Oregon Rafting Trip - Meet Your Staff - WetPlanetWhitewater.com

TEAM WET PLANET

Carrie Heaton

This is Carrie Heaton's first summer with Wet Planet, and none of us can remember how we survived without her. Carrie works full-time for Wet Planet handling reservations and managing the day to day operations in the Wet Planet office and shop. She's the voice behind the phone when you are making reservations, the photographer behind the camera when you're running Husum Falls, and the driver behind the wheel of the van for your shuttle to the river. If you have already made reservations and have called a few times with questions, the chances are that you have spoken to Carrie a couple of times before ever arriving at the Wet Planet headquarters. Carrie's organization and professionalism, upbeat personality, and sense of humor when things get busy are indispensable to the success of our operations at Wet Planet.

Carrie spent most of her life growing up in Oklahoma, with stints in Washington and Nebraska. Upon graduating high school she attended the University of Nebraska where she completed her degree in advertising. While there, her parents bought a U-pick blueberry farm on the Olympic Peninsula. It was during this time that Carrie fell in love with the Northwest all over again.

Her first experience with seasonal work came at a lodge in the Olympic National Park in Washington right by where her parents live. It was supposed to be a summer job that ended in August followed by a cross country move to the other Washington to begin working on her Master's degree in political management. While there was the initial move, within two weeks Carrie was back in the Northwest at the park. She was ready for a break from school, and decided to follow her love of traveling and the Northwest by staying in the seasonal industry for a while.

It was after that summer that Carrie decided it would be fun to try something new and work at a ski resort. She ended up at Stevens Pass, where she worked for Todd and met Jaco as well. Working at Stevens Pass, Carrie supervised roughly 90 employees in the day to day operations of a high volume ski area restaurant. Recognizing Carrie's skills and professional attitude, Todd and Jaco started recruiting Carrie to join the Wet Planet team that first winter. However, it wasn't until two summers later that we finally landed her. After spending the last year back at the University of Nebraska where she was working on her Master's in political science, Carrie decided she needed to get away from the library for the summer, and Wet Planet provided the perfect fit.

Carrie is new to the whitewater industry, only having been rafting on the Arkansas River in Colorado a few times, but her familiarity with the seasonal industry, her marketing education and experience with graphic design, and her ability to keep the rest of us organized as the reservation phone calls start pouring in make her an invaluable asset to Wet Planet. Now that she's here, the river has its hold. Carrie's new goal for the summer is to learn to whitewater kayak!