the lost world

Peaceful Dam Protest Turns Bloody in Arunachal Pradesh India

2011-10-10T10:31:00.000-07:00

A message from Roland Stevenson.

The world's third largest river system and the bread basket of well over 100 million people in North East India and Bangladesh is in jeopardy. Please consider the following incident from last week.

I apologize for the graphic images, but there is bad news coming out of Roing, Arunachal Pradesh, where the Dibang meets the Brahmaputra. Students who were organizing against the dam hearings were inaccurately labeled as Maoists. During the Durga Puja two days ago police shot at them. Below are some disturbing pictures sent to me following a Freedom of Information Release by one of the human rights lawyers we're working with to oppose the dam. Luckily there were no fatalities.

This month there are many hearings scheduled on dams in eastern Arunachal Pradesh, including the large Siang and Dibang dams. We set up operations near the Siang five years ago to train locals in river-tourism practices that are economically viable alternatives to dams, while predicting this issue would come to a head. Large portions of the population are against the dams, but they are being pushed through by a powerful private company. Many have said that the dam company, Jaypee, is buying out political and police leaders to subdue opposition, and that is certainly the feeling in Roing.

Please share and/or cover this if you can. Let me know if I can help to answer any questions or put you in touch with our people.

Thanks,
Roland Stevenson

Maoist labeling of students, some were of high-school age:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/guwahati/Arunachal-tribe-branded-Maoists-to-check-anti-dam-protests/Article1-755336.aspx

And a link quoting the CM of Assam as labeling the protesters as "left wing extremists" rather than the legitimate, peaceful protesters that they are.
http://www.assamtribune.com/scripts/detailsnew.asp?id=oct0811/at07

Sunil's Message:

Dear All,

Please find enclosed FIR, injured photos of victim,list injured,
presently victims are admitted at Dibrugarh and treatment going on .
Please see more detail in dibangnews.com, and the
standardtribunal.blogpost. Roing police under the head of Veenu Basal
and his wife Deputy Commissioner using police force and they were
provoking public in different occassion to take action against the
youth and public. Some months back police issued fake media report
alleging that moaist has been working with anti-dam groups. Linking
up some underground and wanted to sabotage the people’s movement
against the dam activist and to get the public hearing done which is
fixed on 24 Oct 2011. The public hearing is being protested and was
cancelled ten times. The same tactics were condemned by the public at
public meeting. Now this tactics paved off and unarmed student
present in the puja pandal were shot, by chasing them.After the
shooting incident, SP tried to enter the hospital but was not allowed,
he blank fired.

Hope strong action against police and magistrate

Any other documents required let me know

With regards
Advocate and HR activist

Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh

Expedition Mambucaba

2011-09-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

Finally after two weeks of extended meetings and film showings in Brazil, the real objective of our trip to Brazil is directly infront of us. I know what you must be thinking, and no Carnival is still 5 months out. For Chris Korbulic, Pedro Oliva, and I the real point of our annual reunion in Brazil has always been based on the next big river descent.

Unlike previous years where we have been traveling to the far ends of this massive country; this time around, our destination is located precisely between the two largest cities in Brazil if not in the world: Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro. Brazil coast hems in a sizable portion of the South Atlantic Ocean and for much of that the Serra do Mar or Sea Mountains rise up from the coast line appearing in Rio de Janeiro as the iconic Sugar Loaf and other granite massives. In fact further down the coast towards Sao Paulo these mountains form the largest costal land form in brasil extending 40 miles into the interior and peaking out over 6000 feet in elevation giving rise to sizable river whose main stem drops 4000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean in just 20 miles: the Rio Mambucaba.

Luckily for Brazil and the outside world this one of a kind watershed has been completely protected from deforestation and pollution. Unluckily for Kayakers there is limited access and what little access is available is restricted by a National Park designation not so different from our Yellowstone. So it is good to have friends in Brazil that know how to pull this mission off and not get thrown in federal prisson.

In fact Pedro was a part of the team that made the first and only descent of the Mambucaba 5 year's ago following such kayaking visionaries as John Grace, Pat Keller, Andrew Holecombe, Jason Hale, and not to mention Emmy award winning cinematographer Ryan McPherson. But by all accounts it was a nasty portaged filled affair with the vast Majority of the 72 hour descent spent climbing through some of the densest jungle on earth and running from hummingbird sized Wasps.

So why go back? Well for one thing we are here at the end of the dry season and the river should be as tame as it is ever going to get. But really this is one of those opportunities to experience a place that time and progress has left behind; which in theory; is worth a few days of suffering.... I will let you know.

Cheers

Ben Stookesberry

Into 2nd Deepest Canyon in North America

2011-01-05T12:55:00.000-08:00

At the end of September 2010. Rafa Ortiz, Chris Korbulic, Daniel Migoya and I stood at the brink of one of the most beautiful and daunting canyons in Mexico. In fact according to the guy who is literally writing the whitewater guide book to Mexico, Rocky Contos; there might be only a few rivers in the whole country that would offer the kind of challenge we were about to take on. Situated do west of the tourist Mecca of Mazatlan, and just next door to the south of the monster gorge of the Rio Piaxtla (North America's deepest Canyon), the Rio Presidio is considered to be North America's second deepest river gorge at 7900 feet deep.

Unlike the Piaxtla that Darin McQuoid, Jesse Coombs, James Dusenbery, Rocky Contos, and I first descended in 2009; the Presidio had never been canyoneered before and the majority of a google earth scout was shadowed by a canyon too deep and narrow to be scene from space. Of course the Piaxtla had taught several lessons that would improve the odds of our attempt on the Presidio:

1. Bring twice as much rope as you think you need.
2. Keep a close I on the weather forecasts.
3. Pack enough food for at least 7 nights.
4. There is little or no hope of rescue so the first aid kit should be well appointed.
5. Move quickly through the portages as marijuana plantations are prevalent in the area.
6. Bring enough cameras to capture some of the most spectacular canyon vistas in the world.

From an inconspicuous put-in like some pine covered river on the Colorado Plateau, the Presidio was set to descend some 7000 feet into the core of the Sierra Occidental plateau. With Mexicans Rafa and Daniel on board, we sifted through mountains of local beta about the canyon, only to find a general consensus amongst the locals that our attempt would be met with one danger after the other: "If the scorpions don't get you, than a flash flood will."

But here is the thing. You can't ask or get permission to do a first descent. The question of can you or should you can only be worked out with the canyon and the river while in the act. The only thing we knew for sure while standing at the lonely bridge high on the Rio Presidio in Durango Mexico is that Chris, Rafa, Daniel, and I would try.

An animated retelling of our descent of the Presidio is featured in the January 2011 addition of Outside Magazine. Here is the link to the teaser of the film that I am making from the descent. Stay tuned to jacksonkayak.com for more clips and pics from the Rio Presidio.

Cheers

Ben Stookesberry

KAYAKINGS FIRST MEGA RAMP FALLS

2009-05-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

Kayakings first natural 20 meter megaramp! Summit Creek, Washington is the venue for one of kayaking most noteworthy drops. First found by up and comers Todd and Chris Wells, they soon spilled the beans to Cody Howard who in turn thought it was the coolest drop he had ever seen. However no one was sure how 50 to 60 feet of freefall transitioning to a nearly flat rock slab would feel on the body.

Way back in the day I used to specialize in low water big drops, and even in my "old age" this one was right up my alley. After Cody, Bett Adems, and I explored the upper gorge of what will be known from now on as skate park creek, Cody insisted on hiking into the lower gorge to show me Mega Ramp falls. With rain pouring down and light waning everything I saw in the drop exuded perfection. The was visibly raising the level of the creek and I knew that the following day could be the perfect opportunity to probe the giant ramp. With an all important Ashland showing of Hotel Charley Vol. 4 to attend that same evening, we would have to get to the creek at the proverbial butt crack of dawn in order to run the drop into the down stream gorge and still make the 7 hour drive to Ashland, OR by show time.

At 6 am Cody, Bett and I were joined by videographer Ryan Scott and Pro Photog Lana Young to make the return trip to Summit creek. Visual inspection revealed that the once paltry flow was now roosting over the massive drop. Although the entry to the falls had cleaned up considerably, there was concern that the thick flow was now vaulting over the transition and landing abruptly on the flat slab below. Cody decided against probing the drop but was eager to help with safety and cameras. After a few more test logs, I was confident in gaining the transition and rocketing cleanly into the pool below.

Avoiding the acceleration of the lead in flume, I ferried into the drop at the lip and tried to hold my speed to a minimum. I went dead vertical right away and rocketed at 32 feet per second squared towards the flat slab 20 meters below. As hoped and anticipated, the transition was as perfect as anything dreamed up by Tony Hawk, sending me flying off the trani into a 40 foot dart move towards the pool below. The descent was so clean that Cody quickly followed with and equally spectacular and clean descent. Cody and I then proceeded down the rest of the gorge below the falls that was something like nearby Little Goose Creek (aka Kenobi gorge).

Big props to the whole crew for their commitment to expanding the boundaries of the sport in the already ultra-classic Columbia River Gorge!

Central Brazil: A new world record

2009-03-05T04:52:00.001-08:00

We took a frame from one of the angles for you to check out!

Yesterday the 4th of March, 2009, Brazilian kayaker and fellow Brazil World Record Attemt Expedition member Pedro Olivia shattered the existing world record (108 foot or 33 meter) with a 38. 7 meter (127 foot) waterfall descent on a tributary to the Amazon on the Rio Sacre in Campos Novos, Mata Grosso, Brazil. His 2.9 seconds of pure freefall sent Pedro rocketing into the pool at right around 70 miles per hour in his Jackson Kayak Rocker. Although people have certainly perished upon hitting a pool of water from such heights, the team counted on the massive, gushing rivers of Central Brazil to produce the softest water landings on earth. This particular falls was nearly a foot ball feild in width, with approximately 5000 cfs of crystal clear 70 degree rain water spilling over the lip. This meant that although Pedro´s boat went over vertical, he and his boat were swept and kept intact into a deep mist filled pool. Infact Pedro resurfaced behind the falls were he was able to right himself with his hands on a conviently located boulder bar. The place is truely beyond description, and I guess that is why it is aptly named Salto Belo or Beautiful falls.

As with the majority of our descents in Brazil, we were led to this falls by extremely friendly and helpful locals. So friendly and helpful infact that they set a 40 meter repel for us inorder to access the base of the falls.

Our team and Pedro inparticular have been searching for a world record falls during the rainy season in Central Brazil for the last two years and it was certainly surreal to see both the Team´s and Pedro`s dream come true. I think it is now official that this Area of Mato Grosso and Goias is the true ``North Shore´´ of big waterfall kayaking.

