Spending the Summer As a Whitewater Raft Guide

Updated May 15, 2022

Ever thought about chucking your day job—the desk, the conference calls, the commute—and doing something completely different, preferably outside?

Pete Bell did just that. In spring 2019, he left his respectable job as a statistician at a law firm in Denver to become a whitewater guide—but then he got his “real” job back at the end of the summer.

Pete Bell Zoom Flume Browns Canyon Arkansas River photo by Whitewater Photography — *Pete Bell taking friends down Zoom Flume in Browns Canyon on the Arkansas River* (photo by Whitewater Photography)

Pete’s side trip from his steady career course preceded the pandemic, but his seemingly daredevil move fits right in to the current phenomena of millions of workers taking a closer look at how they define working for a living. In Pete’s case, he didn’t end up ditching his real job for good in favor of taking to the river full-time. But his successfully negotiated sabbatical gave him the confidence and savvy to continue improving his terms of employment, including better way, a 100% work-from-home situation, and more vacation.

So how did Pete summon the nerve to take a time-out from his desk job? And how did he get it back? (And why?!)

Pete’s story is a perfect playbook for how to fit new outdoor experiences into your life—on a bigger scale than just hiking over the weekend—without having to sell all your possessions, sever ties with your spouse, or even give up your 401K. He basically created his own sabbatical—a longish break from regular duties that’s common in academia, but pretty much unheard of in any other job.

Deep plunge into whitewater rafting

Pete’s journey to becoming a summer raft guide started when he met his future wife, Audrey (co-founder of RiverBent). She’d grown up river tripping with her parents. Her dad had been a guide back in the 1980s. Her brother guided during the summers while he was an undergrad. And when Audrey and Pete got married, the extensive circle of friends that Audrey had grown up rafting with bought them a whitewater raft.

Pete Bell rowing House Rock Rapid Grand Canyon — *Pete’s experience as a river guide came in handy when he rowed Grand Canyon in spring 2021—here he navigates House Rock Rapid (photo by John Hughes)*

All great, except neither Audrey or Pete really knew how to run a paddle raft or an oar rig. But Pete had quickly realized that to secure his berth in the family, he needed to get savvy to whitewater. He was game, but when you’re an office worker in a law firm, it’s hard to get great at rowing an oar rig in whitewater.

“If you haven’t grown up running whitewater, you can pick up a lot on weekend trips or that big multi-day trip that comes typically once a summer,” Pete said. “But I wanted the opportunity to run river trips day after day so I could get better at reading water, pulling swimmers into boats, and just responding to the situations that inevitably come up.”

Pete was keen to take his whitewater experience further.

“I loved everything about running river trips from the start,” he said. “I had a bit of outdoor experience as an Eagle scout, and felt like I was a decent camper. But being on the river puts you in remote places that in many cases you’d never get to on foot. Plus, you get to bring a guitar.”

(For the record, Pete didn’t play guitar before he met Audrey, either, but now has dozens if not hundreds of terrific songs under his belt, and can bust out some great finger-picking.)

Pete started hatching his plan for being a professional guide after about three years of rowing their raft on weekend trips or on the highly anticipated multiday trips the family ran each year.

“I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish by the time I was 30, and being a raft guide for a summer was one of them,” he said. “My sister and her husband had a baby, and I started to realize the time for doing things like this would run out. It would get harder to take a break from a steady job to be a raft guide.”

Now that Pete’s on the other side of this adventure—and would recommend taking an outdoor adventure break to others—he has some tips to share on how to pull it off.

1. Get your money business in order

Once Pete had the idea in his head, he started laying the groundwork. First, knowing that raft guides make less than statisticians at law firms, he put together the money plan.

“I had some hope that I would be able to take a hiatus from my job and then come back,” he said. “But I knew I couldn’t expect that.”

He started saving money to cover his part of the family expenses during the four months that he’d be rafting. Although he knew he would make a little money rafting, he also knew not to count on that. New raft guides find out quickly that it takes time and an initial outlay of cash before you start making money. You typically have to pay for training. You might spend your first weeks after training scrapping for trips, because new guides are at the bottom of the lineup. The volume of trips doesn’t start to pick up until July or August.

Leaving his regular job for a few months also meant he missed out on some benefits. He had to switch to his wife’s health insurance, which was a cumbersome process. He wasn’t able to contribute to his 401K during his absence. Plus, he came back with zero accrued vacation or personal time.

*Pete guiding a paddle boat on a family trip through Gunnison Gorge* *(photo by Lily Durkee)*

2. Set the stage at work

The next step was approaching his supervisor.

