Rafting In Style Taking On Wild Rivers Doesn’t Mean You Have To Give Up Comfort

White water! Gut-wrenching rapids! Adrenalin!

Tables and chairs? Hot showers? Pillows? And what about the guy on the harp?

Rafting isn’t what it used to be. For a whole pile of folks, that’s good news, not bad.

Twenty years ago, rafting was for the hale and hardy and, above all, the young. When I went down Idaho’s Salmon River in a rubber boat, we slept under tarps, not in tents. We wore garbage bags when it rained. We cooked dinner over a fire and weed in the woods.

And somebody else did the paddling because this water was tough. Anyway, we were too busy bailing with buckets to paddle.

With memories of all this, I signed up last summer for a couple of days on the Salmon’s Middle Fork. This was an even rougher part of the river than I had done in ‘74, yet we were going to be paddling our own boats. I was more than a little anxious.

But then the final itinerary arrived. It talked about tables and chairs and a choice of wine with dinner and a list of other luxuries.

Whatever anxiety I might have had melted within 15 minutes of hitting the river last September. To begin with, the Salmon is really mellow in August and September, when the water drops to leisure levels.

This year, especially, major rivers are likely to be high and wild well into the summer.

Our first day was more an energetic float than serious white water. We nosed our paddle boats and kayaks into riffles that were enough challenge to keep us novices on our toes but by no means scary.

We spent the day sliding through deep canyons lined with pines and gnarly, artistic rocks.

Our excitement of the day happened near the end of the afternoon’s run. “Jackass Rapid can be tricky,” guide Brent Estep warned. He told us where to position our kayaks and we took off.

One by one, we slid around the corner like it was a toboggan run, caught the main current in the middle, tipped over the edge of a small waterfall and shot out into the dark, calm water below.

Fifteen minutes later, still flushed with excitement, we pulled into camp.

Our tents were up and waiting because the gear boat had gone ahead of us. The shower bag was hung and it bulged with hot water.

We went for a brief and chilly swim while the crew set up the table, unfolded the chairs and laid out our hors d’oeuvres, including bread bowls filled with dip and garnished with fresh veggies.

“Yes, the boomers have struck again,” said Doug Tims, president of a national organization of outfitters and guides called America Outdoors. People in their 40s and 50s still want the outdoors experience, but they’re no longer willing to be uncomfortable, he said.

“But more important, the gear has changed and that has opened up rafting to a far-wider audience.

“Today, we can put people into Polarfleece to wick moisture away from their bodies and add a urethane-coated nylon shell on top. Combine that with wetsuit booties, hats and gloves, and the weather doesn’t matter any more.

But the greatest innovation in whitewater is the self-bailing raft.

“Old boats would have a single sheet floor and when water came into the raft, which was often, you’d have to take a bucket and sponges and bail,” Tims said. “Now, they have an inflatable floor, and instead of being solidly attached to the tube, it’s laced to it so water drains off the top of the floor and out through the lacing.”

And there are rubber duckies - one- or two-person inflatable kayaks, also with self-bailing floors. Fall out and all you do is flop back in. No need to know an Eskimo roll.

“When I started in this business,” recalled Dave Arnold, head of Class VI River Runners in West Virginia, “our parking lot had a lot of Volkswagens with Deadhead stickers. Today, it’s BMWs and Lexuses.

But it’s more than just boomers. “We have younger and we have older. We have trips with three generations. We have less athletic people and overweight people.”

Our second day on the Middle Fork was as mellow as the first.

The river was gin-clear.

Between rapids, we scrambled up a hillside to look at ancient Native paintings on rock, visited an old homestead and soaked in a hot spring.

That night, while we washed our grilled salmon down with wine, the stars put on a show. First one star, then a dozen and then the entire sky lit up with so many stars, you could easily see the silhouettes of trees and rock walls.

It was cushy on this trip but things can get even cushier with the latest rage on the rivers: theme trips.

Several rafting outfitters offer trips featuring gourmet cooking, wine tasting (complete with winemaker), music trips (including, say, a harpist) and an herb trip, where the herbalist takes people on hikes to collect wild herbs.

River Odysseys West based in Coeur d’Alene has one trip designed specifically for families, with extra activities for kids.

Aggipah River Trips in Salmon is featuring a trip especially for artists. Joining the six-day float will be Erica Craig, a professional wildlife biologist and Idaho watercolor artist.

Meanwhile, back on the Salmon, our dinners weren’t particularly shabby either.

Our final night, Brent carved up a prime rib that could have choked Chicago. It was coated with a special herb paste and cooked in a dutch oven until the outside was crackling crisp while the center stayed juicy rare.

Getting pampered, we decided, wasn’t all that bad.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: OUTFITTERS For a directory of licensed rafting companies, contact Idaho Outfitters and Guides, P.O. Box 95, Boise, ID 83701, telephone (800) 847-4843.