Our team of kayakers is a international subset of Team Jackson Kayak that include certainly some of the most able class V (extreme) kayakers in the world including (USA)Jesse Coombs, (Mex) Rafael Ortiz, (USA) Chris Korbulic, (USA) Ben Stookesberry, and of course the venerable Brazilian Pedro Oliva. In Pedros words his descent was a reflectoin of this teams cohesion and support from the moment everyone got off the plane.

From my point of veiw Pedro, alone has shattered all preconceived notions of what is possible in a Kayak!

The trip is still not over yet as we move back into Goais for 3 final days searching out the biggest runnable waterfalls on the planet.

Make sure to check out this record braking and mind boggling descent in this year´s late April debut of Hotel Charley volume 4: At your Own Risk.

Back in the USA: Outlet Falls

2009-01-14T18:41:00.000-08:00

Since getting back from Pakistan and India 2.5 weeks ago, I have been in touch with Erik Boomer about the record snow pack that was soon to be hit by a relatively warm torrential rain. With the true eye of the storm veering north into Washington, the Columbia River Gorge was blessed with the perfect amount of rain to bring creeks and rivers up to flood stage, but not to catastrophic levels like what happened around Seattle. When the storm finally came to an end, Devin Knight and I made an all knight drive to Portland to meet up with Boomer and the Herbecks (aka Nate and Heather). Apparently, they had their eye on a falls that had been bouncing around the collective imaginations of the Northwest paddling crowd for several years: Outlet Falls.

In the spring of 2004, I scouted Outlet falls with Josh Bechtel, Tao Berman, and Eric Link only to find the creek far too low to run despite heavy rain the night before. From nearly a quarter mile away high on the canyon wall, we could see a perfect but extremely tall punch bowl style falls that was the gatekeeper to an impressive canyon below.

Despite seemingly large drainage basin, located directly under the impressive summit of Mount Baker, Outlet Creek is completely cut off from the surrounding mountains that funnel more significant water into the White Salmon and Klickitat basins. Rain on a big snow pack was literally the only type of event short of a full Monsoon that would transform a tranquil trickle into a raging runnable torrent.

When Dev and I arrived on the seen, it was apparent that the word had gotten around as many of the Northwest finest paddlers and personalities where on hand for a would be first descent. Sam Drevo was the first to greet us and let us know that Boomer was at the lip and ready to go. After a 7 hour all night drive, Dev and I were weary of just jumping into the Malay of a flooded big drop, but a short visual inspection had us scrambling for our gear to join the rest of the team in preparation for the first descent.

Of course with this type of unique winter induced opportunity, comes hazards also unique to mid-winter paddling. Outlet was now a thick tongue of brown current spilling 60 to 80 feet into a boiling , icy cauldron below. Due to the 2 to 5 feet of snow pack, the peak of the rain of event was only now entering the falls indicated by the river lapping up to the edge of the snow packed bank. 7 foot boils at the base of the falls sent the 35-degree water hurling towards ice shelves on either side. Dry suits were certainly mandatory in light of the significant hazard of hypothermia from any would be swim.

To complicate matters more, a 5+ rapid above the falls was preventing an easy entrance into the creek necessitating a pretty exposed seal launch above another significant rapid that led right to the lip of the falls. Boomer is certainly no stranger to exposed situations and radioed to the rest of the group that he had his line dialed and was ready to launch. Dev and I where positioned directly above the lip as Boomer used a hybrid form of snow kayaking to fly off the canyon wall and porpoise perfectly into an eddy above the massive drop. 2, 3, 4 strokes to the lip of what Boomer would later describe as "ka-ra-te" and he set the classic stern draw to tuck which has become a hall mark big waterfall kayaking. From what I could see from above it was a perfect descent, but seconds later I saw his paddle float downstream and then Boomer appeared fighting to hand rolled against the icy wall. In the end, he swam just feet from Heather running safety in the pool below. He was ok and super pumped on an amazing first descent, but it was obvious that the falls was extremely powerful.

Many of you already know that I love big waterfalls, but what you may not realize is how much they scare me at the same time. To intentionally enter an avalanche of liquid ice is counter intuitive, yet a clean line will yields a feeling of elation and personal accomplishment that lasts a lifetime. In the end it is all about the feeling of the place and the people around you and that day the situation was perfect. Devin Knight and I dissected the line and came up with the ideal scenario. The rest of the crew including Ryan Scott, Barnie Bonito, Charlie Munsey, Christie Glismyer, Richard Hallaman, Keel Brightman, Jed Weingarten, et. al where on hand shooting photos and film, and running saftey to make the event a one of a kind experience. I'll let Sam Drevo's sweet photo tell the story of my descent. What can I say... the Super Hero Loves to fly!

Also huge thumbs up to LJ Groth for is third and final descent of Outlet that day. He tossed his paddle and nailed a beautiful plug, flushing straight downstream and nailing his hand-role!

Check out more on our Outlet descent at:

northwestpaddling.com
www.keelbrightmanphotography.blogspot.com/
watergrande.blogspot.com
www.pbase.com/ greglief/outlet_falls

Intercontinental Crossing: Northeast India and Bhutan

2009-01-13T11:37:00.000-08:00

Ben Stookesberry and Chris Korbulics transcendental journey through a 130 mile swath of the Himalayan front.

The Eye of the Lion: Pakistan

2008-12-27T05:49:00.000-08:00

The Indus River is a Himalayan Giant whose headwaters juxtaposes the mighty Tsang Po/ Brahmaputra River in Central Tibet near the mystical peak of Kilash. Traveling 600 miles through Tibet, India, and Pakistan the Indus slams into the Karakoram Range of Northern Pakistan at 8000 feet above sea level. The following 100 miles of the Indus forms one of the most dramatic Gorges on the planet that at it's heart forms a chasm 2 miles deep and 12 miles wide.

Karakorum beauty: The Indus River bisects the two most prominent mountain ranges on earth. The Himalaya and the Karakorum. In addition to being the second highest mountain range in the world, the Karakorum is known for jagged spires that render some of it's more prominent peaks still unclimbed.

30 day tourist visas to Pakistan are available for $120 usd, but are not valid for travel through restricted area. Please note that the entire country outside of Islamabad is a restricted area: make sure you have a guide!

Our "guide" and friend Roland Stevenson was our ticket to the Northern areas. Upon arriving in Islamabad, Roland quickly connected with old friends and new ones to make our trip up the Indus a snap. Roland is rapidly becoming the preeminent expedition coordinator in on the Indian sub-continent. Over the past three year's, he has spearheaded dozens of commercial and non-commercial trips through his cooperative whitewater company River India. I say cooperative because Roland uses his language and people skills to connect with the locals and give every trip a local partner.

Right to left (top to bottom) the whole crew including our intrepid Pakistani drivers: Chris Korbulic, Phil Boyer, Ben Stookesberry, Darin McQuoid, Roland Stevenson, Rashid and Mustafa.

When 10 to 15 thousand cfs constricts to 50 or 60 feet and drops 20 - 30 the ride down the tounge is nearly out of control. Here on day 1, Rafa enters our first encounter with the full power of the Indus on day one. In this same rapid the surging hole/ wave that you can see in the middle closed out on me and I spent the second have of this rapid getting held upside down in the proverbial glacial strangle hold of the Indus. This was my wake up call: take off your pogies and get your gameface on because there is no one that can help you if something goes wrong out here.

Our first encounter with the local population on day 1 in the Canyon set the tone for the trip: friendly, excited, and stoked to interact with the crazy kayakers.

Darin McQuoid on day 1 turning his skill full steep creek maneuvers into big-water sledge hammers. In the Indus, you either punch or get punched.

Day 1 part 2 "Himalayan Drainpipe"

On day 2, freezing haze gives way to brilliant blue skies as Rafa leads the way towards the first truly enormous rapid on the Indus. On our 100 mile pre-scout of the Indus from the Gilgit/ Skardu Highway we spotted some rapids that stood out like cathedrals amongst mere castles. It was obvious that all of Rafa's time spent honing his big water prowess on the Ottawa had paid off as he alone taps into the first Cathedral sized rapid on the Indus... an obvious first descent!

Still Day 2 and the Rapids continued to stack up. Already our group had become more accustomed to both the Indus and each other. To that end, the boat scout begins to develop where just a few brief glimpses from the approach to the rapid gives the lead paddler an adequate mental map of where to go. In turn the rest of the group either gets that same feeling or has enough faith in the lead paddler to follow somewhat blindly. Boat scouting is a true sixth sense unique to river runners.

Again on day 2, this rapid dropped completely out of sight and we took the Liberty of a relatively short scout to Identify our lines. As usual to that point, Rafa fires off first taking a nasty center line into a huge standing wave in order to surf clear of a ominous looking set of pour-overs further down.

The near the end of Day 2 and beautiful sandy beach that was bathed in light under a full moon that night.

Day 3 turned out to be the natural evolution of Day 2's dabble with boat scouting. The river had opened up into a long series of powerful read in run that might be more dangerous than a daunting scouts. In this type of water, a fellow paddler only 20 feet in front of you can be out of site do to double and tripple over-head crest to trough wave heights. Darin McQuoid accelerates into depths of the Indus gaining only breif cresting views of what lay in wait down stream.

Day 4 began with another lengthy section of big water read and run. But was soon punctuated by the Legendary falls at Asstack. Somehow photos just don't do this drop justice. Partly because you are not seeing the 10 foot surges in the pool and partly due to the conceptual problem of rationalizing 15,000 cfs through a slot like this. Also know that Rafa was the only one to enter the river this close to the falls as the froth you see him in something more like a storm cloud and less life a turbulent river.

Unfortunately for the group, Day 4 was Rafa's final day with us on the water as his two week sabbatical from his mechanical engendering studies could go no longer. Rafa's final drop dubed "Rafa's Last Stand" forebode what would soon become the norm on the Indus downstream. The river constricted to 15 feet wide between a diagonal pourover and a 200 foot pilar of bedrock. Again the river had acheived insane velocities generating massive boils in the pool below. In this photo Chris K is caught in the interface of the boils and the savage current.

Phil enters Rafa's last stand on Day 4 marking the end of Rafa's aggressive run on the first part of the Rondu and the beginning of the Bedrock Gorges to come.

The end of day 4 saw the rest of the group pushing on toward the next available beach for camp and met with more powerful drops on the Indus. Phil took my hand signals from his boat and ended up with an impressive surf in a huge hole. Phil definitely takes the freestyle prize for his clean air blunt.

Day 5 began with a call on the Radio from Roland up on the road. "You guys better take out at the swinging bridge around the corner. There is a massive rapid there that leads to a 5 mile long vertical walled gorge. Some of the rapids in there look unportagable and/ or unscoutable from river level."

