We're 2 inexperienced rafters who were a bit nervous to try an unguided trip as our first time, but felt safe the entire time. You're on the river with around 30 other rafts, so rarely out of sight of someone. It was the perfect difficulty...
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We're 2 inexperienced rafters who were a bit nervous to try an unguided trip as our first time, but felt safe the entire time. You're on the river with around 30 other rafts, so rarely out of sight of someone. It was the perfect difficulty level for us -- we got stuck on rocks a few times, but never flipped.
More reassuring (and not mentioned on the website or training prep session) is that they *do * have around 3 spots where a person is assigned to sit and point in the direction you should go, to help you avoid particularly tricky rocks.
I'm not athletic at all, so I sat in the front, and my athletic friend did the heavy steering in the back. I thought we were dragging behind the other rafts, but we were the 2nd to arrive at the endpoint.
If you have a cooler with ice, I recommend sticking the provided lunch inside it before boarding your raft. The lunch is packed in a small bag strapped to your raft, but there's no icepack inside. When the weather is in the 100s, the water doesn't keep it cool.
When we decided to pull over to eat our lunch, we tied out raft to some reeds to keep it from drifting away. Lucky us, there was a massive blackberry patch next to us, so we had an extra snack!
One last note: In a 2 person raft, don't expect to have much time for photos unless you fully park the raft. The calm stretches don't last long and still require paddling to stay centered and avoid rocks. Sort of wish they'd had a photographer taking pics along the way -- would have happily paid $30 extra for a video of us in action :-D