I am just a casual rafter, taking one or two floats a year. So little could I imagine that the summer of 1999 would become my year of rafting disasters. It started with a one day trip to the Lochsa river in Idaho just after Memorial Day. Although the river was running high, the neighbor who had invited me and my thirteen-year-old son was one of the most experienced rafters in our small university town of Pullman, WA. Besides, his newly acquired stepson was with us, and Morgan wouldn't put him in danger, would he? Well, shortly into that trip, we flipped. Despite all our safety gear (life vests, wet suits, pile jackets), three of us "swam" a half mile before being rescued, and Morgan and his stepson went down river one and one-half miles before getting to shore. Who would have thought this would be the more placid of my two raft trips this summer.

When Boy Scout Troop 444, the troop to which my son Jeremy belongs, planned its annual raft trip for the weekend before the university students came back to town, I was ready for a more successful time. I expected this trip, on a milder river, the main Salmon into the Snake, to erase the baggage of the Lochsa trip. Unfortunately, it did. But the problem was that we learned that sometimes you need life vests more in your tent than on the river.

I had taken this float about a dozen years earlier. Despite the reputation of this area for hot, dry days and cool, dry nights, on that trip we froze through cool wet days and cold wet nights. So I was about the only one on the trip not surprised that the weather matched the forecast of rain showers and cooler temperatures. Luckily, most of the others on the trip had planned ahead, and unlike scout floats from previous years, brought tents with them, instead of planning on sleeping under the stars or under tarps.

We were feeling pretty lucky. Although it rained most of the first day, by the time we hit camp for the evening it had cleared some, and we were able to set up and have dinner in dry weather. Even when it rained over night, the rain was soft, and stopped for us to have breakfast. The rafting was fun, and not too cold. The second day of the three day trip also brought some showers, but again the river was fun, and when we hit camp for the last night on the river, it not only stopped raining, but we saw some blue sky and sun. Things were looking up as we set up tents and prepared dinner on a sandy beach along the river.

But looking westerly down river, we noticed the sky was darkening. I've lived in Minnesota, and have seen lots of thunder storms. But I've never seen a sky like this. The color of charcoal, it billowed up, with flashes of lightning, so far away we sometimes never even heard the thunder, giving us silhouettes of the surrounding mountains and hills. Moving slowly, the dark clouds ominously approached.

We finished up dinner, and sat around admiring the light show the storm brought. As the rain came, we all headed to our tents and shelters. There were 18 of us, 7 adults and 11 boys, one as young as 8, but most between 13 and 16 years of age. Most of us had tents, but four of the older boys built a shelter with tarps, first digging out a bunker in the sand. And one adult, Doug, wrapped himself in a tarp and sought shelter under a small tree. We were spread out pretty well along the beach, which was probably 50 yards wide.

It was nice lying in the tent, listening to the pitter, patter of rain. I've been a steady camper for more than twenty-five years, and always thought this my favorite, most restful time. With lots of trips into the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, I was used to even violent storms in tents, so didn't think too much of it when the rain picked up, and the wind started.

But all of a sudden, I knew what Hell looked like. It seemed like the lightning was striking right next to the tent. Never before had I simultaneously heard the thunder as the bolt lit up the sky, but now I did. The strikes came, one right after another, sometimes two or three together. I didn't see my own skeleton, but my son's showed up once or twice as the lightning struck somewhere on his side of the tent.

Then the winds really began to really blow. Beating with a fury no tent was ever intended to withstand, I began to appreciate what adventurers on Mount Everest felt. I had brought just a small two person tent for my son and I, and it was clearly not up to this effort. I wedged myself into the corner closest to the wind, braced my hands against the poles, and held the tent together as the wind beat against it. I found out later that all the others were doing the same thing. The force of the wind, at 50 to 60 miles per hour, pushed the rain through the fly and tent itself, and it was as if a mist had invaded our tent.

Suddenly, a corner of my rain fly came off, and the fly was flapping in the wind with a syncopated pattern no jazz musician could match. The wind helped most of the rain find that small corner, and soon it was raining almost as much inside my side of the tent as it was outside. Luckily, I had splurged and brought air mattresses rather than sleeping pads for us, so my son sat relatively dry on the far side of the tent.

Next the hail started. The size of large peas and beans, it beat against the tent with a cacophony of thuds and pings. Like a sentient being, the storm sought out where my body was wedged against the tent to keep it from imploding, and sent the largest stones there. Small red welts began to form where the hail stones were beating against me.

Suddenly, the rain let up, and the wind stopped completely. (Later, Steve told me he had timed it. Although I thought the wind had lasted about one-half hour, he said it was only about ten minutes.) There was an ominous silence, followed by what can only be described as a freight train run wild. A low roar filled the air. Just like you now, I was thinking "tornado". I had been through a tornado once, and it had followed this pattern. I didn't want to go through one again, and I was scared. Even though this part of Idaho was not known for tornadoes, one had hit Salt Lake City only the week before, so I knew it was possible. Bracing myself and my son, I prepared for the worst. When nothing happened, I figured it must have hit the other side of the river.