3 hours later I joined whitewater veteran 40 year old Phil Boyer for an attempt on the Day 5 Gorge. In this photo Phil fights for his ferry as the madatory but scoutable entrance slide to the Canyon smashes into the left wall at the bottom.

The next rapid in the swinging bridge gorge of day 5 was only marginally scoutable from 200 feet off the deck. Phil enters with a perfect sub-out clearing the huge hole on the right and the recirculating wall on the left. Phil and I racked up our collective 4th and 5th portages of the trip on the last two major drops ending with a 30 foot seal launch back into the Indus.

Even the flat water on the Indus is deceptively strong. Floating towards the first rapid of day 6, Chris Korbulic has little time to relax as the steady 10 mile an hour current speeds him toward more towering whitewater.

Chris Korbulic entering day 6 in the Rondu Gorge of the Indus.

Big water to tight moves and visaversa is a halmark of the Indus and exemplified on day 6. Darin mcQuoid inbetween big ones.

Phil Boyer lines up for the entrance slide to a huge rapid called slide left on Day 6.

Day 6 Darin Mcquoid Half-way through his probe run on "Slide Left" establishing the center line.

Chris Korbulic Thankfull that this is only part of the flow of the Indus on Day 6.

Darin McQuoid takes a rare opportunity to skirt the main flow through a steep section of boulders after the Previous Big ledge on day 6.

Chris Korbulic going for a surf at the end of day 6.

Darin McQuoid launches into a big one at the beginning of day 7 our way into one of the most daunting gorges on the run.

The largest single feature on the Indus showed up early on day 7 where all 15,000 cfs literally atomizes into a 40 foot drop.

Where's Chris Korbulic? Find Chris exiting the falls on day 7 to put perspective into this photo.

Phil Boyer leads the juicy side of a river wide series of ledges and seething toungs. Well into a committing gorge on day 7, this seemingly solid toung of whitewater swallowed phil halway down the drop.

Early on Day 8 we encountered another Cathedral sized rapid that mocked into a pothole filled wall. The rapid was too risky for 9 am in the middle of the Rondu and became our 10th collective portage of the trip.

This visual of Phil is one of the best from the Indus midway through Day 8. This is just the final move of a 1 km long rapid that took us almost an hour to scout from top to bottom. Once in the rapid foaming 8 foot haystacks and the occasional ledge hole was framed by a patch work of sieving hotel sized boulders... In other worlds, once you were in the maelstrom the only way out was down the middle through a massive,backed up, but flushing hole.

Darin McQuoid in the Same rapid on Day 8 dubbed "The Road to Perdition".

We called it early on day 8 in anticipation of another committed canyon that would make up Day 9 leading to the beautiful Haramosh Valley. Staying the night at an in just downstream we were able to anticipate and scout this rapid from the road. Again this rapid is like something out of the North Payette, but on another 10,000 cfs of steroids. 1 km long, massive ledge holes and a couple of very fine lines down the left side. In this photo Phil finds the flushing side of a massive river wide hole.

Darin finds himself with nowhere to run in the Middle of the same rapid on Day 9. He was forced to take the mandatory surf diagonally towards a flushing windown on the right. After running this monstor successfully the whole group felt a boost of confidence as we entered the final 20 kms under a cool fall blue sky.

The previous night we had met the Principal of a school in the Haramosh Valley. He was excited for us to meet the students and share a little bit of our english pronunciation with them. Phil Boyer explains how me wishes the South Fork American River in His back yard was like this in November!l

The Students were all extremely well behaved for the presentation on Day 10 and spent much of their afternoon scampering down the banks and cheering us on. Incidentally Chris Korbulic and Roland Stevenson spent half of the previous day working in the class rooms with the male and female students. This is certainly the bright future of Pakistan, and runs in opposition to some of the Militant religous schools that teach hate and blind faith in place of the sciences, mathematics, and English. In the future we would like to try to support this wonderful center of learning and growth in the Haramosh Valley!

Inspired by Haramosh's wonderful People and high mountain Asthetic, I take the "Leap of Faith" on the Indus after school on Day 10 into one of it's more impressive Hydraulic features. For me this rapid exemplified the graduer and the power of the Indus in addition to visually runnable lines. Shukriah al humdila!

Another look at this truly spectacular falls on the Indus on Day 10.

Phil Boyer enters a massive wave train below "Leap of Faith" on Day 10.

Chris Korbulic enters another massive riverwide hole on the Lower Indus on Day 10. At this point we were really in tune with the river and were running many rapids that we might have portaged at the beginning of the trip. Everyone would come away from the Indus feeling like there whitewater perspective had certainly been broadened.

With just one more portage at the beginning of Day 11 we would finish the Rondu with just 11 collective portages establishing the most complete river whitewater descent of the Rondu to date. It seemed everyday would bring a little more winter with it, and our final night on the river we woke up to heavy snowfall clinging to the surrounding mountains. I think the Rondu Gorge is so deep that precipitation can easilly disipate from peaks that are 10 to 18 thousand feet overhead.

On Day 11 the Indus did not let up until literally 2 km above our take out leaving us with 12 kms of big water still to negociate to the confluence with the Gilgit River. In one of the Rapids, I took my heavyest pounding of the trip in a monster hole that I felt extremely lucky to escape from. Even this close to our would be take out, any sort of swim is potentially life threatening.

In the Final few Kms of the Rondu and Day 11 the classic boat scout insued as we held rank through monster whitewater.

With our final scout and one last duck dive into the gulf of yet another Massive on our final and 11th Day in the Rondu, a feeling of elation and accomplishment swept over me like I have felt few other times in my kayaking career. Once again I am literally gafaaed at the power of mother nature and the beauty of the Other side of the world. Our Glimpse of the Rondu area of the Indus was a snap shot in time that can never be repeated. From the massive flows and fluctuations there in that ravage the Rondu year after year I can only imgin how different every flow and therefore time of year must be. I can only think that our confluence of good weather, perfect water levels, great group dynamics, and superb interactions with the local peoples where Serendipitus. But then again, looking back at many stories from this awe inspiring region so many our of the extremely positive variety at least if not life altering. I would encourage anyone to make the trip for any number of cultural or adventure tourist itenararies!

(Front to Back) Darin McQuoid, Phil Boyer, and Chris Korbulic let the accomplishment wash over them as they float beyond the Eye of the Lion on day 11.

The long way home.

the 8th River

2008-12-27T05:44:00.001-08:00

A new single season Sierra Nevada Bench mark by Ben Stookesberry and Darin McQuoid

Center of Brasil: Mesas of Green

2008-03-01T11:02:00.000-08:00

Southern Utah esque mesas punctuate the Central Brazilian Forrest Crossing into the State of Tocantins Brazil from Goias

The catch word in Central Brazil is waterfalls . These, the most southern tributaries of the Amazon, drop over sandstone and limestone escarpments to form some of the most runnable big drops this group of expedition kayakers has ever seen. Boating these rivers becomes an exercise in patients and poise: patients in the endless meanders of rivers that can't seem to decide on which direction to flow, and poise when the river charges into some of the most spactacular and committing box canyons that I have ever seen.

As the brain child of Ryan (Mac) McPherson, this first of it's kind class V expedition into Central Brazil has already set some impressive bench marks for all that follow. Our second day in Goias Mac, Chris Zawakee, and I set a new national waterfall record on the 23 meter Salto Abade. A week later Pedro Olivia and I match that height on a far schetchier high volume falls in the southern portion of Tocantins. What the final two weeks of the mision will bring is anyones guess, but everyone seems to have there eyes on a 30 plus meter drop that is bound to show up around the next corner.

Cataratas de Rio dos Coros

The second drop in the smoking gorge

2008-02-22T05:49:00.000-08:00

Ryan McPherson Lines up the first D of Salto Abade on the river of Souls.... Central Brazil

We are just about to pick up Jesse Coombs this evening in Brasilia the far flung capital city of Brazil. Jesse is just the final piece of the puzzle in the massive effort that was set in motion inorder to get the supper hot off the press Super Heroes to the proving grounds on many till now unexplored rivers and waterfalls of central Brazil.

Chris Zawacki, Ryan McPherson have been on the ground here in Brazil for the past month lining up logestics and doing some promotional work at the 2008 carnival in Itamote. In high brazilian style they opened up the Bar do cacheroeiras (Bar of Waterfalls) at the towns Carnical inorder to promote whitewater recreation and make plenty of friends that could help along the way. Since I arrived on the third night of Carnival there have been whispers that Pedro Oliva (Team Jackson Brazil) has his eye on a big waterfall that he scouted out last year 2000 miles to the North in the state of Tocantins.

So That brings us to today 1000 miles to the northwest from our point of arrival in Sao Paulo and we have already been blessed with a 4 inch rain dump. Check out this first batch of photos and you will probably start to get interested in Central Brazil.

Rock On!

Ben

P.S. The big one is 13 of my arm span tall, and the throat of the devil went.

Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh; India

2008-01-13T11:25:00.001-08:00

Bhudist Monpas, chance encounters, and beef meet in a remote corner of a remote corner of India.

Newfoundland: Reflections on this big island’s root beer colored water

2007-10-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

Getting to Newfoundland
To say that hind site is 20/20 in the search for extreme kayaking first descents is a gross understatement. For all the local beta, historical weather data, topo maps, geologic maps, and finger crossing you can only get a better idea of what you hope you will find. Even if you find a river with the “goods,” there are countless variables that effect the river conditions and levels. Add to this the fact that you are relying on the rainiest month of the year to bring the rivers up to runnable levels, and you have a veritable crap shoot on your hands. Despite the daunting odds 8 members of Team Jackson kayak pulled off 6 different first descents in a mostly sunny and dry Newfoundland October.

Upon arriving 11 days before the rest of the crew, Darin McQuoid and Chris Korbulic found a rusty but low mileage Plymouth Acclaim for a shuttle vehicle, and made a quick push towards the West Coast. From the West Coast of Newfoundland, St. John’s lies 400 miles to a far South East peninsular offshoot of the Island, giving you of an idea of the Islands shear size. It also led Joel Kolowski and Nick Troutman to schedule their port of entry for Deer Lake. As the West Coast transportation hub of Newfoundland the Deer Lake airport is a modern facility that caters to big game hunters, salmon anglers, echo tourists, and the local population. Fueling the areas transportation needs further is the Newfoundland economy that has shed much of the blue collar work force, and has since seen those same workers commuting to the coal mines and oil fields of Northern Alberta.
Humber River
Photo: Chris Korbulic

By the time Jesse Coombs, Eric Jackson, Dane Jackson, Nick Troutman, Joel Kowolski, and I arrived it had become clear that the rain was going to be hit and miss. After a brilliant rainstorm upon their arrival, Chris and Darin had only managed one day of kayaking in 9 possible. Thus we spent our first days in a fevered search for the largest drainages with the highest gradient. The thought being that there should be some class V water for which you actually want really low water. The Humber fell squarely in that category although it took two attempts over two days to actually find it. If you see a “big falls” marked on the map on the Humber River that is not right falls. It seems that what is considered big for a Salmon, and big for a kayaker are two different things. With a little help from the Newfoundland kayak club representative Chris Buchanon, we finally located this drop that is unrunnable for Salmon, and spent the day working out the delayed boof that made easy work of the massive recirculation at the Base. Interestingly enough it was Dane Jackson who was the first to make it look pretty.

