The river flow rate in June is very unpredictable and can vary in amount wildly.

With the factors of amount of snow, rate of melt, temperature, elevations and warm or cool precipitations, which can be rain or snow, we can only guess at when the season starts and when the most water will be in the river.

I hope that a lot of the factors are in favour of water in the river come this long weekend in May; maybe we can get out paddling... depending.