My Stag in Golden

Trip Date: August 2011

Another post about a bachelor party, except this one was my own!  Keeping with tradition we decided to go camping in Golden and do some white-water rafting down the Kicking Horse River.  There was an excellent group of guys, in fact there was so many of us that we couldn't all fit in one raft!  I had my brother and some friends come out from Regina and Rob made the trip up from Kelowna as well.  Everyone else travelled from Calgary for the occasion.  We had a great weekend of fun and laughs, with just the right amount of debauchery thrown in!  

I caught a ride to Golden with the Regina boys (Kyle, Mike, and Brett).  We stopped at Takakkaw Falls on our way through.  The falls really are magnificent when you seen them in person.  We weren't there very long before we were back in the truck and on our way.  

Takakkaw Falls

Brett, Mike, Kyle, and I near the falls

The falls are located in Yoho National Park

Me being dwarfed by the falls

Yoho River

You can read more about Takakkaw Falls in my post titled Yoho National Park.

We stayed at Sander Lake Campground, just outside of Golden.  We started calling it "Tent City" for obvious reasons.

Picturesque Sander Lake

Canoes floating on the lake

Cattails around the lakeshore

 We would be doing our rafting trip with Alpine Rafting, who are based out of Golden.  We chose the Ultimate Whitewater package, which is 22km of paddling through the Middle and Lower Canyon sections of the Kicking Horse River.  Near the end of the trip there's even a Class 3 rapid that you can swim.  Being the bachelor, at a bachelor party, it wasn't an optional swim for me!  Luckily everyone else in the boat jumped out to accompany me down the very cold river.  Well everyone jumped out of the boat except Jeff P.  There was no way he was getting in the river, until our female raft guide called him some names, then he joined the rest of us in the water.  Being a rather large individual, as he jumped out of the raft he kicked off the side sending the boat, complete with guide, into an eddy.  Our guide panicked a little because it was now completely up to her to maneuver the raft out of the eddy by herself and then quickly catch up with her boat crew, who were getting increasingly further downstream.  Don't worry, we all lived to tell about it!

Kicking Horse River map

My boat had Jaryd, Ben, Ryan, Brett, Kyle, Jeff P, and Mike

Looks like we're taking on a little water here!

The other boat had Dylan, Rob, Kurtis, and Jeff C.  Unfortunately Dan couldn't make the rafting part of the weekend.

Their boat hitting the rapid quite hard!

Rafting the Kicking Horse River

I have no idea why Jeff's paddle is straight up in the air like that!

They made it down the river safely!

A beautiful day to be on the water

Sitting around the campfire and cooking some Pizza Pops!

After the night's festivities we needed a good morning wake-up swim!

I had an absolute blast all weekend.  The only thing I would've changed was the number of mosquitos!  They were just awful the entire time.  I want to thank Kyle, Mike, Brett, Dan, Ben, Ryan, Rob, Dylan, Jeff P, Jeff C, Jaryd, and Kurtis for travelling to Golden and making the weekend a memorable one!