Greenpower?
For the next few days we were stymied by an even more insidious factor than low water. No water was the case in many of the rivers that we hunted down over those frustrating days. Apparently the Dam and Deversion Builders had access to the same maps as us and are interested in the same types of rivers that would have been good these low water conditions. Unfortunately they had been at it for 15 years longer than us and had pretty much found all the rivers that were steep, high volume, and roadside. This is the same unfortunate “Green Power” saga that is playing out across the planet. The powers that be have convinced us that not only do we need more energy, but now that energy has to be green. Hydro is the quickest and most ancient form of power on the planet, but as with any technology all uses intended and unintended will be revealed. Thus there are micro-hydros that target low risk low use streams, and there are the macro-ones like three rivers in China that displace millions of people changing the echo system of a massive chunk of central Asia.

Desperate to find water, we head for the Northern Peninsula where there has been some recent rain.

Doctors Brook
3 hours north of Deer Lake we start to see the evidence of the recent showers. Massive waterfalls are pouring out of glacial valleys that were still dry in the South. We cross over what I had expected to be a small brook, and it is pumping. A quick glimpse at the map is a solid reminder of why we need rain. This small costal brook is the same size of brooks around Deer Lake that were almost dry. This one, the Doctors brook, carried nearly 700 cfs!

We forget all about the previous days low water woes and make a fevered hike to get as far up the drainage as light would permit. A true Newfoundland bushwhacking nightmare ensues as we drag our boats and our bodies through the densest miniature forest I have ever seen. The Tuckamore Bush (or Tuck Bush) as the locals call it creates the single worst environment for the off the beaten trail hiking experience. Spiny spruce branches that rake at your face and a visibility less than 2 feet are just some of the highlights.

Finally 2.5k up the creek we can’t take any more and put in. The river is a joy of high volume ledges, slides, and rapids. All eight of us are in the mix with Eric Jackson, Dane Jackson, and myself taking turns at the boat scout probe position. Eventually Jesse Coombs starts pushing the pace as only Jesse can do leading us through some big rapids and to the lip of the big drop. The final drop on the run is a quarter mile cascade that has us all grinning from ear to ear. The icing on the Cake was the cruisy class 3 dump out right into the Bay of St. Laurence.

Castors Falls (Newfies Niagara)
The Weather stays showery and we start planning for the following day. For the first time on the trip we are in a place where the creeks are flowing. In Newfoundland there must be thousands of runnable waterways and the map shows dozens of options in our vicinity. We make a quick probe into the Castors river valley on a logging road to make a chance encounter with some local moose hunters. Throughout the trip the local Newfoundlanders (Newfy pisses them off) have been extremely helpful, and these colorful gentlemen were no exception. Luckily they had extensive knowledge of the area and told us about a waterfall as big as Niagara. One thing you learn about lay people to running big waterfalls is that they will predictably overestimate the height of a falls. Thus we were optimistic for something in the runnable range.

With EJ at the helm of our rental Explorer, we travel at light speed over the muddy hole filled logging road. At 2 Gs we round a hairpin corner with simultaneous hoots and holars. We are witness to every kayakers wet dream as we come around the corner: a massive cascading falls spills from the mountain.

More adventure in the nasty Tuck Bush brings the whole crew up into the middle of the falls. The first two teirs are massive and potentially lethal but the two sliding waterfalls downstream would more than suffice. The first of the two is a crazy sliding rapid that shoots off a 20 foot falls which is run cleanly by all. The next falls is taller and requires a precise line to stay out of a nasty ledge hole on the right and avoid getting pushed onto exposed rocks on the left. After clean if not interesting runs by EJ and I Dane enters a bit to the right losing speed over an exposed flake and auguring into the meaty hole on the right side. 35 seconds of downtime is enough to produce a new found perspective in any paddler and Dane was no exception; although, he showed a maturity beyond his years in the aftermath.

After three more clean lines from Chris Korbulic, Jesse Coombs, and Joel Kolowski; Nick Troutman found himself a few precious feet to the left of good, and went barrel rolling towards the rocks on the left. A lot of time in the air on big waves like Mini-Bus probably helped nick to avert disaster by a helix to stern piton maneuver the likes of which I have never seen before. Also working in Nicks favor was the Jackson Kayak Rocker with it’s intergrated shock absorbing outfitting. Still he hit hard enough to send him swimming semi conscious into the pool below.

Finding the Cloud River
Another one of Chris Buchanon’s recommendations beside the Humber had been to make arrangements to float plain into the Cloud River Gorge. The Cloud is one of the largest, undammed, and roadless waterways left on the Island. According to Chris the river had been attempted in the mid-90’s by C-1 virtuoso Andy Bridge and IR founder John Weld, but that they had portaged the Gorge. Their reports were promising: “many falls from 10 – 30 feet with one big 80 footer at the top.”

The float plane arrangements would prove to be the real crux of the Cloud River Expeditions. Operators were booked solid with Big Game hunters, and the intermittent “bad weather” in the area had put many of them behind schedule. I received my first bid for $5400 dollars from an operator located on the central part of the Island. Our budget would only allow for $200 dollars a person so I continued to pester the local operators to give us a window. The day after our Castors River epic a local pilot ringed to say he was free for the following day. Our luck had gone from 0 to hero in a few short days as we embarked on one of the greatest expeditions left on the Island.

Cloud River Shuttle

This is real Newfoundland adventure: Find the closest place to where your river dumps into the ocean this is take-out. Find the closest pond to that take out and arrange for the flight plain to meet you there, this is put-in. A float plain is a truly elegant form of transportation. Take offs and landings are buttery smooth and the progress through the sky is slow and scenic. Our flight into the Head Waters of the cloud takes a half our to go 50 miles. Roads and clear cuts end 10 minutes into the flight as we take the birds eye view of countless virgin hectares of highland. We dropped out of the sky at a sizeable chain of lakes and spend the rest of the day floating to the top of the canyon. The end of that first day is marked by deep blue cloudless skies, and a freezing cold wind.

The team rallied to find a sheltered camp spot with massive quantities of firewood. As it turns out, we would need every bit of that wood to sustain us into the night with temperatures dipping well below freezing. Just before bed snow flurries confirmed the frigid temps. The morning brought frozen stiff dry suits, with another cloudless sky… this time minus the frigid wind.

Cloud River: Day 2
Right out of camp the river is amazing. It is a smooth, granite half-pipe with big slides at the bottom. After a clean 15 footer in a juicy hole that was better than espresso at 9:00 am, a massive slide greets us as the first significant drop of the trip. EJ is the first one in the water launching a massive boof off the 15-foot entry ledge. He gets eaten up, spit out, rolls up and is cruising at mach speed into the gaping hole at the bottom. 4 more attempts are made on the drop with verying degrees of success. Joel gets the only clean run with an amazing sub surface stern ride through the guts of the hole.

Cloud Gorge
After cruising for 30 more minutes through the open half-pipe style valley, bedrock walls encroach and the river falls away over an intimidating horizon line. The falls is maybe 60 feet tall segmented between a roiling 20 – 25 foot entry to a 40 foot freefall. From our river right vantage the falls is all sloping under our feet and into the wall… not a good sign! Downstream is another massive horizon line that appears to be completely locked in between vertical canyon walls.
Photo: Chris Korbulic

Over the next two hours our group splits into two parties to survey the full extent of the canyon from both sides of the river. The good news is that the canyon rim is a mere 500 feet over headed and is a treeless rocky tundra. The bad news is that to access the rim we are forced to tear through a near vertical tuck forest that tries the body and the patience with every step. The view from the top is stunning. After the big entry falls, the gorge is chalk full of high volume slides and falls, but it appears that most of them can be scouted at river level. The first two still appear to be the mandatory entry fee to claim the first descent of this elusive gorge.

The view downstream through the picture perfect day reveals our would be take out across Canada Bay in the bustling port town of Roddicton. It is already early afternoon and the idea of a another subfreezing night, this time without sufficient food, is enough to put the whole team into action. Dane and EJ have decided against the gorge and are already up on top of the canyon making the portage. Darin and Nick opt against the first two drops and make a substantial portage in order to circumnavigate the most committed portion of the canyon.

Mean while Chris, Joel, Jesse and I are talking lines and as usual Jesse is the first in his boat. In this first falls the entrance is everything. Getting a good bit of momentum to stay away from the more than questionable right wall is the goal. Jesse is one of the most visual paddlers I have ever seen. By that I mean you can see him visualizing the line in his head before any significant drop and he will not go until the visual is clean. With a few of the supper cool, almost casual, paddle strokes Jesse kicked off one of the most amazing descents of my career. 2.5 hours later Dane and EJ greet us with a warm fire and big smiles at the end of the gorge. Photos: Ben Stookesberry

The remaining 3-hour, 15km paddle out through the inlet and into Canada Bay proved to be the real bugger of the trip as we battled an incoming tide that at times was literally like trying to paddle class 2 the wrong direction.

Journey to Labrador
After the cloud river we could not buy a drop of rain. The rainiest month on average was turning out to be the driest month of 2007. A few days later we said goodbye to Joel, EJ, and Dane. Jesse, Nick, Darin, Chris, and I all had another week so we wanted to take advantage of the time. We had heard from the locals that if all else is dry on the Island Labrador should still have water.

A good local heckling about our whitewater ambitions is par for the course, but this guys claims included 60 mile an hour sub-freezing winds. Snow flurries at night, and very rocky streams. This fellow ferry passenger was telling us in so many words that this extreme Northeastern portion of North America in mid October was no place for water sports. We played along and tried to get some real beta out of him, but it was all gloom, doom, and frozen ponds from this guy.
Photo: Chris Korbulic

Labrador is one of the most remote places on earth featuring a single road that runs at or near the coast for a couple hundred miles. Thus other than roadside park and huck, access is limited to float plane, helicopter, or snowmobile (when there is snow). This close to the end of our trip the float plain money has all but dried up, and we are thankful that the snow is not flying quite yet. However the 60 mile an hour icy blasts are no joke as our tents shake it’s would be snoozers like dice in a game of Yatzzi.

