Our Family Adventure with the Nelson Whitewater Rafting Co.

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Have you ever thought of taking your family whitewater rafting? We did, and today I’m here to tell you our story!

Before I get started I should maybe warn you this post is very photo heavy!

Also, we were in no way paid or comped for this post, this trip was an amazingly generous Christmas gift from my dear brother, thanks Matt!

It was Sunday morning. I woke up and opened my curtains. Woohoo! Beautiful blue sky with little puffs of white clouds and no smoke obscuring the gorgeousness of the day. I am so very excited because today is the day we are taking our kids whitewater rafting!

Wake Pat up and, for once, our teenage daughter doesn’t snarl at me for waking her up early because she knows what we have planned for the day. Get dressed, hop in the truck and stop by the local bakery for some americanos and muffins and we are on our way. We drive to town to meet the other two kids (they had slept over at grandmas house the night before) and to meet at the offices of Nelson Whitewater Rafting Co.

We are greeted by a friendly young man who explains the waivers we need to sign before heading off on our adventure. A lovely young woman named Fannie introduces herself as one of our guides for the day.

Next, we are all climbing in the van with the driver/photographer, Chris, and the other guide Jerome. Fannie asks us which decade we would like to try for our game of Name That Tune and Pat and I are happy when it is decided that 90s music would be accompanying our expedition to the river as 90s music is our jam.

After an enjoyable, musically reminiscent, 25 minute drive we are finally at the river and it was time for safety talks and gearing up.

A rare photo of the five of us…

And then we were climbing in and heading off! We had Jerome as our boat guide and Fannie was guiding the other group (of people we weren’t previously acquainted with).

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect as, where we put the boats in, I knew there weren’t any rapids. Pat and I had, in the past, gone down the first section of our trip in just inner tubes.

But, regardless, we had a very enjoyable time floating on the beautiful river, enjoying the gorgeous day and chatting with our funny and amiable guide Jerome. He was awesome and pointed out various features and little historic facts about the river. He also had us play some fun games on the raft. One called Rodeo and the other was a Trust game(can’t remember the name). I’m not going to tell you exactly how the games worked, you will have to try out rafting to enjoy them yourself ;-).

We also talked about our previous rafting experiences; Pat went once before when he was a young teen on the Athabasca River near Jasper B.C and I went once in my younger years during my travels in Interlaken, Switzerland. This was our kids’ first time though and they loved it!

We came around a bend in the river and all of a sudden we could hear what sounded like a waterfall. We were about to experience the Facchina Rapids whitewater!

Did you know there are 6 classes of rapids? Well now you do! The ones we went through we Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3. Class 3 being the highest/most whitewaterish for us.

Woohoo and yehawwww!! More! More! More!

And again!

Love this!

And that concludes our rafting trip. We all got out and helped get the rafts to the trailers, got out of our life jackets, helmets and booties, and hopped back in the van to complete our game of Name that Tune.

I have to tell you, Pat and I were sooooo close to winning the game (only missed a couple artist names) but unfortunately we didn’t win the grand prize (which is a secret you will have to find out yourself!).

We had the chance to purchase the photos of our trip, taken by the bus driver, and photographer extraordinaire Chris,  which included all the photos you see in this post. So, thank you Chris for your awesome photographer skills, we will cherish these memories forever.

We also wanted to say another huge thank you to the awesome Jerome and funny Fannie, you guys are fantastic at what you do!

If you are thinking of traveling to the Kootenays and Nelson specifically, I encourage you to check out Nelson Whitewater Rafting Co. for fun-filled adventures for the whole family. Check out the Nelson Whitewater Rafting Co. website right here for more info.

Disclaimer: This post was not sponsored in any way. All opinions are my own.

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