As the last post suggested Ive been waiting for the snows to melt over in BC to try and get a river over there done at the end of the summer. It was just the sort of trip I've been after on the Dean river. Five days in proper wilderness and a whitewater that demands respect. Fly into a lake and get a ferry out where it meets the sea. Levels are too high though, and its not going to happen in the time window I have available.
So all plans are off, and I have lost the drive to go, or even think about, boating at the minute. That has left a pretty much blank canvas on which to start motivating for something else. So far i have been just keeping things simple and doing a bit of retail therapy (fell shoes and mountain bikes!) with a heavy dose of TV. What a good little consumer I am, my dreams substituted for consumer objects and tele!
I guess I need to accept that if I want to do trips like that then this is all part of the challenge. I cant sit around for a season and wait for the trips to come spontaeneously as most folk do. Weather I need to accept defeat and head to more convienient rivers, or justy keep going with chasing the dream trip is a decision that I'll just drift toward for the minute....
Its been a classic week or three of rainchasing now. Lots of promise of stuff flasing up after heavy summer downpours. I reckon the ratio of getting on the water to not, has been about 50/50. Still Its brought on some nice dog walking on the days it hasnt been flowing;
A trip came off yesterday though and we got the Upper Esk done. Dash from work, meet, grab a load of calories and upset the domestic balance (sorry!). Sort kit and hike up, then and paddle down the Esk in the three hour window we had. Its a nice run, and can be a mellow 4 if you start below the falls. I really fancied that trip because it has the feeling of a mini mission, and a sense of geography. I've been lining up a bigger mission overseas but its still very much uncertain. The time, money and motivation are all in place, but the water levels are not under my control. I'm sat here waiting for the melt thousands of miles away and its draining tmy nervous energy. Uncertainty is hard work. Do I need to be going all out to sort head and body, or shall i just slump back to routine? I needed to stay enthused whilst waiting for the snows to melt and the call to be made. I needed another reason to go boating, so the Esk fit the bill;
The entry moves are at Vica Swa. We skipped the corner above the pictured drop due to time, lack of safety, and fear! This one goes fairly well though, and gives a nice feeling of moving off down the valley.
Then its steady away with a couple of grade 3/4 slides until Birk Dub (above) Its a nasty squeeze with a very awkward entry. Higher water gives an escape route from a line on river right but that was just closed, so we just had to get ugly with it. We had to take the slot on a slower than the water entry move.
Kail Pot is a hoot, its hard to do it with any grace but it's easy and safe. The water squeezes round a dog leg and its hard to read or find the flow over the lip. If your up there looking at it with your mates then "i'm just gonna float over and see what happens" is the only line you have any certainty of making, so go for that! A few more rapids and some easy water slide and a couple of k's of easy water, lead back to the car.
Had a good afternoon splashing around at Skelwith force on Sunday, squeezing the last drops out of the recent rain. Its an unconseqential but tricky left hand boof at these levels.
"I want to do that when I grow up"
Then we tried some old school playboating at the looping pool just below
Summer rain. Its been good to get out and we've had a few runs. On the first I felt really sketchy, I had a bit of duracell bunny moment to make the boof off the ledge at skelwith, but did enough. Later on the same day, we went up to the Duddon and had a good evening blast. The time on the water had boosted the confidence and the feel of it was coming back. A solid run down wallowbarrow in high water confirmed that the reflexes were still functional!
After the rain comes the Leven, and with confidence restored I felt good about messing about and testing the abilities of the Jefe grande which I still feel like I'm learning. Cartwheels are a bit bouncy and poppy and Im struggling to get that third end :-D! Seems pretty good at everything else though! thanks to jon at dbp for the clip
tales from the geordie adventurer harry black, and his adventures in NZ...
"I arrived in auckland with no kit with me so had to buy everything. When you walk to buy everything, the sales guys dream come true they think your one of them 'all the kit full of shit' types.