After seeing the first river on our itinerary low as can be, our hopes sank like our feet into the spongy tundra. We spent the rest of the day surveying the lonely costal road until we found a snowmobile ski road skewered through our tire. The local snowmobile/ atomotive shop was bustling with the new snowmobiles that had arrived just that day. A single degree celcius separated the buffeting drizzle, from a buffeting snowstorm that would put these brand new machines into action. Our Labrador trip had reached its anticlimactic end.

Back on the Island: Torrent Falls

Our first day back on the Island and we stumble across a high volume cascading 40 footer. This was first run by Brandon Knapp and Johny Kern back in the 2002 for Lindgren’s Aerated. Darin leads the charge of a the chunky cascade with a brilliant line. Nick and Chris follow suit with similarly bouncing but upright efforts. Meanwhile Jesse and I eyed a new line down the far left that offered a 30 – 40 foot freefall. It was certainly a high risk line with a very small margin for error. Jesse decided at the lip to just run the center line, but for some reason he signaled me from the seat of his kayak that he would try for the left. I signaled the boys down below and Jesse started his approach. At the very last possible moment (and not a second before) we all realized Jesse was about 2 feet off line and was funneled into a deadend shoot by a guard rock at the lip of the falls. The rock also pitched him to the right giving him the half barrel role trajectory through the tight pinch. Although he appeared to exit the slot cleanly there was the sickening sound of impact and an upside-down landing extremely close to the wall at the bottom. Stripped of his paddle he attempted a hand role and then swam free. His pause on the bank was enough to tell us all that something was wrong. From 200 feet away I could already tell that his left hand had taken a big hit as it was streaming red with blood.

To say that Jesse is a tough guy is an understatement. At one point he had to calm nick down as he instructed us on how he wanted his hand rapped up. He refused any pain killers until hours later claiming that pain is our bodies way of telling us what is wrong and he wanted to feel the full extent of his injuries.

Steady Brook and Corner Brook
As luck would have it, our three hour journey to the Hospital brought us past the islands only ski area where a promising looking creek raged with full flow into the valley below. Steady Brook boasts one of the highest snowfalls in North America along side a creek of the same name that offers high quality class 4 –5 creeking to the lip of an awe inspiring 200 foot water fall. The previous days rain has brought the creek up to a healthy but still boney flow and we hope for more rain. At the base of the falls, an adventure outfitter (mynewfondlandadventure.com) informs us that we should have come in the early spring when the regions 16 feet of average snow starts to head for the coast. We are assured that the Islands waterways are in a completely different state when fueled by the massive snowmelt.
Photo: Ben Stookesberry

Through the next three days Jesse’s hand is set cared for in the Corner Brook Hospital, and we are again stymied with a lack of rain. One day I embark on a long run to pass the time, heading up cities main drainage of the same name. I am amazed by the shear size of this canyon that literally rises out of the center of town. To my surprise the centerpiece of the gorge is a series of spectacular waterfalls that look rnnable with more water: we just need some rain!

Photo: Chris Korbulic

Dominica Part 1 - 3

2007-09-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

Words By Ben Stookesberry
Images By Ben Stookesberry and Josh Bechtel
Part1: A journey to JUNGLE BAY

Before receiving a brief yet fevered phone call from team Pyranha’s Josh Bechtel, my perception of kayaking in the Eastern Caribbean featured rum punch with paper
umbrellas served on an oversized yellow sit on top paddle craft. Maybe that is why it took Josh the majority of the conversation to convince me that he was not inviting me on another trip to the Dominican Republic, but to a similarly named but wholly different island far to the south in the Lesser Antilles. “I thought all of those Islands were too small to have runnable creeks let alone rivers.” Josh affirmed my suspicion that the island was in fact small (roughly the size of New York City), but that Grayson Shaffer (Outside Mag. contributing editor and the expeditions leader) had it on good information that the Island contains has a different river for every day of the year and is littered with waterfalls. Furthermore kayaking superheroes Brad Luden and Alex Nicks had already signed on for this wild goose chase. This was sounding way to intriguing to pass up; and as a result; some 700 precious dollars soon disappeared from my bank account in order to travel to the small Island of Dominica in early October of 2006.

My unfamiliarity with the Caribbean was becoming a bit embarrassing on the flight over as I chatted with the “50-something” middle American vacationers. These club med aficionados assured me that I would be much better off with a kayak in Honduras or Guatemala. They seemed genuinely concerned that I would not be able to use my kayak on any of the Islands of the Lesser Antilles. I assured them that at a minimum I would slide down the side of a steep embankment if there was no running water. Luckily the beverage service arrived and they lost interest in the interrogation. Relieved I turned back to the endless expance of blue that shimmered beneath our noisy little twin prop puddle jumper.

Dominica finally emerged, two hours after leaving Puerto Rica, as green folds of carpet seeming lost at sea shrouded by thick gray clouds. Dominica is the final out post of virgin rainforest in the eastern Caribbean, and it is commonly suggested that this is the only Island Columbus would still recognize today. My anticipation rose as we approached the island and the green fold of rug morphed into an impossibly steep spine of jungle. Getting close enough to see the trees, I could see descent size riverbeds hidden among canopy and cliff.

Despite the Islands small size, by all accounts I was entering one of the wettest places on earth. In the direct path of the fabled West African swells fueled by the westerly trade winds, the Islands rugged western slopes receive 12 feet of rain annually. On top of this October is the wettest month in the Eastern Caribbean so it seemed almost a sure thing that there would be plenty if not too much water in rivers. However to my dismay the rivers that we flew over on our final approach to tiny field looked low and clear. My kayakers alarm bells went off and I feared the worst: “Great just my luck. I arrive just in time for a drought on the wettest place on earth.”

To date there are not less than three major American air carriers that don’t accept “kayaks” as checked luggage… even excess luggage: Continental, Delta, and American Airlines. And with hefty fees and stingy regulations among your other would be choices, transporting your boat through the friendly skies could be the single most challenging logistic of kayaking abroad.

To make matters that much more uncertain, the rest of the group met me at the airport without any other kayaks. They had drawn the stingiest ticket agent at Denver International Airport, and the battle had been an uphill and expensive one from there on, ending in the detention of all four of their yaks in the Puerto Rico Airport. Grayson stayed behind to secure the kayaks arrival for the following day. At that point, I possessed the only whitewater kayak in the Eastern Caribbean (jk rocker).

In high Caribbean style a tall Rasta Man had been sent from Jungle Bay, to pick us up at the airport. Kayaks or not the jewel of the Caribbean was playing host to 5 dirt bag kayakers and I jumped at the opportunity to ride shot-gun for the journey down south to Jungle Bay. But something was wrong and I was sitting in the drivers seat and everyone was laughing. Irvin the rasta-man said “no problem man super Iree, but we be driving on the left side of the road ere in Dominica.” Cool, no problem, but at every blind turn on the steep, wet, narrow, jungle walled roads my senses screamed head on collision. And then we came to a screeching halt and Irvin grabbed fresh what not off the surrounding flora: nut meg, coco, grape fruit, mango, lemon grass, ect. “In America you be goin to da Super Market for your food, but down ere we just step into da trees for ours” Irvin quipped.

From the Airport in the north to Jungle Bay in the South, was a distance of only about 30 miles as the crow flies but the “highway” makes a major detour deep (5 mile) into the islands interior. First crossing the Melville Hall River, the size of Washington’s White Salmon, then turning up the Little White sized Pagua River, towards the center of Island to the countries longest river the Lyou. High up in the mountains (2,000 feet) it began to sheet rain and the Lyou’s many tributaries were suddenly swollen. Josh, Brad, and I were all pasted to windows planning our first first descents when the kayaks arrived. As quickly as it has started the deluge broke, and the clouds parted to reveal the countries second highest peak: a strata-volcano called Morne Trois Pitons elevation aprox 4600 feet.

Dominica is so rugged and thus distinct from the other Island in the Caribbean because it represents the apex of the Lesser Antilles Volcanic arc where the Caribbean plate is being subducted by the South American plate. Of the 17 active volcanoes in the Eastern Caribbean, Dominica is formed by the proximal confluence of 9. Although, there have been no major earthquakes since Columbus landed, signs of past and present volcanic activity are seen every where the torrential rains have washed away the jungle and Irvin comments “up in da mountains be an entire lake set a boil by da fire in da mountains.”

As we turn away from the Trois Pitons, and back towards the Rugged Atlantic Coast we descend into the Rosalie River, one of the countries largest. Irvin points back towards the mountains at the headwaters and we see the major challenge to accessing the steepest portions of Dominica’s Rivers: slot canyons guarded by impenetrable virgin jungle. “We need a helicopter,” comments brad, but Irvin assures us that he can get us into some of these places “but maybe not dat one… the Rivine of Two Gods. At 6:00 pm our 12 hours of tropical daylight had faded and we continue on into the darkness following a convoluted slot of pavement towards jungle bay. All told it takes 2 hours to traverse 2/3rds of the length of island and a dozen major river drainages, and we are all reeling from excitement, Jet lag, and motion sickness.

Part 2: First attempt, Sea Kayaking
Alex Nicks greets us on arrival having arrived earlier in the day, and is veritably un-phased by the news that we have only one of five kayaks in tow. News travels fast on a small Island, and he and Sam Rafael (the brain child and owner of Jungle bay) have already made alternative arrangements for the following days activities: a first attempt to sea kayak from the resort to grand bay 10 miles to the south.

We learn that earlier in the day, Alex had horrified the locals by leaping from nearby sea cliffs into a surging shark infested channel of Jungle Bay. Alex assures us that the sharks are of minimal concern and that he is thrilled to make the journey. For Alex this new type of sea fairing adventure has become par for the course. Since branching out from his ground braking offerings to the world of Big Water Expedition Kayaking (The Wicked Liquid series, Jehovah’s Wetness, and Tweaking The Nose of Terror), Alex has been filming sea kayaking epics for National Geo and PBS in places like Bolivia, Croatia and South Africa. Thus leaping into supposedly shark infested, walled in waters of Jungle Bay was nothing compared to be chummed off the side of a fishing boat without a cage in order to film a feeding frenzy of 600-pound tiger sharks in Baltic.

Grayson arrives early that morning to find the rest of us preparing for the voyage south. We find out quickly why Sam has not attempted this costal traverse from Jungle Bay. Three to six foot waves crash directly onto a beach of 20-pound football sized cobbles. Sam and Alex probe the beach exit first with Alex pushing off the stone beach balls and Sam paddling like hell to get beyond the brake between the sets of waves. Brad and Lizzy follow suit and make it look easy. Beyond the brake we all relax a little and I go over board to check out the sea life with some snorkel gear. Aqua marine, ultra clear water reveals all the usual suspects: Colorful schools of fish, sea turtles, and huge sub-marine rock outcroppings.

