that the water had swallowed the rock that we had decided to use as a point of reference, so I steered the raft down the left side and yelled out for everyone to paddle. In no time we entered the raging waters of The Otter Slide. We went shooting down and then blasted into a furious wave which launched our raft up into the air. Zach, whose section of the raft hit the wave the hardest, came flying out of his seat and slammed into Nick, immediately knocking them both into the surging water. This sudden imbalance of weight in the raft sent Cody and I reeling backward as the raft was tossed down the remainder of the rapid. Both Cody and I felt like we were riding a mechanical bull while we tried to stay in the raft, but all of the water rushing into the raft proved to be too much and we both fell out of the raft backward into the spinning rapid. At that point, everything started to get blurry. My heart was pounding through my chest; the water, only in the 40s, immediately took my breath away. The spinning and fuming water caused instant disorientation. I was tempted to panic, but I remembered the rules of survival: feet up, don’t panic, and swim to shore. I timed my breaths as I was still being pushed under water while being carried downstream. Cody was just feet away from me. I reached the shore and crawled up the river bank. I could see that Cody was almost to shore also. I had no clue where Nick was: I had not seen him since we capsized. I was pretty sure Zach was right behind me in the river. As I pulled myself up, I looked back, and sure enough, there was Zach. He was down on all fours with drool or snot dripping from his face. I am still not sure which it was. He was white as a ghost and looked as though he was going to pass out. He looked up at me and said in an urgent yet grateful tone “I thought that was it.” (That’s a line we all still give him a hard time about to this day.)
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