Newly fixed up with the embarrasingly new kit I then headed south and bumped into a few other boaters. I hooked up with them to run the kaituna then the wairoa. We did a few others runs in the north island and then on to the main business, south island..
bruce the heli pilot was the point of contact, I ended up being asked along with ted (another brit) to be safety boaters for a raft company, as they're not allowed to run class 5 without kayaks. Getting paid to run class 5 sounded like a good gig.
I haven't ever done saftey boating before, and nore had ted, so we aere ideally qualified ;-). After a quick briefing, off we went on the Whotoroa, a class 4 river we had'nt done on the west coast!! we are supposed to stay in front of the raft, putting on safety at different points down the river, but we then found that the rafts are fast as they dont eddy hop like kayaks naturally do on this kind of stuff. So there was no time even to scout and not even any thought of safety for the safety boater - shit scary!
Then the next day it was onto the perth river, a classic heli access class 5 trip. This time we told the guides that we needed to slow down as we don't know the river!
This river had just got its raft licence and is still being sussed by the raft guides. The last big drop is called 'corner pocket' (not commercally rafted). It looked like death, an 18m wide river going through a 3 ft gap folding over into a big violent recirculating eddy fed hole, all of which is heavely under cut!!! A walk at this level for the kayaks, but the rafts thought they'd give it a go. They flipped on entry and did the down time. One guy was gone for seventeen seconds ropes and rescue, then on to the second raft the whole raft was gone for a second the guide had his helmet ripped from his head but the carnage was'nt so bad.
Well were up and running with version 2. Its been a big effort and all thanks are to Shorty really. Without him this would not exist. We have both stepped away from it this last week and just let it fend for itself. How it will evelove is as unknown now as when we started. I guess personally its also been a chance to step away and reflect about what the point of it is. I guess it something to do. Keeps me off the street corners (or more realistically, watching telly). I hope though that it does, in its own little way, provide some positives to the sport. River level info remains at the heart of what were about and the rest of the media stuff is about generating some community thing. I enjoy other websites about kayaking, and find them, at times, informative and inspirational. I hope that we succeed in that mission occasionally. I hope the new interactivity of this site will help draw readers into being participants, but whatever will be will be...
I've tried, and pretty much failed, to drum up intrest for other folks to take on a rainchasers style site for other areas, but its been an interesting quest and has served to underline that my original reason for getting involved was that what I saw on the web did not represent what I saw was reality on the ground (or the water). Obviously my take on it is no more valid than anyone else's, and that is why the more contributors we have, the better this site will become. The more websites there are about UK boating the better for us all. I dont feel the UK websites 'compete' in any way. The idea of competition amongst non commercial, community based sites is redundant, they all contribute to the plurality of sites that reflect the plurality of different boaters. I do though think that there is room for more. More information, more voices, more plurality, more regions speaking out.
I cant help coming back to the theme of the previous post though. Why no real time river level data? Why are there limited ambitions amongst too many younger boaters? Why are the official body still fighting a battle about credibility with the most active boaters? Why cant we draw down significant funding for recreational boating? Why do we always have to be seen to stick together when in reality we are as diverse as the rest of the population? Why cant we 'grow up' as a sport?
I suspect it all goes back to the fact that kayaking is a pseudo crime.
Today I met a guy on the fells who organised this local long distance fell race, the lakeland 100. They expect 100 or so competitiors for the first year, what i'd expect a good river event here would get. They pull in a serious budget from proper companies marketing departments. What would happen to a kayak event here? it would have to be done illegitimately on zero budget.
Yet if we change the legal climate and make it possible to put on something for boaters. A leven extreme race for example. 100's of entries - yep. Telegenic? yeah. Good marketing opportunity? yeah. Get the councils, tourist and youth board people on board? Possible. Suddenly we would be able to go to leven anglers with an offer to restock the river and get some environmental work done. I think in that climate, frictions between river users may well be lubricated quite amicably.
