Fraser River Rafting

Yale (where I'm now based) and the Fraser River

Jacqui and I have been in Canada for close to a month now. Jacs is well into her first NOLS expedition and I haven't heard a peep from the young lady since she headed off into the Yukon Wilderness. I've been hanging out in British Columbia since she left and have found myself a saweet summer job in the Fraser Canyon, about 2 hours west of Vancouver. Daily duties here vary from safety kayaking during rafting trips to building rafts to cooking gourmet meals for the B&B here. Its a pretty cruisey deal, I live on site with the family that owns the place and another kiwi couple. The property is in a magic location with lots of hills to go hike up all around us when there's nothing else to do.

The view from my tent during a job we did on the Thompson River.

Shaun Safety Kayaking on the Nahatlatch River

Once we get further into summer here I'll also be driving "J rigs" down the Fraser River. A J rig is a boat, made of either 2 or 4 inflatable tubes. The tubes are ex-army from about 30 years ago and were initially designed to be used as quick inflatable bridge floats to enable tanks / vehicles and troops to cross rivers by lashing them together. The guy I work for has made some big steel frames to hold the tubes and we attach a 40hp motor to them and power through some MASSIVE rapids, waves and whirlpools with a bunch of tourists onboard. Sounds dodgy as I know but he's been doing it for like 25 years and it's actually quite safe once you learn the places on the river not to go...

A J Rig on the Fraser River last year

Thats about it though, life is good and work is not really much like work which is nice. I'm likely going to hang here at least until Jacs is done with her work in the Yukon which will be mid august.