The day before we left North Carolina, we managed to fit in a river rafting trip on the Upper Pigeon River. We used Wildwater as our 'outfitters' and had a thoroughly enjoyable trip.
The Upper Pigeon trip is only about 2 hours long, and is a good compromise between 'too tranquil' and 'too exciting'. It has one Class 4 rapid and a number of Class 3 rapids. Only one person fell out of a raft in the group of rafters that went down with us (5 rafts wtih 4-6 people per raft).
We had hoped for a warm and sunny day, but we ended up with kind of a misty cloudy day. The water temp is VERY COLD in the mountain stream, and a little sunshine would have been welcome. I was really worried about getting too cold.
We did get drenched on the trip, but Dave and I had snagged the optional spray jackets at Wildwater, and we stayed pretty warm and dry (at least the part that was under the jacket!). Our friend John had opted not to take a jacket, and was pretty chilled by the time we got to the bottom of the run.
Here we are 'surfing'. You go through the rapid, and then circle back around and put the bow into the waterfall. Everyone leans forward, and a skillful guide can hold the raft there for a minute or so. When we did it, our raft filled to the brim. Fortunately they are self-bailing.
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