Anyway, I digress. I guess i just feel like the best way i can chip away at these issues is through rainchasers. I know others do their thing in other ways as well, and thats all to the good. I repeat that if we can do anything to help anyone else set up and run their own (not for profit) website then we are up for it and we have no angles other than what's up here.
the next entry will be about somat good and have pictures - promise
I just walked by the gunpowder gorge section of the kent. On a hot sunny lunch time the rapis looked clean, the water sparkly and deep, with clear lines down all the drops without scraping, grade 2, and perfect for beginners. Some nice little ediies to make, gentle stoppers for learning skills, and deep enough to throw short boats around. Thge flowers were out anmd the wild garlic going large on the perfume.
Number of fisherfolk? None. Disturbance level to human or animal if there were a group on there today? None.
Why do we put up with this situation? In any other country it would be easy to imagine local clubs there teaching young people skills, developing both the sport and giving them something positive to do. Some environmental cleaning and awareness work in the process? There should be no conflict with fisherfolk. the 'problems' with access (spawning beds, busy fishing times, some privacy for residents) are easily solved once us boaters are granted the opportunity to be responsible . We should take on board lessons from history. Up the revolution :-)! Dumb laws should be changed.
I spent the Easter Hols up on the Isle of Mull, it’s not exactly well known for its white water but we’d taken up a couple of boats anyway mainly for messing around on the local loch. So rain and snow melt combined with Rich’s almost annoying optimism and enthusiasm meant we were driving up alongside some river hidden by trees, we’ed randomly picked off the map (still no idea what it was called). Getting on bouncy grade 2/3 was ok but not great with wind and sleet lashing across the river, then things came good. The wind dropped, sleet stopped, sun came out and the river narrowed from15 to 2 meters wide with a sweet horizon line. A quick scout then 500 meters of fantastic water followed, as the river dropped into a gorge about 4 meters deep, which was like a log flume, tight turns, waves bouncing off the wall, lots of holes to boof over, the kind of thing that makes you laugh all the way down. A couple of hundred meters down steam and a sweet s-bend followed, with a cheeky little hole waiting to hand out a spanking if messed things up.
Packing up at the van in warm spring sun shine with broad smiles, having done a beautiful river, we had not expected to do and had been picked at random was really good. Guidebooks can be inspiring, and kinda let you know what you’re going to get, but doing stuff like this just seems to make me smile more! Time for some more exploring…… still we did have some 'access' issues with the locals ;-)!
And from ned, the River Traligill…..
no piccys sorry, but i was staying up north of Ullapool a while back and I noticed this on the map. I was the only one with a boat so did some soloing of the classics like the Inver and Kirkaig, but was tempted into a bit of exploring. A walk up showed that it had potential at least in the lower section so I put plastic to shoulder and went into the hills.
The lower section was fairly unexciting run at grade 3 with one mini gorge which was maybe worth a 4. the track gave a clear site that further upstream was a steep gorge where a tributary joined the main stream. above was a bit bony so I hopped on there. I expected to walk back down thew gorge section, especially as I was alone, but to my surprise all of the gorge section was a go. An easy boof off a 2m lip before it narrowed and accelerated down a series of slabs. The final slab was steep and had a rock sticking in one side but it looked good. 2 or three more falls of up to 3 metres, but all fairly uncomplicated, led me out and away down the lower section.
Two days later there was more water so I was keen to go back up, hopeful that the run would be really good quality and that the upper section may be on. The upper section has some big falls and bizarre rock formations. the whole river resurfaces from a cave sysaetm and I put on there, it all went apart from one bigger fall which I skipped. It may have gone under different circumstances but it was not sensible to really even look. I picked down some class 4 water before joing up with the now familiar gorge section. In high water it was just a blast, 5 falls back to back all, which run come quickly. A good value walk in burn entertaing but not too pushy.
So i got to get my act into gear and think of something else to do now. Its always a bit of blow. I think I could suffer from SAD, but in reverse. Its always good to go against a trend!
The hills are calling a bit at the mo. that was a good theme in the longer evenings last year.
I also gotta new dog to introduce,
so he'll be joining the 'man 'n beast in the elements' line up.
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