Travel Tip: Keep Track of Your Gear on Group Trips and Other Handy Tips

Get ready for a story packed full of tips since this is the story that started it all. This is the tale of how a canceled hiking permit and an open invitation to a white water rafting trip changed my entire life. I learned the valuable lesson of keeping track of your own gear on group trips and a whole lot of other tips along the way.

pulling over on the Salmon River for some views

This story is broken into four sections:

Part 1: The Backstory

Part 2: My Introduction to Rafting

Part 3: Life on the River

Part 4: Travel Tip Takeaways

Part 1: The Backstory

I had absolutely zero knowledge of rafting when I was invited to join a family friend’s rafting trip for the first time. As someone who is always up for new adventures, I hopped on board (literally) and flew out west to spend a week on the Snake River in Idaho. There were 20 other people on the trip, all of whom- with one exception- were seasoned rafters. And then there was me.

But before we get to the trip itself and the point of this very handy tip, let’s take a few steps back to the initial invitation and reason for being on the river.

During the summer of 2019, family friends, Jessica and Adam, and their then 11-year-old daughter invited me on their family rafting trip. I was honored but initially said no because I had other plans in mind. See, I was not supposed to go on this rafting trip. 

Heading out west solo for the first time! An obligatory airport selfie ensues

John Muir Trail or Bust

My original plan was to fly to California to hike the John Muir Trail (JMT). Now you guys, this was THE hike at the top of my bucket list. I honestly don’t know how I even heard of it but somehow I had and it immediately became my obsession. I was bound and determined to do this 216-mile hike through California wilderness. Everyone said I was crazy, but I didn’t care. I bought a ticket out west to prove to myself and everyone else that I could and would do this hike. No going back now. 

Flying to California

So here I was. I had my plane ticket to Sacramento because if I’m anything, I’m a determined optimist. However, let me just lay out my life position at that moment in time. I was a junior at Michigan State University, which if you don’t know, is a school smack dab in the middle of Michigan. If you don’t know about mid-Michigan, it’s flatter than _________ (this line, right here). Not the most ideal for training for a three-week hike in 10,000+ feet elevation, but I figured I’d “train” the first week of the hike.

I had a hiking pack that wasn’t properly fitted, no sense of how to ship food to the stop stations, and no rec.gov account because when you live in Lansing, Michigan with no means to get to national parks, there is really no need for one. I called the Yosemite ranger station to be put on hold for probably 234,324,179 hours. Looking back now, it’s because I was calling the wrong ranger station during their off-season. Go figure.

Let’s just say hours of scouring the internet would not prepare me for the John Muir Trail like living out west would. But that’s a different story.

Flash forward to about three weeks before my flight out to California. The realization hits like a wave: “I don’t think I can do this hike.”

I was so wildly underprepared mentally and physically. I was about to fly solo to do a hike that terrified me! It was not the fun “do things that scare you” terrified. It was the “you probably should know your limits because you’re about to go into the wilderness solo and you haven’t been above an elevation of 500 feet in over two years” terrified.

But I had my plane ticket.

So despite my fear and because of my pride issue, I felt I HAD to do this. 

Bonus Travel Tip About Getting in Over Your Head

Don’t ever let your pride get you into a situation that puts you in insane danger. Now that I’ve done the John Muir Trail, I can look back and say with confidence I was so not ready for the experience during the era this story took place. Instead, I waited until I had more knowledge of the outdoors. Then, the trail was the best experience of my life instead of a source of impending doom. 

The Family Rafting Trip Invite

Then, God sent an angel in the form of Jessica to invite me on a rafting trip. It just so happened that the river dates perfectly aligned with the date of my one-way flight. It was an absolute miracle because I was WAY over my head and so unprepared for the JMT.

I was face to face with a hiking trail that I was not prepared for, especially solo. But I also had an invitation to a river trip that miraculously coincided with the dates my trip was supposed to be. So I made a choice. I said no to the John Muir Trail. It was hard but also such a relief at the time. Then I chose to say yes to Jessica and Adam.

Years later, I found out that one of the reasons I was invited on this rafting trip was my mother’s lamenting to Jessica about how unsafe and reckless her daughter is- talking about me, obviously. She had a point. Since then, their amazing family has played a huge role in my life and I'm so grateful they invited me. I'm also grateful for my mom and her justified worry!