Suddenly, one of the boys from the bunker was up in the tents yelling about flash floods. As we stumbled out of our tents, the adults told the boys to get to higher ground. I told Jeremy to grab his shoes and head up the hill, I would check on the others and follow shortly. Smart kid that he is, he grabbed his poncho, and mine, as he fled the tent. I looked for my sneakers, finding one of mine and one of Jeremy's (I figured he had my other one), but couldn't find my glasses. Half blind, I started checking the other tents with RC, another adult. When no one answered our calls, and we found Doug's tarp and sleeping bag empty, we surmised they were all gone, and headed up the mountain after the others.

We quickly caught up with Steve, one of the other adults, but we couldn't find the boys. It turned out they were way up the hill on a small knoll that seemed safe and secure. Doug was with them. Since the ground was by now so soft, they were worried about mud slides, and wanted to get to something that felt firm. We took a head count, and only thirteen of us were there. Four adults, and one boy, the young son of the rafting guide, who was also missing, were not there. We decided RC and I would head back down to camp, and check for them while Doug and Steve stayed with the boys.

RC and I went back to camp and found Josh and Tom snug in their tent, Dick in his, and Steve S. (the guide) and his son in their tent. All had been out saving gear or couldn't hear through the rain. RC and I looked around, decided it was safe again, and headed up to bring the troop back down. We still couldn't figure out what the freight train noise was, but were too tired and cold to care.

We climbed what seemed forever, slipping and sliding back almost half as much as we climbed, until we found the group. Using their recently learned survival skills, the boys were all huddled together under available tarps and ponchos, trying to keep warm. We "buddied-up", with adults in the front and back groups, and headed back to camp. I was next to last in line with one of the boys who was having the most trouble with the wet and cold. He was mumbling incoherently, nearly hypothermic. Behind me was RC, with one of his sons, who was almost as badly off.

When we got back down, we had a problem. Suddenly six boys and Doug had no place to sleep. The dugout was under water and one tent, where my charge and another boy had planned to sleep, had four inches of water in it. Most of us had wet sleeping bags and tents as well. The rain just kept coming and coming. I took my charge to Tom and Josh, since I was pretty sure they had the driest tent. They did, and as soon as the boy hit their warmth, he seemed ok.

Steve and RC had each been sleeping alone in two-person tents, so they each took one boy. Steve took Doug's son, while RC took his son. The other three boys who needed a place crowded in with two other boys who had brought a four-man tent for extra room, so the five of them shared the space. It was crowded and wet, but at least they were warm.

Doug still needed a tent. Doug is the largest person any of us know. He stands about 6'8". Since Jeremy is a lot smaller than Doug's son, and my tent 3 inches longer than Steve's, Doug came in with us. Between the three of us we had two air mattresses and two half wet sleeping bags. And far less room than we needed. Doug scrunched into the tent with my son and me, taking one of the mattresses and bags. Jeremy and I shared the rest. I got most of the mattress, and he got most of the sleeping bag. By now, I was close to hypothermic, and Jeremy, who hasn't four ounces of fat on his body, somehow became a little furnace. This is a kid who gets cold at 80 degrees, and wears sweatshirts on 90 degree days. But he saw I was shivering, and huddled against me, helping me make it through the night.

As we crawled into the tents, I commented that the warning of flash floods was probably misguided, and we had climbed the mountain, and gotten all wet for nothing. Boy was I wrong, as I found out the next morning. Most of us spent a restless night, with varying amounts of sleep. Steve and I had none. Both Doug and his son snore like the devil, and with the rain, wet and now mountains of sand in my tent, along with the cold and crowding, I just lay there uncomfortable, waiting for the sun to come up, or at least the sky to lighten. I never expected the rain to stop completely, although it had let up, becoming a steady pitter patter once again. It was only 10 o'clock, so this was going to be a very long night.

Morning finally came, with clearer skies and a hope that the few remaining clouds would move off when the sun finally came up over the mountain across the river. As we stumbled out of our tents, we all had the look of survivors from a disaster. As we looked around, we realized we were.

Next to Steve's tent was a four foot gully from the top of the hill to the river. It hadn't been there the night before. At the first camp, Steve had a sloping site, so was adamant about getting a flat site here. He was the first to set up his tent, and the rest of us set up off of him. If he had moved over four more feet, he probably would be in the river now, instead of next to the new stream bed.

A washout that was two feet deep and ten feet wide had taken the kitchen. It turns out Tom and Josh had moved their tent twice the night before to get out of it. Only a small washout hit the dugout the boys had built to sleep in, but there was no evidence of the lean-to they had built out of tarps, nor of their sleeping bags or other gear. We thought it was all lost, but later found it all buried under eight inches of sand. If they had stayed there, they probably would have been buried too.

The biggest surprise was about 100 feet upriver from our camp, and we knew what had made the freight train noise. Measuring twenty feet across, deeper by far than Doug is tall, and extending hundreds of yards up the hill, was the biggest washout any of us had ever seen. It had picked up small trees and big boulders, along with tons of sand, dirt and small rocks, and roared its way into the river. Previously a beautiful green, the river was now muddy brown and swimming with debris. Clearly, if it had come through camp, many of us, maybe all of us, would have died. As it is, three of the four washouts that did hit our camp snaked through tents and camp sites, and the one that hit the boys was the smallest of them all. As we picked up wet gear, and warmed in the sun, we realized how lucky we were.