Don’t panic (It’s always best to stay calm and control your breathing). Swim to shore (Pick someplace where the others in the raft would be able to pick you up). As we waited, each of us holding a foot over the side of the raft on the river bed, we felt the river start to inch up our leg, telling us the water level was coming up. It became harder and harder to hold the raft as the shallow spot in the river quickly become deep. I can remember Nick looking back at me from the front of the raft with a giant grin on his face. He knew. I knew. We all knew. The time had come. We had spent all week preparing for what was just ahead of us, sitting in our offices daydreaming about what was about to come. Little did we know just how intense it would be. We had already been rafting that spring at least four times. Just down the road from the town where we all lived and worked was a fun section of the Schroon River. It didn’t offer any particularly hard challenges as it was mostly Class II and III rapids and, if the water was especially high, one Class IV. But each spring as the snow melted from the mountains, it flooded the Schroon, and if we hustled, we could leave our offices at 4:00 PM, and be done rafting before 6:30. Let me take a moment to explain the class system; it’s really pretty easy to understand. Class I is the easiest, mostly just fast-moving water with small ripples and waves. Class II is next, this one obviously has slightly bigger waves and small rapids but all easily navigable by a novice paddler.
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