Looking back towards the Island, thousand foot sea cliffs are bisected by cascading waterfalls and fringed with thick greenery. This may have been the first voyage around the point to Grand Bay by leaving the cannonball coated beach at Jungle Bay, but we are certainly not the first adventures to make the journey into these rich waters. We spot local fisherman surfacing closer in with spear guns and a leash full of fish. We get close enough to watch these stealthy swimmers go under for minutes at a time descending almost beyond site to make their catch.

This adventure not withstanding, sea kayaking is for… well sea kayakers, and I was suddenly jonesing to see what the Islands rivers had in store for us. Irvin must have noticed this, yelling over from his yack “Titou Gorge is just over that mountain dere. We’ll be goin dere this after noon.”

Part 3: The Titou Gorge
By default the Titou Gorge is probably the most well known waterway on the Island since it marks the beginning of a 3 hour trek to Dominica’s most famous landmark (The Boiling Lake). However, the mouth of the Gorge is probably all that most people see of this one of a kind water way since the Boiling Lake trail snakes up and into the Jungle and away from the sound of its cascading water. Would be explorers of the Gorge are forced off trail and into the virgin forest to locate the crack in the earth that is the Gorge.

Dawning protective clothing for the Jungle’s numerous would be adversaries (poisonous insects, lizards, amphibians, snakes, spiders, and plants) I see Irvin rush ahead in bear feet and a pair of swim trunks. Although the locals of these Jungles and many others throughout the world have developed special adaptations to such inhospitable environs, the people of Dominica have a special advantage: This island ecosystem is completely devoid of anything poisonous. As I was soon to find out, there was barely a single thorn in this G-rated jungle. Enjoying a virgin jungle with no protective clothing is a luxury that might only be experienced in Dominica.

Aproaching the gorge after a 100 foot ascent on the boiling lake trail, we veer off towards the sound of a muffled roar of a thundering flow. By the sound of the river, the rim of the gorge wasn’t far off yet there was absolutely no indication of it in the crowded jungle ahead. No more than 15 feet ahead Josh hollers “holy shit” and woops with excitement. The gorge is narrow enough to jump across and more than 80 feet deep at our first vantage. Below us there is bearly enough light to see down into the insane crack in the earth, but everything that we can see appears to be runnable. After another 2 hours of scouting along the Canyon rim, we are satisfied and agree to return early the following day to make the 1.5km descent.

After a 45 minutes of yanking kayaks through the tangled forest, we arrive we descend to the river through a chink in its other wise unbroken gorge. As an effluent of the Country’s two principle freshwater lakes, the Titou contains a relatively constant flow of 70 cfs of the purest drinking water in the Caribbean. Unacostomed to the savage combination of heat and humidity, I am face down drinking my fill decreasing the flow by at least a few cubic inches per second.

Downstream the run is boney, and another 3 inches of water would have made it amazing
but impossible to stop. 4 rapids down, I am the last one enter an extremely narrow slot and I leave my beloved red Werner behind. Without hesitation Nicks makes like a spider in an effort to retrieve the forlorn blade. He snapped this shot of the paddle impossibly wrenched in between the canyon walls. This is certainly a testament to the strength of the classic Werner fiberglass blade and shaft!

The canyon is tunnel in the earth with long, rectangular skylight. In one particularly deep recess in the canyon wall we eddied out above sheer notch. Josh drop his boat a bit on the rock bank creating a thundering echo with another far more chilling shrieking noise. Within seconds the air was peppered with frightened bats, who spend the first few minutes of their frantic flight indecisive as to whether to flee upstream or downstream. Eventually the cloud lifts and we are able to scout downstream. Peering through the notch the canyon roars with as much noise as 50 cfs can create. This is the final section the gorge and the only part that we were not able to scout from above. We are 100 feet inside the chasm and it might be nice to have a head lamp to run the next 4 drops that will lead to our freedom. The last drop is a vertical 20 foot shoot that will require a hard left move to avoid the left wall.

In classic lemming formation we riffle through the final part of the Gorge. And complete our fist descent of the trip. The water runs supper deep and placid for another 100 yards before we reach Irvin where the Gorge finally opened into dense tropical heat.

TUNUYAN: Argentina's Grand Expedition

2007-09-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

For 13 years The Rio Tunuyan resisted all attempts to descend it’s grand canyon. Now an audacious group of river explorers takes up where the failed attempts left off in their bid to lay claim to this elusive first descent.

Introduction:
In early February of 1992 a fledgling group of rafters embarked on a 100km river trip with little more than yellow rain suits and a few river snacks. 7 days later, search parties found a severely dehydrated and mostly despondent group of rafters in the bottom reaches of the canyon. Stories of the ill-fated trip tempted a generation of local and international explorers alike with a first descent of epic proportions so close to Argentina’s main tourist attractions in the high Andes Mountains. 10 years after the first attempt Silvio Gurrieri a local raft guide and kayaker assembled an international group of kayakers to make the second attempt on the Tunuyan. This time prepared for five days in the canyon proper, the group covered little downstream ground in the first three days do to peak glacial flows in a continuously vertical walled gorge. Now Silvio has met up with fellow Argentinean standout Pato Valsechi and extreme kayaker Ben Stookesberry to make another attempt at completing one of South America’s last great whitewater expeditions.

From left to right: Silvio Gurrieri,Ben Stookesberry, and Pato Valsechi

Quotes:
∑ The order of the previously upright raft mixed violently in the recirculation at the base of the second falls.
∑ Winter breaks late and arrives early to a mountain range with many peaks exceeding 20,000 feet.
∑ With a vertical wall rising several thousand-feet from the rivers edge on the right and an improbably vertical scree slope guarding the left hand bank, Silvio says that this was the most frightening portage of the previous attempt.
∑ It is times like this when I can’t decide whether our sport epitomizes mental fortitude or mental masochism.

February 10th, 1992
Sage coated air vacillated between chilly breezes and icy gusts of wind at nearly 10,000-feet in the Argentinean Andes Mountains. A group of rafters donned yellow rain jackets and assessed the Rio Tunuyan crisscrossing the massive U shaped valley into the visible distance. The loosely informed yet audacious owner of Betancora Rafting, Fernando Cartez, had enlisted an unlikely group to attempt the first descent of a major drainage of the Andes Mountains. Cartez, his three fledgling raft guides, and three professors of physical education, made their way down to the river from the overlook. While the rest of the crew shared the burden of the inflated 16-foot paddle raft, Fernando carried the groups only provisions. Planning on a celebratory asado (Latin American style BBQ) to meet them at the takeout, he thought it necessary to bring only a few river snacks in anticipation of a 6 hour float.

Raul the shuttle driver had already spent a stiflingly hot day and an uncomfortably warm night at the Valle De Uco, the rafters scheduled take out. After leaving the group at the end of the road miles from the river, gauchos had transported the rafters and their gear over a high mountain pass to the put-in. Raul thought a full day of the trekking with mules and horses was a lot of work for a single day on the river, but he was happy to get paid for the work. It was three in the afternoon and the days heat approached another oppressive crescendo forcing the heavily set and heavily sweating shuttle driver out of the shade trees and down to the river. Raul fell to his knees in thick brown sand bringing ice-cold water to his face and neck. He imagined the group upstream hooting and hollering in anticipation of another chilly blast of glacial water. As Betancora’s only shuttle driver, he always felt a bit left out on the adventure, but soon consoled himself by settling into the cool grit of a riverside nap.

Pato contemplates a bad place for a raft in 2005

Crisscrossing the wide alluvial valley with surprising speed, the slate grey Tunuyan carried the raft playfully through a parade of small standing waves and gentle holes. After a chilly and somewhat anxious start, the rafters joked and laughed while casual paddling. The rafters took notice and as the entire valley swerved to the right and the meandering channels merged to one. The recently lively crew went silent as the river roared to life and accelerated their raft towards a constriction of jagged boulders. After a moments pause, Fernando screamed for everyone to paddle hard and oriented the raft to the river left bank. The raft connected with conflicting currents at the rivers margin and spun upstream, slowing just enough for one of Fernando’s understudies to jump free and anchor the bowline to a riverside boulder. The Tunuyan had presented the group a major obstacle. Ahead the river appeared to vanish into the valley floor. With a long scout from the bluffs above, they find a broiling mess of water entrenched 60 feet into the glacial rubble of the valley floor. Fernando’s team was not prepared for this, and there were murmurs of discontent from the relatively inexperienced crew. Fernando quickly pointed out the exhilarating and more runnable rapids that they saw downstream, and wrote this “nasty bit” off as an anomaly. They all agreed to portage, lining the raft down the long, steep boulder strewn nightmare. Taking an hour and a half to portage the cataract, the group faced the river below with an emerging sense of urgency.

Below the portage the raft continued without interruption, but the entire group was looking forward to the end of a non-stop procession of powerful rapids. Taking on a lot of water through a series of waves and holes, Fernando was again calling for everything the group had to escape the main current, aiming for an area of calm water along the right bank. Despite the effort, the waterlogged raft slipped past a last chance eddy into a series of three river wide falls hemmed in by now towering canyon walls. The raft sailed over the first ledge melting into the froth at the bottom emerging sideways at the lip of the second falls. With just enough time for Fernando to realize that one of the professors was already missing, the raft flipped hard. The order of the previously upright raft mixed violently in the recirculation at the base of the second falls.

Hours later, Raul awoke in the dark with mosquitoes buzzing in his ear. Embarrassed for missing the rafters’ arrival, he wandered back into the trees of the riverside camp to find no sign of the group. He knew that they could not have floated past with a small diversion dam blocking all downstream progress. Raul was accustomed to the roadside Rio Mendoza where he followed rafters’ progress from a conveniently placed highway. Emerging from a thought progression towards the worst, he chose the less drastic of his two options: wait. The following morning, Raul awoke early from uneasy sleep to pace the riverbank and fear the worst. By noon he was driving to a nearby town to spread troubling news.

The bleak propects of down stream progress sans raft

12 years 11 months later: January 3rd, 2005
A short, stocky Argentinean named Silvio Gurrieri has the miscellaneous audience of raft guides, kayakers, and a few of the day’s guests sitting on the edge of their seats with this tale. He is intimately connected to the Tunuyan’s lore having worked for Betancora on and off for 9 years. He was not on that failed first attempt, but instead organized the second attempt in February of 2002. Consisting of an international group of experienced kayakers, Silvio’s attempt had encountered peak glacial runoff forcing long exposed portages book marked by the most intense river running any of them had ever done. After three days and little downstream progress, they abandoned their attempt 35 miles from their would be takeout. In the traditional sense, a hike out was not an option for the group owing to the remoteness of the Tunuyan’s canyon. One might hike for 100 miles to the north, west, or south without encountering a single soul, let alone road. Thus the group toiled to the east, moving downstream on foot along the steep, exposed canyon wall thousands of feet above the river. It took them two days to reach a dilapidated refuge, and a concerned search party on horseback. Undaunted Silvio returned 14 months later to retrieve the kayaks and paddle the bottom portion of the river with flows greatly reduced by the freezing temperatures of autumn in the high Andes.

