White Water Rafting - Our 1st Class 5 Attempt

Since my friends and I are now expert class 4 white water rafting rider.....LOL....we decided to go try our first class 5. We went to the Upper Yough at Laurel Highlands Outdoor Center in Ohiopyle, PA.

After we arrived and signed the waiver agreement, we hopped on a bus and went to lunch which is a bit different than class 4. In class 4, we ate lunch half way into the white water rafting trip. But food still sucks!!!! There were barely enough food to feed everyone. For some reason, my wet suite was expanded after the last wash, so I was wearing an oversize wet suit. :(

There were six of us so we were in two different rafts and there were also a bus full of teenages going for the unguided rafts. We started out on very calm water and after a few class 4 drops as practices, we began on the real stuff. There were approximately 15 class 5 falls and the guide stopped before each drop and explained how we should tackle the drop. No one fell out from our raft, but Christine fell out because she got push out by a passing-by kayak. The worst fall of the day was an unguided raft w/ 4 teenagers, all felt into the freezing water and our raft picked up a couple of their paddles. Since we had a guide, everything went smoothly for our raft but we still had to paddle like crazy. :P There were lots of twists and turns and the raft shifted from left to right and right to left pretty fast. I thought we did some pretty cool maneuvers, but of course, the guide did most of the hard work.

But we all agreed, from now on...we are definitely going on class 5.