A trip for which the participants supply all of the group's needs including planning and purchases. While the group may share the costs of hiring transportation, rental equipment, food packing, etc; they usually do not hire guides. When their destination has regulated access, a permit may be required (i.e. river permits, back country permits, etc.). Regulatory agencies frequently require that the trip be participatory in nature with both sharing of expenses and of any work required.
A trip organized by a group of friends, who have chosen to restrict who may join them. May be the same as a non-commercial group if everyone has agreed to share the costs incurred as a result of the group's travels. Touring Yellowstone with your family and some friends would be a good example of a private trip. Conceivably, a private trip could also hire a full service concessionaire and still be a private trip. The trip might then be considered commercial or non-commercial depending on what the relevant regulations are in the area where this group is traveling.
Cost-sharing occurs when the trip participants make a bonafide effort to share the trip costs. Sometimes mistakenly assumed to be only monetary costs and exactly equal shares of these costs. Actually, the intent of the laws governing cost-sharing are bonafide sharing of costs. This implies that those who suffer wear and tear on their vehicles might reasonably pay a smaller proportion of the monetary costs of the trip and still be involved in valid cost-sharing. Since participants are organizing their trip with their own gear, agencies recognize that it is impossible to equally share everything and trade-offs will occur.
Ideal work-sharing on a non-commercial or private trip would be each participant doing exactly their equal share of pre-trip, on-trip, and post-trip work. Since everyone isn't required for every job that must be done, there is no way to equally divide all associated trip work. Trade-offs must be made and inequities will always exist to some degree. If the group makes a bonafide effort to share the work and trip participants agree that their division of labor is satisfactory, then acceptable work-sharing should be assumed.
Frequently used to mean travel to third world countries where living conditions are substantially different than in the developed western world or travel that involves physically challenging activities entailing some risk. The term adventure travel has become overused, even abused, and is now frequently applied to commercial travel where little or no personal risk exists and where the accommodations are in western style lodgings which totally isolate the traveler from local culture. The trips we organize or join involve a high level of physical challenge. We are not interested in antiseptic, risk-free travel.
Rivers of all sizes and gradients can be floated by those who wish to isolate themselves from the busy highways and byways. A whitewater river is one which has a high enough gradient that it can not be safely paddled by the average canoeist in an open canoe due to danger of capsizing. An international rating scale has been developed to grade rivers' difficulty. Whitewater rafting grades would be III (marginally canoeable), IV (requires good equipment and some skill), V ( highly technical, requires substantial skill to navigate successfully), and VI (unrunnable, should be avoided). These rivers are usually boated in rubber rafts of 14-20' size using oars for maneuvering and limited propulsion. On larger rivers, huge rubber rafts of up to 36' take 15 passengers and 2-3 guides down the river using motors for control and propulsion. Whitewater rivers can also be paddled by people using, kayaks, paddle rafts, and solo sit-on-tops.
A recent trend is to increase participant involvement by using 4-8 man paddle raft teams on 14-20' rubber rafts. On western rivers, these boats are piloted by one experienced person in the rear of the raft. Commands allow the pilot and crew to negotiate up to class V rapids. Since this type of boat has a greater chance of flipping, with the paddlers becoming swimmers, this experience would qualify as putting real adventure into adventure travel.
The large commercial 36' rafts that run big rivers like the Colorado through Grand Canyon have always been self-bailing since they were composed of large tubes strapped together with no floors. Small two tube versions of these rafts, called catarafts, have become popular with private boaters in recent years. Self-bailing rafts which place a large, flat air-chamber underneath for extra flotation and shed water through holes in the floor are also available now. The older style rafts have a rubber floor stretched between the side tubes and in large hydraulics they can fill with thousands of pounds of water, making them unmanageable until someone bails the water out using a bucket. Self-bailing rafts offer obvious advantages on fast-moving, high-gradient rivers where little time is available between major rapids to bail. Floored rafts have higher floatation, are usually more stable, and will carry substantially heavier loads on longer trips. They're also easier to row or paddle on flatwater sections.
A trip which visits a scenic place on an easily canoed river or lake. The Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota, the Colorado River below Hoover Dam, or Utah's Lake Powell would be examples of flatwater trips as long as they were free from storm conditions.
This remarkably scenic area of the American Southwest is sometimes publicized as "color country" by Utah's chambers of commerce. The region is noted for its beautiful canyons and encompasses some of the best National Parks in the US: Zion, Bryce, Grand Canyon, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Arches, Natural Bridges, etc. The timeless sedimentary rock has eroded into magnificent multi-hued layers which endlessly fascinate photographers. The mystery of the prehistoric Anasazi culture adds to the mystique of this wonderful area.
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Updated on Thursday, December 8, 2006 @ 4:30 MST © 1995-2006 by Robert R. Marley |
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