There’s nothing like tasting river before the bittersweet end of bachelorhood

Sputtering and spitting water, my friends Kirk and Trevor washed up along the banks of the river and found a bright yellow sarong peeking from the shoreline vegetation. One of the waterway’s largest rapids had flipped their canoe, and they just finished conducting a “fish count” below Saunders Ledge. Glub. Glub.Now Kirk was wearing the salamander sarong like a superhero’s cape. He would later attach it to a makeshift flagpole at the stern of their canoe.Kirk and Trevor were the first casualties of my bachelor party—a three-day canoe trip down a punchy section of Alberta’s glacier-fed North Saskatchewan River. They would not be the last. As bachelor parties demand, there would be bravado. There would be antics. And with the river running high, there would be a lot of dumping, flipping, and getting wet—a lot of “fish counts.” The sarong became the token passed from one canoe to the next as participants lost their “whitewater virginity.”Ten of us were on the trip, including myself, and it was the perfect chance to renew old friendships while others got to know each other for the first time. Participants spanned 30 years of my life, and it was the first time everyone had come together for a guys’ trip. It was a memorable occasion.That first evening we camped on a large sandy island about three miles downriver from Saunders Ledge. We pulled beer from the coolers, found a prime swimming hole, and cooked fajitas for dinner. We started a small fire, which became the center of the universe for one night of raucous storytelling, the tales morphing and changing and becoming more exaggerated by the hour.

Day 2 brought more rapids, including two large wave trains that were not marked on our map. At one of these unmarked rapids, Cam and Jason executed a perfect half Eskimo roll and earned the salamander sarong for the first time. Glub. Glub. They swam ashore, dumped water out of their canoe, changed clothes, and then half a mile downriver performed another half Eskimo roll. Glub. Glub.
By mid-afternoon we approached one of the longest and most challenging rapids on the river: Devil’s Elbow. We pitched camp so that we could practice counting fish and execute half Eskimo rolls for the remainder of the day. There are distinct advantages to not having female sensibilities along on such a trip, hounding you with useless observations like: “Your lips are turning blue and I can’t feel your pulse. Maybe you should take a break for dinner rather than do another run.”
By the end of the day Brad and I had both tasted the drink for the first time, Trevor went in for a second time, while Cam completed his “hat trick.” Glub. Glub. Glub.If Days 1 and 2 had their fair share of whitewater, Day 3 was to be the grand finale. Of 14 rapids worthy of note, fully half of them were slated for Day 3, including Brierley’s. At high water Brierley’s features a long Class II wave train with huge standing waves, followed by a massive re-circulating hole—it was unquestionably the crux of the entire trip. We were pumped.We were all on our games that morning, and apart from Mark and I almost running over a black bear that was swimming across the river, there were no major incidents. By early afternoon we had beached our canoes on a gravel bar to scout the churning water of Brierley’s. That we watched three teens successfully shoot the rapid in a large, pink inflatable pool made us feel only marginally better.At this point, six out of 10 in our group had tasted river at least once. The pressure was on the remaining four to preserve their reputations. Jason and a second friend named Trevor went first. They made it through Brierley’s massive wave train, but were stopped dead on top of the huge hole. They clawed at the river frantically for several seconds, and then were sacked. Glub. Glub.Mark and I were next. We punched the hole at the end, but had taken on so much water while bucking the wave train that our swamped canoe sank slowly below the surface a few seconds after shooting out the far end. Glub. Glub.Only Wayne and Greg had their virginity intact, and all of us were pulling for them to lose it in spectacular fashion. They entered the wave train at a slight angle but managed to recover before hitting the largest section. They pitched up and down wildly, maintaining a delicate equilibrium as they approached the large hole at the end. Just before hitting it they let out a resounding Whooop! and plowed successfully through. Their canoe fluttered briefly, but stayed upright.As they cruised past, I called out: “I love you guys, but I just want you to know that you’re both bastards.”In the end, Wayne and Greg weren’t able to hang on to their “virginity” after all. As they approached the boat launch in Rocky Mountain House, a funny thing happened: their canoe inexplicably flipped not 10 feet from shore. They claim it had something to do with the eight guys leaning heavily on one of their gunwales, but I don’t buy that for one second. Glub. Glub.Matt Jackson is a freelance writer who lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with his new bride, Stacy.