Alyssa and I spent our last day in the mountains wandering the streets of Canmore, eating beaver tails, and buying I ❤️ Banff t-shirts.
JUST KIDDING
We went whitewater rafting!
Whitewater rafting the Horseshoe Canyon
We checked out of our hotel around 7 am and made our way to Chinook Rafting. As soon as we pulled out of the lot, we noticed that the air pressure alerts were on for the car tires. I was almost certain that it was due to cold weather, but I didn’t want to risk destroying the tires on our rental car, so we stopped at a gas station to fill up. This is probably embarrassing for me to admit, but I have never put air in car tires before. Luckily, we figured it out. Girl power! The lights in the car never went off, but at least the pressure was reading more normal (which is apparently 32 psi FYI).
Despite our unplanned detour, we arrived at the rafting place just in time. We changed into wetsuits and then climbed onto a bus with a bunch of other people on our tour. I’m going to be so honest… I was not loving the wetsuit. I remembered this feeling from when I went snorkeling in Iceland, too. Those suits are just SO tight, and it makes me feel suffocated. I tried not to think about it and instead focused on what the guides were telling us.
What the guides were telling us —for about 20 minutes straight— was about alllll of the ways we could potentially die during our Class IV rafting excursion (which is the highest class allowed in North America, by the way). There were a lot of scenarios, but the most memorable was what happens if you decide to stand up in the very shallow river.
Your feet get caught in the rocks, you fall face forward, and the water gushes over you until you’re a limp noodle.
What the hell did I get myself into?!
As they continued telling us instructions for every possible situation — “hold your paddle like this or you’ll knock your neighbor’s teeth out!” — we shimmied into our life vests and strapped on our helmets.
I couldn’t be happier when the bus finally stopped, the doors opened, and I inhaled a deep breath of fresh air.
Despite my dramatized replay of this part of my morning, I will say that I am very grateful that the company took safety seriously. I would much rather hear all of the crazy scenarios than not know what to do if something bad happened.
Before long, Alyssa and I were climbing into a raft with five other people. Two of the five were young girls who looked like they would rather be doing anything else. They actually looked terrified, and I felt bad for them. They couldn’t have been more than 13 years old!
Our instructor taught us the commands and stressed the importance of a team. Once he felt we were ready for the real deal, we set off down the river.
We encountered the most thrilling waves right off the bat. I have never experienced anything like that before. We just powered right through the wave, and it nearly engulfed us! I genuinely thought someone was going to fly off the raft. It was insane.
As soon as we made it around the corner, we pulled off and docked our raft on a small beach. There, we had the option to cliff jump. At first, I wasn’t sure that I was going to do it because I was scared of getting injured.
“I’ll just do the short, 10ft jump”, I said.
HAHAHA. Yeah right.
I did the first jump and immediately couldn’t wait to do the 30ft one.
YOLO, am I right?!
We finished off the rafting experience with a leisurely float down the river. At one point, the guide let us jump in the water and float for a bit. When she pulled me back into the raft, I felt like a blubbery seal. She picked me up by my life vest, and I slid ever so slowly across the edge of the raft. Thud. Back into the raft I went!
“Graceful”, she said.
I laughed.
At that, my friends, was my first whitewater rafting experience.
Goodbye dinner & a movie (Mario Bros 2)
That afternoon, Alyssa and I drove back to Calgary. We spent a few hours lounging at a park near her apartment, and I discovered the existence of red-belted bumblebees.
For dinner, we went to a sushi place nearby called Globefish. It was nice to sit down and chat again before I headed home the next day. We planned which movie we were going to watch that night and decided on American Sniper.
As we were finishing up our meal, the server came by and asked if we had any other plans for the evening. We said, “not much, probably just watch a movie”
“What movie?”, she asked.
Alyssa and I looked at each other, neither one of us wanting to admit that we were going to go home and watch a war movie for fun.
“Hmmm, probably Mario Bros 2! We watched the first one the other night”.
Good save.
On the way out the door, we couldn’t stop laughing. What kind of face would the woman have made if we told her we —two twenty-something young women— were going to watch American Sniper after having a nice sushi dinner?!
That’s all for now!
Until next time,
Clara