“With my primary supervisor, I felt like I had laid the groundwork early on,” he said. “I really like and respect her, and we had often discussed my goals, which included both my career aspirations and personal goals. Before this raft guide thing was a firm deal even in my mind, I had mentioned it as something I might want to do.”

With that forewarning, Pete said, his boss wasn’t surprised when he came to her in January 2019 and said he planned to apply to be a raft guide for the coming summer.

“She said, ‘Let’s make it happen,’ ” Pete said. “But I prepared for anything. I was ready to lose my job and have to look for another job at the end of the summer.”

The specific details—including when Pete would leave his post at the law firm, and when he would return—came over the next few months of wait-and-see. Pete didn’t know whether he would get invited to training by a rafting company, how long the training would be, and whether he would get hired by the company to run commercial trips.

He was invited to train with a company that runs trips on the Arkansas River as well as Clear Creek in Colorado. Once he had the training dates in mind, he went back to his supervisor to start mapping out a specific plan.

*Pete rowing a gear boat on a Thanksgiving family trip through Ruby-Horsethief on the Colorado River*

“I told her that I would be gone at least six weeks for the initial training,” he said. “And then after that, the timing of coming back to the law firm depended on whether I would be hired.”

Pete said that he successfully navigated the time of uncertainty with the law firm by being as honest as he could at every step in the process.

“Because I was prepared to lose my job, I had nothing to lose by being up-front about the twists and turns in the process,” he said. “It might have worked out that I was back at my desk job after six weeks of training.”

One important aspect of Pete’s negotiations with the law firm was that he didn’t intend to become a full-time whitewater guide. All he wanted was a summer off to hone his rafting skills, and he’d be back at his spreadsheets in late summer.

3. Keep expectations for the outdoor adventure in check

Any day on the river beats a day in the office, right? Yeah … sort of. Pete said that the difference between floating a river on a private trip and working as a raft guide was stark.

“It’s definitely work,” he said. “You’re doing a job. On a private trip, you can hang around in camp and launch when you want, and pretty much run at your own pace,” he said. “With commercial trips, everything runs on a tight schedule. You have very little time to get the customers set up with life jackets, get through the safety talk, and get launched. It’s stressful at the put-in, because several other outfitters will be launching at about the same time, and when it’s your turn you have to get on the river and go.”

Some training days were surprisingly tough, too. Pete wanted to get more experience handling flipped rafts, but he didn’t expect to do it more than two dozen times in a morning.

“On on particular day, we had to flip a raft 26 times in a 9-mile stretch of water and get it righted,” he said. “That’s a lot of pull-ups. But that’s part of the reason I wanted to guide, to have to recover from those situations time after time.”

This repetition instilled confidence in running whitewater on private trips that he never would have acquired otherwise.

“There’s no comparison in how I feel now in stressful situations,” he said. “When you practice pulling swimmers into the boat day after day after day, it becomes second nature on a private trip. You know that most situations can be set straight fairly quickly, and that gives you a lot more confidence.”

Pete Bell and friends in Zoom Flume on the Arkansas River (photo by Whitewater Photography)

4. Keep in touch with work

Throughout the summer, Pete checked in with his supervisor at work, and kept up on office doings with his co-workers, many of which are friends outside of work.

Pete set a clear date for when he would return to work, which meant that he probably left some trips on the table at the end of the summer but helped his supervisor plan the workload.

How did it feel to get back to the grind?

“Surprisingly natural,” he said. “It took a while to get some projects again, so it was slow the first few days, but felt good.”

Pete Bell on the Lower Salmon River — *Pete guiding a paddle raft on the Lower Salmon (private trip)*

5. Pay it forward

Pete knew that his hiatus from work would put more work on his teammates.

“There was some discussion of whether they would bring on a contractor while I was out,” he said. “They didn’t, so my buddies had to pick up extra work.”

In addition to laying the groundwork with his supervisor, Pete talked to his teammates beforehand so they weren’t caught off-guard. When he went back, he poured himself into work and was resigned to the fact that he wouldn’t be taking vacations anytime soon.

Take that work break

All in all, taking a break from work to run commercial river trips worked out well for Pete. He got the river experience he was looking for without sacrificing his day job, which he doesn’t hate. He enjoys his work, likes the people he works with, and appreciates Denver’s music and sports scene so he’s not looking to hole up in the mountains and ski or trek around Europe.

“I would absolutely do it again,” he said. “And I would tell anyone who wants to do something similar to just go for it. Plan it out, be straightforward with the people at work, and you can carve out space in your life to do something you’ve always wanted to do.”