None of the rafting companies control the water flow but calling this a ‘whitewater’ trip is a big stretch right now. We got stuck 3 times with the raft trying to get from the tributary put-in point to the river itself. We also got stuck in the river once & drug across the bottom a handful more. We had to do a ton of paddling due to low & weak water current. O-k, it’s August in a drier year. Call it a float trip though.
The above said, the 2 real big issues with this trip was the laziness of the guide (Joe) & the utter joke of the entire setup for the included dinner portion of the half-day trip.
Guide: You can’t have a guide say it’s about ensuring people have fun & get wet then not facilitate that experience by telling people they can swim, then literally sitting on your rear end & not helping anyone back in the raft when the time came. I take that back, he helped 1 person back in…. A skinny cute blonde woman who was wearing a skimpy bikini (no joke). My wife & I, days later, are still shocked the guide didn’t assist people getting back in the boat. It just doesn’t make sense. Don’t tell people they can go swimming if you’re not going to help them back in the boat.
‘Dinner’: Complete amateur hour effort bordering on ‘rip-off’ it was so bad. Many of the details were not conveyed beforehand or else we’d have went elsewhere. The site was riverside vs at their compound (or any improved area for that matter.). Plastic picnic tables were filthy. Area had consistency of powdered dirt in places. Piles of drift wood around. 1 porta-potty for all of us to use. Only 2 changing huts for entire group. Everything served on cheap paper plate. Drinks provided were either water or lemonade in paper cup out of dispensing coolers… that’s it. I guess you could walk across area to the golf course & get beer (that you paid for) but that wasn’t conveyed to anyone ahead of time so no money on person for that. No bread served w/dinner, instead we got some (less than a handful) of bland tortilla chips w/watery pico sauce. Only 1 small bottle of steak sauce for a group of about 20 people (which was gone before half of the folks that wanted some could get to it). 1 pair of salt / pepper shakers for everyone. Girl helping serve had at least 1 bin of brownies sitting in the dirt before they were served.
I must stress that this wasn’t my 1st rafting/dinner trip on the middle fork ofvthe Fkatheat here at Glacier. The other one I’ve done was with a company that runs blue rafts & both the guide & especially the post trip dinner, was light years better. Light-years-better.
Bottom line: You have choices in companies to partake in this activity. Do some homework. Ask the companies if the guides are expected to help people back into the rafts after they invite them to swim on the trip & moreover, ask about where & what comes with the dinner trips. For me, I’d rather have a nice dinner at a nice permanent dinner area at a company compound rather than at a dusty make-shift site with a sole porta-potty for folks to use & food eaten on filthy plastic picnic tables. Bad on me for assuming we’d get the former based on my prior experience w/another company. I figured they’d all be about the same… I was wrong.
We really are still kind of shell shocked at how disappointing the afternoon & evening was with these guys on the day we partook with them.
Одговор домаћина
Aug 2021
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience and feedback with us. We pride ourselves on providing outstanding guest services, and we take your concerns seriously. We are disappointed that we did not meet your expectations and have discussed internally how we can improve so that this does not happen again.
It seems that you may have had different dinner expectations that we did not meet based on your previous rafting experiences. Our riverside dinners are one of our most popular trips, but we hope to improve the trip for all with your feedback. If you would like to discuss your trip with us in further detail, please feel free to reach out.