I went on the second annual Rogue River rafting trip in Oregon this September. The core of the group is Rambus related, plus a number of people with one degree of separation; this year, it was Rick Barth, Allen Roberts, Jim Gasbarro, Craig Hampel, Don Stark, Larry Rubus, Shiera Henderson, and Tyler Banas. We put in at Grave Creek and took out at Foster Bar, a run of 40 miles in 2 1/2 days.
The river has a few class IV rapids. Three people drowned in this second during the summer: the first swimming after an escaped raft without wearing his jacket, and the other two by flipping in the Blossom Bar Rapid (class IV). The first Blossom Bar fatality was a flipped inflatable kayak (perhaps not that surprising), but in the second case, a woman caught her foot in some rocks and was pulled under. When we got there, two boats had just flipped and wrapped – we spent quite some time scouting this part before making a clean run.
Most of the pictures in the gallery are from Allen’s EOS 5D SLR- the full frame sensor gives beautifully detailed images even after cropping. (It’s a supreme act of rafting hubris to take such an instrument on the river, where one missed move can turn it into a multi-thousand dollar sodden brick.) The movies were taken with a waterproof Sanyo Xacti E2.