When we went back and watched the video that Eric took from shore, Zach was underwater for hardly more than five seconds, but to him, it felt like an eternity. We all ended up just fine. Nick had ironically gotten tangled in the rescue rope, but it actually allowed him to get back to the raft and grab some of our paddles that were floating down the river. We lost one but had brought two extras with us just in case. When we all finally met up fifty yards downstream, we enjoyed a good laugh and swapped our experiences of what had just happened. We dried off and gathered ourselves and prepared to set off for the rest of the day. As we got back in the raft and positioned ourselves for the rapids to come, Eric, who had watched from shore, and had more rafting experience than any of us, said, “Next time make sure you guys are all paddling when you hit a big rapid. You really have to ‘punch through’ the rapid if you want to stay in the raft.” He was absolutely right. When we went back and watched the video that he had taken, and the footage from the GoPro that we had with us in the raft, we hadn't all been paddling. Our friend Zach, riding in the front right of the raft and overcome with fear as we went flying down into the raging Otter Slide, had pulled his paddle out of the water and shifted his weight towards the inside of the raft. This had been the primary factor in our capsizing. (We still love to give Zach a hard time about this.) If he hadn’t been so afraid and had kept paddling, we would have made it through The Otter Slide successfully. It was, however, a lesson he learned quickly, and we kept reminding each other of it for the remaining five hours we were on the river that day. Every time we came to a section of big rapids I would yell out, “Paddle hard boys, we gotta’ punch through it!” and we did. We worked as a team and paddled hard to make it through the rest of the rapids without falling out. We had a lot of fun that day. We made
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