OUTDOORS REVIEW

BY MARK FORSYTHE

Tamar Glouberman is “running the line” through standing waves and thunderous rapids while dodging massive rocks. On occasion her raft becomes “bent like a rubber taco.” Welcome aboard the liquid roller coaster of a whitewater raft guide. Chasing Rivers: A Whitewater Life is her adrenaline-charged memoir, where the unexpected can be around the next bend in the river.

Glouberman writes from an insider’s perspective after years of guiding on wild, remote rivers; from BC’s Chilko River and Tatshenshini to the Colorado River’s Grand Canyon and leisurely splashes in the Galapagos. A rusty, duct-taped Honda hatchback takes her cross-continent to the next whitewater rush and paying job.

Guide work is physically and mentally demanding. Standing 5 feet 2 inches tall, she is fully tested lugging rafts and supplies, grappling with oars on Class IV rivers, and dealing with male customers who wonder why they’re stuck with a woman. One guest, “Steroid Man,” finds himself “accidentally” bounced out of the raft a few times. Soon enough, he sees the light.

Raised in Montreal, Glouberman started guiding on the Hudson River in upper New York State and on the Ottawa River. Launching her kayak off Rockwell Falls in the Adirondacks sealed her fate. “It was the first time in my life that I’d focused on just one thing while every other thought, and even the outside world, went silent,” she says. Self-doubt vanished for a time too.

Glouberman headed west to BC in the 1990s shortly after the province had tightened regulations when 12 people died rafting in 1987. Five men were lost from a single raft on the Chilko River. Potential risks and the responsibility associated with keeping people alive occupied an eddy in the back of Glouberman’s mind. Respect the river, and it rewards you though. Glouberman describes seeing hundreds of migrating caribou on the Yukon’s Firth River: “What amazed me most was the smell. The musky aroma of so many animals was unlike anything I had known before.” While she was rafting BC’s pristine Tatshenshini River, a detour to Alsek Lake included an earth-shaking moment: “Across the lake, the massive glacier boomed and calved huge chunks of ice into the water, sending waves splashing to the shore of our camp.… If we had to say our goodbyes to the world, I couldn’t think of a better place to do it.”

One of a handful of female guides in a male-dominated business, Glouberman was always having to prove herself. For the most part, she was accepted by male guides and loved being part of a community that was prone to partying hard: drinking to the “fall down stage,” dancing naked around campfires and engaging in multiple flings. She is frank about the latter: