Merced River Rafting 2008

Whitewater Excitement's opened it's Merced River rafting season with a bang.  With very hot weather for this time of year, the snowmelt was really sending the river flows at great level.  Saturday the river was about 1500 or so at the Red Bud putin.  This is the upper 3 miles of continuous class 4-4+ rafting.  With the temperature in the high 80's on Saturday, the river rose about 2 feet for Sunday's run, making the trip extra exciting.  With our experienced crew of Ann and Mike guiding our commerical guests, and our seasoned guides Vin and Andrew guiding the trainee raft we were all in good hands.  Even our 14 year old Guide Phillip got a taste of guiding some of the class 4 rapids of the Merced.  He guided Ned's Gulch, a very long and powerful rapid with ease!  Well done, Phillip.

One of our top Guides Karl rowed our safety raft and did a great job looking after the paddle rafts.  We did have to laugh, however, a couple of times, when he got stuck at the bottom of Ned's and surfed for a few seconds, and we laughed really hard (listen to Karl's Surf Video Below) when he ran the hole at Bikini Rock Rapid and surfed there for a minute.

All in all, our first trip done this year was a total blast.  Check out the video of the trip below.  We hope to offer trips on the Merced this year well into June.  If you would like to run this awesome river, please try to do so in the next 3-4 weeks when the river is running at it's best.  Give us a call at 1-800-750-2386.

Karl Surfing on the Merced

Merced River Rafting Video