“So, what do you do in the off season?”
There are few jobs as awesome as being a whitewater rafting guide, which can make this a tricky question to answer. A summer of Colorado white water rafting everyday is just that, only a summer, so our guides are forced to find other ways of occupying themselves in the off season. We asked around our Buena Vista office to find out what some of our guides have planned for the fall.
Quite a few are in college and going back to pursue their studies at the end of the season. The whitewater rafting season is May through September (usually we end our season with Labor Day weekend) which coincides perfectly with most university summer breaks. Our guide staff is pursing degrees in a diverse variety of topics from Music, to Environmental Science, to Architecture. Some are very local going to school here in Colorado and others are spread off as far Northeast as Vermont.
Of our staff that isn’t going back to university this fall, there is quite the mix of plans for the off season. One of our guides works with elementary and middle schoolers at an environmental camp based out of the Redwood Forest in Northern California. Here she leads week long seminars that focus on eco-friendly best practices and inviting children to develop an appreciation for nature.
Another one of our guides will be heading to Nicaragua this September. While living in Managua, he will spend a semester volunteering at a children’s school teaching English. The school’s mission is to enable children through an education focused on technology and achieving bilingual English skills so they can pursue a better life.
Joe Greiner, owner of Wilderness Aware Rafting, is organizing a trip for our guides and former guides to join his family for some whitewater rafting in South America. This two week whitewater rafting adventure takes place on the Rio Marañon in Peru, the source of the Amazon River. This incredible section of river is very similar to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River, and in fact, is known as the “Grand Canyon of the Marañon”. It features class II and IV rapids, beautiful scenery, and flows typically are 20,000 CFS. To give you perspective, the Arkansas River we do most of our Colorado whitewater rafting trips on reached 5,000 CFS this year—and this was its highest flow in 20 years.
No matter what our whitewater rafting guides are up to in between summers, we can guarantee that they all are monitoring the snow pack and counting down the days until next season kicks off!