As Silvio continues the story with the rafters now desperate fight for life in frigid, turbulent waters; I wondered aloud, “How could Fernando have been so naïve to bring such an inexperienced group on a first descent, let alone to think they could complete 60 miles of river in a single day?” But wasn’t my own previous attempt on the Tunuyan just as ill conceived?

Upon arriving to Argentina just two months earlier with fellow class V nut Devin Knight, the Tunuyan was the first river to catch our attention on a recently bought road map. The map showed road access to an alpine river valley; after which, the river cut a course through a vast roadless section of the high Andes. Everything hinted at multi-day expedition. On top of this, we had heard nothing about this river, which made it all the more enticing. So we did what any young, self-proclaimed extreme kayakers would do: we bought a few days worth of food, packed a role of duct tape in lieu of a first aid kit, strapped the kayaks on the roof of our rental mini-van, and headed for the put – in. The truth is, our Hyundai minibus just wasn’t made for that kind of abuse. And once we reached an Argentinean army checkpoint an estimated 30 miles from the river’s put-in, our worst fears were confirmed.

Dev and I contemplate the the 14,500 foot pass Portillo Argentina in early November

In slow Spanish one of the officers explained to me that we were free to proceed, but the road went over a 4,400-meter pass covered in winter snow. With a bit of quick math, and a little head scratching, extreme kayakers had a revelation: “This will be like trying to take the Hyundai minibus over the summit of Mt Rainer in the springtime… sic!” The next question seemed to confirm to everyone in the outpost that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing. “How long should we wait for the snow to melt?” Now they were all shaking there heads, and I realized that we must need 4-wheel drive with clearance to make the drive. I signal towards their over sized army transport, but they were still shaking their heads. Running out of silly questions and bad ideas, Devin and I drove south. A month later Devin returned to California, while I boarded a bus and returned north to the Tunuyan.

“Maybe it’s because they don’t labled it the Grand Canyon of the Tunuyan on the road maps,” a now smirking Silvio responds. I am caught in a daydream, and the whole room is staring. I snap back to reality to agree that he has a point. I think Silvio considers me a bit of a cowboy at times, yet our destinies have become inextricably linked. We have just agreed to attempt the Tunuyan in two months time. That time flies by in a blur of fevered anticipation as we hash and rehash every detail of the planed descent down to the last gram of Gorp. With the addition of Pato Valsechi, one of the Countries most experienced and well-equipped adventurers, we are well prepared for the challenge.

2 months later: March 6th
I would like to think that the next 5 to 8 days will be little more than a formality to claiming our first descent of the Tunuyan, but the sky and my gut are saying otherwise. Winter breaks late and arrives early to a mountain range with many peaks exceeding 20,000 feet. Driving to the trailhead and first refuge, snow falls sideways. Pato Valsechi is behind the wheel of the Toyota helix calmly sipping mate (Argentinean style tea) while bouncing along the edge of a 2000-foot cliff. Pato’s brother Maxi, our shuttle driver, is sprawled out in the passenger seat refilling the wooden gourd, passing it always counter clockwise: next to Silvio, then me, and finally serving himself. Maybe it’s the anticipation of the river, the shear drop off to my right, the driving snowstorm, or the hyper-caffeinated sting of mate; but I’m practically jumping out of my skin. The Argentineans are quiet and meditative, and I try to fall into their pensive mood. I take solace in Pato’s cautious driving, and the cold weather that should eliminate any chance that the river will be too high.

Recently filled corrals and an ancient two-room stone hut signal the end of the road and the beginning of the trail over Portillo Argentina. We unload our gear into a covered stall with fresh meat hanging from the ceiling, while the world turns white outside. Maxi offers a few terse well-wishes before departing just as our last bag leaves the truck. He is anxious to return to Mendoza before the storm renders the road impassable. Maxi’s departure brings the cold realization of our impending isolation.

Inside, the hut is dank with the smoke from wood fire, red meat, and cigarettes. Tonight we share this refuge with the gauchos. There is a younger group of three that is drinking wine and playing cards in the bunkroom. These are the leaders of the mule team that will take our gear and us over the 14,400-ft. pass in the morning. Silvio made this journey with them once before, and they seem to admire his courage in leading another. They share their wine freely with all three of us. As the bottle makes the rounds, the young cowboys joke with Silvio and Pato about my status as the unwitting pawn in this whole affair. I don’t mind the jokes, and they make sure I get plenty to drink.

As they settle into their card game, we join the larger group of horsemen in the kitchen. These men welcome us in immediately and are quick to relate the history of this place. The trail that we are about to embark on was an important trading rout with Chile until a railroad connected the two countries moving most legitimate trade 70 miles to the North nearly 90 years ago. However, this trail stayed active as a major smuggling rout. When Silvio mentions the remnants of one such smugglers’ trails blasted into the canyon wall, the men take notice. “It is relatively easy to reach the headwaters of the Tunuyan from Chile because the pass is much less severe. So it makes sense that the smugglers would try to find a rout through the canyon, instead of having to deal with another more precipitous pass and army checkpoints to complete the Andean crossing,” remarks the eldest of the men. These modern gauchos are guides and porters as opposed to the smugglers and outlaws of prior generations; and therefore, have only hearsay awarness of the decrepit smuggling routs. Surprisingly, the eldest of these gauchos tells the story of Betancora Rafting’s failed attempt in 1992 as a prime example of the Canyon’s Taboo. As it turns out, it was his father that transported them over the pass 13 years ago. After a few hours of wine, steak, and drink they seem to be as apprehensive and excited for our attempt as we are.

At 11,000 feet the wind howls through the crowded, drafty hut as I search for, but do not find, sleep. We rise at first light the next morning to find a few inches of wind blown snow, crystal clear skies, and a socked in cloud mass covering the plains below. As we prepare for the days ride, our gauchos load irritated mules with kayaks, food, and river gear; all the while, the thick soup of clouds from below rises into our hanging valley. The thick fog engulfs our camp. Freezing temperatures turn the condensation to snow. We hasten to ready the remainder of the gear in an effort to race the frigid storm for the pass. Above the clouds, the day is stunning.

After riding for nearly two hours, there is still no sign that the pass is at hand. Colossal mountains soar to the heavens on all three sides of the stair stepping valley. Two hours pass and I am working out the last of my horse’s misgivings about his woefully inexperienced rider when we arrive at the base of a relatively low pass through the rim of craggy summits. The animals labour up steep switch-backs cut into a foot of fresh snow, but are unrelenting in their climb. Finally gaining the pass slightly ahead of the pack, we emerge through a rocky keyhole into a flat big enough for a very small picnic. Behind us the foggy soup has seemingly stagnated below. Ahead, the trail drops precipitously into a limitless expanse of Andean wilderness. Another, more significant weather system looms dark in the valley below. The moment my second thoughts begin to build, the mule train reaches the small landing forcing my animal off the other side. The trail ahead has been broken, but only by those just ahead of me. Two feet of drifted snow is caked to a 35-degree slope and my horse is doing his impression of a glissade. I decide that if there are any rapids on the river that are this dangerous, I will portage without hesitation. My animal eases his way through this nightmare while I am about to pass out from clenching every muscle in my body at significant altitude. A few hundred feet down, the snow and pitch gradually relent, as did my veritable bear hug on that wonderful animal. I pledge my undying gratitude to the warm fuzzy mule over the next few hours.

Through several hours of relentless riding through driving sleet and cold, I pull my focus inward stoking heat from memories of Mexico, Costa Rica and the like.

I emerge from my tropical manifestation, to bear witness to the entrance of a holy cathedral; beyond which, the next unknown journey lies just downstream. My first glimpse of the Tunuyan is emotional. Its a literal dream come true. I wipe away the tears and lead my weary animal by reins the short distance to the valley below. The sound of a patient river grows with every step.

Tonight we find refuge in the spacious Refugio Dominguez. By comparison to the mud hut at the trailhead on the other side of the pass, this old military outpost is the Ritz Carleton. Our land-based journey ends here, but will continue for our young guides who will return to the trailhead while the other group of gauchos continue on to Chile. Our three parties gather around a massive fireplace and contribute food and drink to a communal feast. Succulent bife de chorizo, fresh salad and bread, along with the warm intoxication of tangy red wine quell our collective angst.

The morning dawns far too early and our final preparations begin in earnest. I am delirious with anticipation and chastise Silvio and Pato for fraternizing with the gauchos when they should have been packing. I regret the unwarranted outburst and step outside to cool off.

The air is crisp and without movement beneath remarkably clear skies. Thousands of feet up into the mountains, yesterday’s snow blazes in the early morning sun as shadows recede across the valley floor. Pato and Silvio join me on the porch to marvel at our good fortune. Over the quarter-mile hike from the refuge to the first of the river’s braided channels, we discover the true burden of our mules. Hundred-pound kayaks tear at the flesh of our shoulders, and mock the thought of any impending portages. At the rivers edge, kayakers embrace horsemen and bid “suerte” for luck. We enter the Tunuyan’s shallow channels with high hopes.

Turning our backs on 21,000-foot Andean volcanoes of the Chilean border, we paddle quickly through a spectacular, but briefly meandering, Tunuyan. Just as Betancura before us, we are soon confronted with the stark metamorphosis as the valley bends to the right. Pato and I follow Silvio to the river’s edge to scout what lies ahead. Gaining just enough elevation to see downstream by standing on the bank in my kayak, I see the river constrict and accelerate. It seems to me that we might save some energy, and scout from a point further downstream. I wait for Pato and Silvio at the beached kayaks in protest of a premature scout. After 10-minutes, I am on the verge of suggesting that they defer to me to lead the descent.

Luckily, I kept my mouth shut as I realize the value of their reconnaissance. Reaching the point of my intended scout, I am already committed to what lies ahead in the now deeply entrenched channel. I am relieved to see Pato and Silvio as they fly by my precarious eddy dropping over a ledge and out of sight. By stopping just above this horizon line, I accept a distinct disadvantage in speed. Unable to quickly accelerate my overloaded kayak, I pay for my lack of momentum over the next quarter mile. I spend an uncomfortable amount of time buried deep under water through a seemingly endless series of ledges. I catch the bottom end of a flushing eddy immediately above a picket fence of jagged looking boulders that guard yet another horizon line. Silvio flashes me a knowing smile as I join him in the eddy.

