Embarking on a senior whitewater moment
They are in their 70s, 80s and 90s, with centuries of collective life experience and wisdom. But for one day last week, they were all wet behind the ears.
A dozen residents of the Riverview Retirement Community in Spokane Valley had signed up for a daylong whitewater rafting trip down the Clark Fork River’s Alberton Gorge.
“How many first-time rafters do we have?” said John “SeaBass” Hernandez, the lead guide for Coeur d’Alene-based River Odysseys West. His eyes bulged when almost all of the hands went up.
“Don’t worry, we read “Raft Guiding for Dummies” last night and we think we’re ready to go,” he said, setting the light-hearted tone for the morning at ROW’s Superior, Mont., satellite camp.
The Riverview community ranges from people needing assisted living arrangements to active, independent seniors who live in condos and leave the home-maintenance headaches to somebody else so they have more time to enjoy life and the programs the community organizes.
This particular group wasn’t shy of the occasional challenge and a few sore muscles.
The four- to five-hour trip, one of the most popular and affordable river outings on the ROW summer schedule, is no walk in the park. The rafts float away from any roads and negotiate nearly 13 river miles including a dozen face-washing rapids.
“This is not a controlled environment,” Hernandez said, growing more serious only momentarily. “It’s not Disneyland. Nature makes a lot of the decisions out here.
“That means you can’t sue me, and it wouldn’t do any good anyway because I don’t have anything to sue for except some old CDs and pitted out T-shirts.”
“What kind of CDs do you have?” one of the retirees called from the crowd.
With that, Hernandez realized he had met his match with a group that was anything but over the hill.
“I want to introduce Mark, our bus driver,” Hernandez said as they set out for the short shuttle to the river. “He’s just back from his 17th unsuccessful cataract surgery. He’s the only legally blind bus driver in Montana.”
Sarcasm and smart aleck remarks would be a complementary service on this trip, he said as he explained that rafting guides have three basic answers they use for virtually any question posed on the river:
“”About 10 miles or so.”
“”Just around the corner.”
“”It varies.”
Fifteen minutes of one-liners later, the group arrived at the put-in just off Interstate-90.
“Use the outhouses here,” Hernandez said. “After that, it’s the bushes and the river.”
The seniors didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Seems they had roughed it a time or two.
“What’s the weather forecast?” Hernandez said, repeating the question. “Increasing light by day, and decreasing by night. That’s all I know for sure.”
Kerri Cummings, a West Virginia whitewater guide who had hired on just a week earlier with ROW’s Clark Fork operation, gathered the group and ran through a checklist of safety tips.
“If you see a rope dangling in the raft, let us know because that’s not a good place for your hands or feet to be,” she said.
“That’s a line, not a rope,” observed Lloyd Madison, who was wearing his U.S. Navy Retired cap.
Standing corrected, Cummings continued, “You’re life jacket needs to be snug because that’s what we grab to pull you in if you fall out of the raft.
“I feel like Mae West,” one of the ladies said.
“If your life jacket is loose, we won’t pull on it if you fall in the river because we don’t want to pull it off of you. In that case, we’d resort to the “atomic wedgie” method,” she said, pantomiming through a scenario in which she grabs the back of a victim’s pants and gives a full body heave-ho to pull him or her back into the raft.
That got the attention of even those who thought they’d experienced all of life’s worst invasive procedures.
“My life jacket is so tight I can’t breathe,” said Pearl Brakel loud enough to assure that Cummings got the message.
“Rafting is a team sport and everybody gets a paddle,” Cummings said.
With the boats in the water and the formalities over, Hernandez said, “It’s called whitewater rafting, not whitewater standing around. Let’s go!”
Everybody helped everybody, — guides, seniors and Riverview staff alike — on the short walk over the river rocks to the rafts. “This is the most dangerous part of the day,” Hernandez said.
Brakel, the grande dame of the trip, beamed as the guides gave her a hand to the center tube of the raft.
“Pearl is 90, the oldest on the trip,” one of the Riverview staffers said. “And she was the first one to sign up.”
The guide in each of the three rafts gave their crews the short course in rafting as they floated down the initial calm stretch of the river. At certain times, everybody would need to dip a paddle and help power the raft to navigate the rapids, they said.
“In a while, we’ll stop at a nice beach so you can work on your tans while we stuff you to the gills with lunch and then we’ll all go for the white stuff and get the blood pumping through our veins,” Hernandez said. “I promise some stuff that will peel your eyes back.”
That’s a bold statement to a group of people who have collectively seen it all through many decades of experience.
But as each of them plunged into the rapids, took a whitewater lick to the chin, cheered the wettest among them and reveled in their teamwork, the much younger guides gained worthwhile insight into the greatest generation.
“They’re just like us, only older,” Hernandez said.
At lunch, the seniors dug into the crab dip and other hors d’oeuvres, ate picnic style and shared snippets of rich lives. Bob and Lois Iller, for example, said they enjoy Elderhostel trips, which combine travel and entertainment with an educational edge.
Brakel said she once rafted the Colorado in Grand Canyon.
“What’s your son going to say when he hears you came on this river trip,” someone asked her.
“He’ll say what he always says,” Brakel answered. ” ‘I can’t trust you.’ “
“I’ve done a lot, but I’ve never been rafting before,” said Madison, the Navy veteran. “I’ll admit, there was a little cowardice involved, but when my wife and I heard about this, we though we’d go for it.”
He paused, smiled and said, “If they’re bringing old people along, it can’t be all that bad.”
Jen Cisewski, who’s been guiding for ROW on the Salmon as well as the Clark Fork this summer, gathered a few of the seniors on the beach explain the great Ice Age Floods and how they carved the area’s landscape.
A few minutes into her presentation, Nola Wolfe started filling in with details, more and more until the raft guide finally just smiled and started listening to someone who obviously had done considerable study on the subject.
Hernandez had given the seniors reason to be skeptical about virtually anything he said. But he hadn’t exaggerated about the after-lunch whitewater thrills.
The bravest among the seniors went to the front of each raft and took the full brunt of the waves, acting as windshields for the more practical seniors who claimed the middle seats.
The summertime breeze and river water temperatures were mercifully warm. Nobody had to dig in the dry bag for extra clothing — not even Madison, the Navy career man, who was digging so hard with his paddle he forgot to hold on through the rapid called Tumbleweed.
“I was in the Navy 24 years and never fell out of boat until this,” he joked after Cummings pulled him back into her raft. Luckily he had cinched his lifejacket tight, keeping himself afloat during his short swim and negating the need for the “atomic wedgie” rescue.
“I was a little off in my entry (to the rapid),” Cummings admitted later. “Once I realized that, I just grabbed Pearl and held on for life.”
Asked how she stayed aboard the bucking raft, Brakel said, “I used to ride horses. I’m rough and ready.”
At the takeout, the guides opened the doors of the old school bus and, while they loaded the boats, told the Riverview seniors to help themselves to the contents of a huge white cooler.
“We have plenty of beverages for you to quench your thirst on the bus,” Hernandez announced. “There are sodas and stuff, but if you want a beer, I’ll have to see your ID.”