Again, I had never done anything like rafting before, but Jessica had for her entire life and she made me feel safe and excited. I was still scared, but this time, it was the “do things that scare you,” fear, not the paralyzing other type I forced myself into. I got on that plane with no idea what was in store. I landed in Sacramento and took the Amtrak north to Eugene, Oregon, where the story really begins. 

a blurry view from the Amtrak of my first mountain views! I was a kid in the candy store this entire trail trip

Part 2: My Introduction to Rafting

Now, there are many tales I can tell you about that first rafting trip. I can tell you about how it introduced me to the best people in the world, how I left the trip with a whole new friend group that I’m still blessed to have today, how I fell in love with white water, how I learned to read water, how I left the Pacific North West knowing what one day I would live there, and how because of the pandemic that self-proclaimed prophesy would happen within the next year. But this is not the blog post for those stories.

In the nature of this being a blog for travel tips, I’m going to give you one of the most CRUCIAL pieces of advice I had to learn the hard way: keep track of your gear on group trips. And make sure that gear stays with the trip. 

an image to give you insight on what gear looks like :-)

Staging the Rafts

Staging for every rafting trip was an ordeal and a half! Staging involves logistics up the wazoo. It's meal planning, getting food, and packing coolers to last ten-ish days. It's getting everyone to the put-in and assigning cars, hotel rooms if necessary, and gas. It's gathering gear for everyone, including lifejackets a.k.a personal floatation devices (PFDs), straps, dry boxes, booties (water shoes), rope, clips, pumps, backup pumps, wetsuits, drysuits, paddles, oars, and a bunch of little details that make rafting trips possible. Sheesh!

The staging phase for this trip happened in Eugene, OR. It's an Ann Arbor-esque town in the Willamette Valley and it's one of the best places in the whole wide world. I tried my best to help during staging, which can be tricky when you don't know what you're doing. I didn’t know a throw rope from a strap. When I first saw the Groover, I thought it was some kind of military-type cooking stove. Turns out it’s the shitter that all twenty people would be sharing for the next week! Imagine my surprise!

all smiles on the IK

I was lost and overwhelmed and could literally not. Stop. Smiling. This newness riled up a sense of adventure inside of me that I never knew existed. Yes, I had done adventurous things before, but THIS! This was something totally different. This was a community coming together to live on the river for a week. I was enamored, and we hadn’t even left for Idaho yet! 

The Packing Before the Put-In

Let's fast forward to the night before the put-in. The put-in is the place where the rafting trip starts on the river. There were only two new people to this sport: a wonderful woman who happened to be a professional swimmer, and me, a 20-year-old who was a far-below-average swimmer, a fact I became keenly aware of the closer we got to the roaring body of water.

She and I bonded over being the newbies and quickly hit it off, coming up with this genius plan to pack our dry bags together. See, you have to use a special type of bag to bring on the trip so all of your stuff stays dry through the intense splashing.

We each borrowed one dry bag to fit all our stuff in. For some reason, we thought it would be smart to combine our novice forces. Why, you may ask? Couldn’t tell ya. The only thing I can think of is if one of our bags was larger than the other and one of us couldn’t fit all our gear. Yeah, that sounds better than any other reason. Let’s go with that rationale.

So, in the (presumably smaller) blue bag, we stuffed our clothes, bathing suits, toiletries, and towels. In the other (presumably larger) red bag went our tents, sleeping pads, sleeping bags, and warm overnight stuff. 

We finished packing, thinking we were fully prepared for the next day.

for a point of reference, here is a gear boat. This one is pretty fully loaded. Load amount depends on length of boat, who the rower is, how many people are coming, and weight of the gear

The Put-In: Keeping Track of Your Gear

The morning came and it was finally time! We were about to traverse the white water of Idaho’s famous Lower Salmon. We arrived at the put-in and it was pure chaos. Of course, there was a method to the madness, but one that my virgin rafting eyes could not see outright. I did what I was told to do: fit into an assembly line to load gear, make sure the boats were wet down and then fully pumped up, put sunscreen on this person’s back and so on.

When the time came to load the gear bags, I didn’t know which bag went where or whose boat was whose. So my soon-to-be friend and future roommate Taylor told me not to worry about it, just focus on what I’m told to do, the bags will all get loaded up. 

This was mistake number one. There were approximately 504,018,272 items that needed to be tied down to the boats. I love Taylor with my whole heart. He has the best intentions. It was not his responsibility to watch my gear. I know that now. He was sweet to offer, but when you have 25 gear bags that are all pretty much the same style with a variety of a mere four colors… well, keeping track of individual bags that AREN'T yours becomes complicated (let along keeping track of your own). Heck, I saw four red dry bags plopped into a pile and assumed mine was included. You see where this is going...

Part 3: Life on the River

We got on the river and the rafting adventure commenced. And wow. You guys. WOW. Epic rapids soaked my August freckled skin and splashed over the inflatable kayak I was paddling downstream. It was pure bliss!

different trip, same stoke

And the whole time: grinning out of my face! I don’t even think that’s a real expression but it was for me those days on the river. It was an adrenaline rush like I’d never had before. This was it. This is what I wanted to do.