“Hey Ben, are you ok man because it looks like you are breathing pretty hard” says Silvio, paying more attention to the next move then my disdainful expression. “Don’t worry” he goes on “we call this one The Asthmatic.” He turns quickly and peals out of the eddy with Pato close behind.

For the next half-mile we continue playing the Tunuyan’s high speed chess game, volleying from one side of the river to the other, lining up for ledge holes, avoiding pin-spots, and otherwise paddling for dear life. With the appearance of a downstream eddy, we seize the opportunity to call a timeout. While Silvio is thriving in the non-stop action, Pato seems a bit overwhelmed having escaped two near pins by the narrowest of margins. These challenging rapids are made that much more difficult by the weight of our kayaks.

The river soon relents into a more manageable, yet still exhilarating pace. We are only a few hours downstream; and already, this place reeks of absolute isolation. The once entrenched riverbed spreads to a more comfortable width, but valley walls morph into an ever-encroaching bedrock gorge. Without warning the river falls out of sight, and we exit the current at the last possible moment. Upon viewing the rapid, we are all thankful for the lower water that was not experienced on Silvio’s previous trip.

“What are now straight forward ledges, were massive river wide keepers,” remarks Silvio. “This rapid is called Physical Education for the first attempt where they lost the raft and almost drowned.” (On Silvio’s last attempt, they lost significant time here because the fore-mentioned “massive river-wide holes” guarded the entrance to a long vertical walled rapid; thus, they were forced to portage the entire section. This time we run the rapid and canyon without incident.)

After running two more of the previous trip’s portages, we face a rapid that Silvio has warned us about throughout the planning for the expedition. Silvio named this one Sin Paso or No Way Out because there is no good way to get around the cataract. The reason becomes readily apparent from our upstream eddy. With a vertical wall rising several thousand-feet from the rivers edge on the right and an improbably vertical scree slope guarding the left hand bank, Silvio says that this was the most frightening portage of the previous attempt. However, an initial survey of the rapid reveals it to be of marginal navigability. We soon deem the rapid less dangerous than the portage, and opt to run it. Once headed down the tongue toward a pile of what Pato calls Garbage rocks, our scout becomes almost meaningless. The garbage rocks had concealed a sticky hole that lurked just downstream. We all struggle in the hole and lose momentum over the ensuing 8-foot falls. Pato suffers the worst, surfing the hole before melting into the base of the falls only to be violently spit out offline and into a veritable graveyard of sieves. Silvio and I battle through 2 more falls before seeing Pato slip though the only possible exit of the nasty jumble. Despite Pato's sketchy line, we all agree that the rapid is one of the best so far and is much preferable to a two-hour portage. Our exuberance is palpable, running the fabled river without portaging to this point. Silvio soon tempers our premature back patting by mentioning, “from here the river’s intensity will only build to the real crux sections of the Tunuyan.”

We finish the day several hours later with an exhaustive effort, having run 31 km of the estimated 91 km of the Tunuyan without a portage. Having already gained two of its principle tributaries (the Rio Salinas and Rio Colorado) just upstream of our camp, the flow of the river has more than doubled. We catch an hour of late afternoon sunlight, and bask in what must be 70-degree weather. We attribute the increase in temperature to a significant drop in elevation (nearly 2000 feet) that is also reflected in a change in vegetation. Cactuses and small trees are evidence of this, but we also see signs of warming at higher elevations where snow had fallen the previous day. As sun sinks into the upstream canyon, the river changes color from slate grey to chocolate brown. To our relief, the morning reveals only a small rise in the height of the river along with more perfect weather.

Just as Silvio prophesized, day 2 begins with more intense white-water that is locked between vertical canyon walls. Not even an hour after putting in, we encounter the most significant drop so far. The river drops 15 feet through massive hydraulics. We make our first portage with little effort, but Silvio warns that we are quickly approaching a mandatory portage and a box canyon.

Downstream the canyon opens slightly allowing a magnificent vista of snow capped peaks more than 10,000 feet over head. The respite is short lived. Hotel size boulders constrict the rivers flow to a boiling frenzy. Towering gorge walls are visible just downstream as we measure our progress carefully, moving downstream from eddy to eddy. Last chance eddy hopping can become a macho style game of Russian roulette, and I fold first opting to look at the maelstrom ahead before proceeding any further. Silvio looks on disapprovingly as Pato quickly follows suit. From shore I can see that Silvio is contemplating yet another downstream move into a tumultuous eddy above certain death. I shake him off from shore, but he seems sceptical of my signal. Half of me wants to tell him to do what he pleases, but downstream a thousand CFS go subterranean at the entrance to a towering box canyon. I repeat my signal to come ashore. Our side of the river offers absolutely no chance of portage, and I want nothing to do with the death sieve. I decide to hike back upstream of this overgrown boulder garden to scout and/or portage from river right. Pato is on my program, but Silvio resists my initiative yet again. There is more than a bit of tension between the two of us, and I fear the situation will come to a head.

According to Silvio this is the first of two crux sections and is the site where his first attempt ended with a long, gruelling hike downstream. After a laborious scout of the box canyon, we set our sites on the massive portage at hand. Misgivings between Silvio and I fade during the subsequent two-hour portage. Exhausted we find a river emerging from the impressive slot gorge only to sieve into more dangerous boulder gardens. We portage for another half an hour at river level until we are literally forced off the bank by more vertical canyon walls. The rapid we will be forced to run is dicey at best. However, for the first time on the trip, we enter a discussion as a team, and take a long break to consider how best to proceed.

In this portion of the Canyon, both Silvio’s last trip and the Bantancora rafters were forced thousands of feet up onto the Canyon walls in an effort to hike out. In a severely dehydrated state, one of the professors on the first attempt, nearly fell to her demise when crossing a steep slope of loose rock exposed over a thousand foot cliff. Luckily she caught hold of a bush to escape the deadly plunge. For these rafters, this was their fourth day spent hiking in the canyon after losing the raft, but the group felt renewed hope upon hearing planes making several passes over their position. They waved their arms in hopes of signalling would be rescuers, but they were the proverbial needle in the haystack in the profound depths of the canyon. As the light began to leave the canyon, they found themselves stranded for yet another bone chilling night without bag or blanket. They retreated to the river to wet cracked lips with muddy water. The next morning only brought the chilling obligation to head straight back up the canyon wall a thousand feet to continue the hike.

Through a gruelling patchwork of portages and must run rapids, we finish our second day having covered only six miles of river in seven hours. From our second camp Silvio points to the second major crux of the Tunuyan just downstream. We are tempted to abandon the river level attempt of the vertical walled corner, and make a gruelling portage over a high ridge that bisects the river bend. We put off the descision until morning turning our focus to the evening show. The canyon blazes red and then fades to grey in the setting sun. As the twilight settles into darkness, a river of stars runs thick overhead. We say silent thanks to continued clear weather.

We rise to prehistoric Condors circling overhead as sunlight breaks into the upper reaches of the Canyon. Silvio is convinced that our good weather will soon break as these Condors are searching for food in anticipation of a storm. I hope his prediction is flawed, but wispy cirrus clouds streaming overhead forebode his conjecture.

With the impending bad weather, we make a collective decision to continue on at river level in order to expedite downstream progress. Our morning hours are spent eddy hopping through a maze of powerful chutes in between massive boulders. We are again tiptoeing on the brink of something more significant. Boiling and quivering above smoking horizon lines, the Tunuyan seems to resist the next downstream passage.

From a vantage atop a three-story boulder on river left, we see crazed currents running head long into another unseen mist laden falls. Below a relatively placid pool beckons our passage. Silvio spots his line and goes for the smallest of eddies just above the downstream falls. I have great respect for Silvio’s abilities, it is hard for me to watch his attempt at the precarious downstream eddy. After days of toiling through this expedition, I want nothing more than to see our take out with the whole crew safe and sound. This is not, however, an unwarranted risk as there are truly no other good options for continuing downstream. Silvio paddles with conviction through the initial gauntlet, knifing through conflicting currents to the rivers opposite bank, he exits at the precarious brink. It is times like this when I can’t decide whether our sport epitomizes mental fortitude or mental masochism. Regardless, Silvio has saved Pato and I similar torture standing ready to pull us ashore if needs be.

Below the crux we are making good down stream progress for the first time since day-1, with kayaks made significantly lighter by two and a half days of food consumption. However, Silvio seems possessed by the impending storm, and it is all I can do to keep him in sight. I am caught between a downstream charging Silvio and the lagging pursuit of Pato. With a mix of anxiety and excitement I paddle hard after the fiery Argentinean through an endless barrage of class-five rapids. For the ensuing hours, the canyon pulses between black sheer walled gorges, and massive amphitheatres of red rock. I want to stop at the end of every rapid, but the sky is turning black before its time and Silvio proclaims a small covered refuge around every corner.

7 days after losing their raft a famished, dehydrated, mostly despondent, but very much alive group of rafters was found just above this same small, dilapidated refuge. They had made the 50-mile downstream hike aided by a single throw bag and mortal motivation. From the few points along the trek where they could actually see the river, they deemed the river unrunnable and felt blessed that the debacle had not lead to a much greater misfortune.

Three days and more than a vertical mile below the Tunuyans Alpine valley, our jubilant albeit dead tired group of kayakers arrives at this historic point of passage to the Rio Tunuyan. A partially intact tin roof of a stone structure that brought salvation for the two previous attempts now provides much needed refuge from the onslaught of a major Andean downpour. Were it not for Silvio’s single mindedness, we would have weathered the monsoon in the unprotected reaches of the upper canyon. More over, we awake in the morning to find a river that had tripled in size to a massive muddy flow, with heavy snowfall visible in the canyon upstream. We paddle the final 15 miles of river in a little over 4 hours through huge rain swollen cataracts. As the Tunuyan exits the last of it’s canyons and spills out onto the plains, we enter a wooded park with a small diversion dam just down stream.

A two car caravan awaited our arrival on a dirt road just a short distance from the rivers edge. Silvios father was the first to spot us emerging from the trees and onto the road and offered us an enthusiastic “hey hey!” The rest of the welcoming party emerged slightly less enthusiastic, yet still full of Argentinean hospitality.

After the trip, I lingered in Argentina for another month riding the high of our accomplishment as far as it would take me. The river had finally relinquished its prohibition on successful descents, setting the stage for all attempts that will inevitably follow. In retrospect it was a miraculous convergence of circumstance that allowed us to pass unscathed through the Tunuyan’s depths. More importantly three individuals entered an unknown journey and emerged on the other side as a team.