BELLAIRE • MEMORIAL • RIVER OAKS • TANGLEWOOD • WEST UNIVERSITY

Whitewater rafting adventure

By Aditya Mandke, age 14 | September 27, 2024

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ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME EXPERIENCE Aditya Mandke, a ninth grader at Stratford High School, has been part of Scouts for four years. This summer, he and his troop, Troop 642, went on a high adventure whitewater rafting trip on Salmon River in Idaho. They went 80 miles down the river over five days. Pictured is Aditya (in front) with his friend Jacques Gillespie.

Even if they don’t realize it, everyone has a bucket list. This summer, I did something on my bucket list, on my Boy Scout trip to “The River of No Return” in Idaho. While we traveled, we were greeted by the sprawling suburbs of Boise, grasslands and rolling hills, and then the snow-clad Rocky Mountains. The beautiful sights and fresh mountain breeze filled me with anticipation as I thought about what lay ahead.

The first day of rafting dawned bright and windy, stirring up little whitecaps on the surface of the water. We had a somewhat bumpy ride in our large raft, and passed a few small Class II rapids throughout the morning. Rapids are rated on a scale from I-VI; a VI is the most difficult. By lunchtime, I was feeling somewhat let down. This would soon change.

That afternoon, as we approached a rapid, I looked ahead and saw – nothing. The river simply ended. In reality, the river dropped rapidly, gaining speed, and hit the slow, calm water ahead of it. This generated a huge wave, the biggest one I had ever seen, which we could only just see at the top of the drop. We were speeding towards it. Our guide told us to paddle, but our utter shock caused all seven of us to sit there frozen, deaf to our guide’s commands. The next thing I knew, we were vertical. The wave slammed into us like a brick wall, and the raft nearly flipped over its end.

Any doubts I had about the trip were erased. This was not a typical rafting trip, and I knew at that moment that this would be one of the greatest adventures of my life. Even in calm waters, the ride was fun, as we occasionally stopped to view historical sites, from pictographs made by the Sheepeater tribe, to a cabin at Campbell’s Ferry, the site of the first European settlers in the region. We learned loads about the hydrology, geology, and history of the area. My favorite lesson was when I learned that we were, in fact, in the second-deepest canyon in the U.S. – deeper even than the Grand Canyon.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. We climbed out of the boat and removed our life jackets on the last day with heavy hearts. I learned many things about rivers, rocks, ropes, and the region’s history, but most importantly, I learned about myself.

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