Day one was an epic success. Have I used the word epic yet? It was epic !!!! At the end of day one, each watercraft paddled and rowed to an expansive beach that was camp for the night. We newbies stood together gushing about the day. The gear was getting unloaded. The kitchen was getting set up. Camping chairs were getting set up on the beach. Boat by boat, the gear bags became scarce. I started to look closer at the boats. I scanned the shore. Then the upper beach.

The bag was not there.

The red bag, the one with all of our camping gear, was gone.

This could mean one of five scenarios:

1. It fell off the raft and may float past us

2. Someone stole it or mistook it for theirs at the put-in (multiple rafting parties put in at the same time) 

3. It’s stranded at the put-in

4. It’s in the car

5. This was some elaborate prank and someone would come out with the bag at any moment

Once the fifth scenario was eliminated as an option, the true reason was up for speculation. But no matter how much theorizing we could laugh about as a group, it did not change the fact that our gear bag was missing. 

unloaded boats that did not have my gear on them

So now comes some bonus travel tips:

1. When things go awry, improvise!

2. Humbly and gratefully accept help  

I was without a tent, sleeping pad, and sleeping bag. Night was FAST approaching. This was the moment I realized rafters are some of the most gracious, generous group of weirdos I have ever had the pleasure to be part of. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, went through all their belongings to give us gear. 

Like, are you kidding?! I could cry even now. It was so nice and had such a community mindset. Forgetting that bag taught me that I want to be part of this, part of the rafting community. Yes, for the white water, but also to be part of this synchronicity. To be part of this TEAM. 

When things don't go as planned, the best strategy is to be silly!

Living Without Gear

I ended up sleeping without a tent- even though one was offered. It turned out that, unlike Michigan, the mosquitos in Idaho were pretty nonexistent. Plus, falling asleep under a starry night sky had a romantic river mystique to it. Jessica’s dad- a lifelong rafter- packed a comfy sleeping pad cover that worked as a dual-purpose comforter. And as for the sleeping pad? I released air from the biggest inflatable kayak and slept in a little kayak nest. It was the best. 

For all six nights of the trip, I cozied up in the kayak and fall asleep to an expansive starry Idaho night sky. Glorious. 

going down the river in an Aire spud

Learning the True Lessons

The trip wrapped up at the take-out. At that point, I wasn’t even remotely concerned about the missing gear. We got back to the truck and lo and behold, tucked in the back of the covered trailer, was one red dry bag. 

I might’ve left that bag behind, but I found something much more valuable in its stead: a community I wanted to be part of. 

a view of camp during a sunset hike. Life is the best

That being said, if you have the chance to forget your stuff or not, I’d still go with the option to not leave your gear behind if I were you. 

Part 4: Travel Tip Takeaways

As a SparkNotes for this blog post, here are your travel tips: 

1. Never let your pride get you into a situation that puts you in danger you cannot handle

2. When things go awry, improvise!

3. Humbly and gratefully accept help  

4. KEEP TRACK OF YOUR OWN GEAR. You never know when a river fairy or mountain troll will claim it as their own

Salmon River, ID

A Little Update Since this Story Happened:

A LOT has happened since that first rafting trip. So much so that I dedicated a whole website to the lessons I've learned! Here are a few of those events relevant to this story...

• I have since hiked the John Muir Trail and plan on hiking it again. I waited three years from my initial attempt until I felt ready to do it. Since this story, I moved out west, hiked many mountains, and got familiar with permit processes. All this made me WAY more prepared. There are lessons in every adventure and I plan to learn many more when I hike the JMT again. For more on the JMT read here :-)
  

Conquering Mt. Whitney after the JMT! I'm so glad I waited to do this and get to experience with wonderful friends when I was mentally and physically prepared. Nathan, pictured second from the right, is one if my first friends in Eugene who accompanied me on my first rafting trip :,)

• I am now an avid rafter and go on as many trips as I can with amazing people, one of whom is now my long-term partner. We met on a rafting trip after I moved to Oregon. He saved me not once but twice after I fell out of my kayak in the rapids and almost drowned. I have a feeling those won't be the last. My Prince Charming of the River!

Noah and me on the Green River

• I have since learned my lesson from this trip. Though I am extremely grateful for other's generosity, I now keep a keen eye on my bag every single river trip.

packing up for a river trip, current day

There ya have it, folks. A combo of my out-west origin story and some travel trips I picked up from my first rafting trip! Thank you for reading this little novella :-) If you have any questions for me, feel free to reach out and ask. Thanks to all who have been part of this journey! Oh, and if a family friend ever asks you to join on a rafting trip, you should probably say yes... you never know where that yes will take you.