Gerrit McGowan

River Guide

Hometown

Houston, Texas

AVA Employee Since

2018

Favorite Trips

The Lower Canyon on Clear Creek

ABOUT Gerrit

Gerrit has been a river guide on and off for a whopping 22 years of his life, and his favorite part about it is he gets paid to do what he loves every day. He sold his software company five years ago and is living the dream, and he hopes that five years from now his life will be filled with no work and all play.

REVIEWS FOR GERRIT'S TRIPS

Poor Judgement

Our guide was Goose. That wasn’t a choice, so I just chose one name to fill in the required field. Goose mentioned to us that he was a rookie. We got that! A few times he admitted that it was because of him that we got stuck on rocks. That was fine. He was concerned about our safety so he chose not to have us raft a part of the river. That was fine. It was when WE were asked to carry the raft out of the river, up to the RR tracks. That was NOT fine. My girlfriend and I were not able to carry it. We tried. That left the 3 of them carrying that heavy raft up the hill and on the RR track until another guide came to help. That’s what SHOULD have happened from the beginning. I watched them struggle hauling that raft up that hill. They both lost footing at times. Did I mention that we are in our 60s? Safety first. We get that. We just feel that Goose and his superior used poor judgement by asking US to carry that raft. We still think what might have happened. Unfortunately, that’s the main event of the trip. Not the fun we had. But how we should have asked for someone to help us when we realized the 3 of them had to carry the raft by themselves. Bottom line, we were safe. The other bottom line, the main memory of the Day was not a good one.

Family friendly

This was the perfect introduction to rafting for our family. Our 5 and 7 year old had a great time as well as the adults. The kids even opted to jump from the small cliff! It was an awesome family experience!