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Earthquake recovery donation to UCCC

As a post-earthquake gesture of goodwill and encouragement Hydroscapes River Gear is proud to announce that we have donated 6 Full On Vests to UCCC.
The University of Canterbury Canoe Club, or “UCCC”, as it’s better known is responsible for introducing hundreds of new kayakers to the whitewater world. This donation is intended to help make kayaking trips just that little bit safer for the students in the earthquake ravaged city of Christchurch. The Full On Vests include the last remaining Canadian made models hand crafted by Kev England, founder of Hydroscapes River Gear and some early New Zealand made models.
Pictured below are UCCC members wearing the donated PFD’s at a rolling practice session and out on the river.

Alaknanda on the way to the ultra-classic Pindar.

Our next river trip was the Alaknanda, on the way to the Pindar river. We did a short (17km) section that ends at a rapid named Hillary’s step, after Sir Ed’s last trip to the Himalaya, where he took a jet boat up the Alaknanda as far as this rapid. The run was fantastic. Big and bouncy, fast class 4. We paddled 17km in about an hour and a half! The perfect break in the drive to the Pindar.

Shalab had given us a detailed description of the logistics and route for a 3 or 4 day trip on a river called the Pindar. It drains the Pindari Glacier and the valley is one of the last major drainages in Uttarachand to see roads and other modern infrastructure. Because of the lack of roads, it requires a 20km trek along the popular Pindari Glacier trekking route, from the road end at Lokharket, up and over the Dhakuri Kal Pass and down to the Pindar river. Shalab had described the route they had taken a few years ago, and suggested that we may be able to drive further than they had, but we quickly realised that we were in for a much longer walk!

Predictably, the road was destroyed by landslides, even before we could get to Lokharket, so we loaded our boats with gear and food for 3 days, and began the long, steep climb up the old road to Sog, where we were told we could arrange porters. We arrived late in the afternoon, and seemingly, our state of exhaustion provoked the local porter hustler to up the prices by about 300%. Harry, the porter hustler, invited us to his “restaurant” for dahl and chapattis, and we could talk about the price more then. His “restaurant” was his house, and it measured about 3m by 3m. His wife was cooking over a wood fire in the middle of the room and the lack of a chimney created a completely unbearable atmosphere. We sat outside. The grand price of 1000 Rupees, plus food, was agreed upon for a porter to carry an empty kayak over the pass and down to the river. We would meet at Harry’s at 7:30 for breakfast and head off soon after, with the porters that he would find in the morning.

We woke in a stunning position, high on the ridge, with a group of Nepali porters, eagerly asking for work. They offered their services for 600 Rupees (NZ$17). We still dined at Harry’s restaurant, but ditched the porter hustler in favour of the Nepalis, who are famed for their legendary carrying skills and mountain fitness.

We had climbed 500m the previous day, which left us a 1200m climb up to the Dhakuri Kal pass (2932m). The trail was a beautifully constructed pathway that had obviously been used for centuries. Our pace, with camping gear, kayaking gear and food, was about the same as our porters, and once we’d settled into the pace, the trek became less of a slog, and we began to thoroughly enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and clean air of the mountains.

The pass was a welcome sight, and once refreshed we headed down the steep slopes of the Pindar valley at double speed. Our porters still had to walk home!

We camped on a flat paddock next to the river, close to the village of Dhakuri, about 3km downstream of the confluence of the Sunderdhunga Gad and the Pindar river. The water was the clearest green we had seen in India, and the flow looked great.

We slept like babies and woke early, with the usual crowd of onlookers, who observed our every move, as we made breakfast and prepared to get on the water. JJ had done some Google Earth scouting, and clocked the gradient of this river section at about 30m/km for the first 20km or so. This type of scouting is notoriously inaccurate, but the whitewater was just what we had hoped for. Beautifully formed rapids, with clean water and just the right gradient to allow boat scouting, yet still provide fun and interesting moves.

Great class 3+/4 read and run medium volume creeking with a few beefier class 4+ drops entertained us all day. The valley is sparsely populated, with only a few footpaths and 3 or 4 foot-bridges, so we saw very few people, and the usual river bank decorations of litter and shredded clothes were not visible here. We found ourselves scouting a much steeper section, late in the afternoon, and tried estimating our travel distance. We decided we had most likely paddled about 20km, and since the next section was going to take some time we opted to set camp.

We found a perfect, small sandy beach, surrounded by huge boulders about 10m from the river, at the top of the steep section. After clearing the tiger/leopard risk by lighting some highly suspect firecrackers, we settled into one of the best camp spots of all time.

In the morning, we scouted the next section and decided that the first waterfall (right next to camp) was the only one we could safely do, for the first few hundred meters. The portaging was not challenging, so we found ourselves back on the water very quickly.

More high quality class 4 boat scouting and short mini gorges carried us quickly downstream. The gradient slackened off, but our pace remained fast, with swift class 3 wavetrains and no need to stop. The fun was endless, but we were all eagerly hoping to see our take-out (Laxman and the van), before dark. We had planned for 3 days, so our food supply was a little low and another night out would be a hungry one if we could not find a village where we could buy supplies. Fortunately we came across a small village where we bought eggs, rice and onions-perfect!

Our camp was on the main path of the hay collectors, bringing straw and hay back from the meadows to the village. We were visited by a few friendly local kids and presumably gave the whole town much to talk about for a few days.

In the morning we drifted downstream, to find more stunningly beautiful whitewater. Not challenging, but enjoyable and moving quickly.

When we eventually saw the van parked next to the river at Pulwara, we were weary, but still enjoying the river. We had paddled about 45km of some of the best whitewater in Uttarakhand.

The Pindar is one of the classiest river trips I’ve ever done, and has to be one of the World’s best multi-day kayaking adventures. Unfortunately there is a road being build into the upper part of the valley, to allow the construction of a hydro-electric dam, so the river’s days are numbered. Next year it may be possible to drive to the put-in, but in 2 years, the Pindar River will be gone.

This is a sad realisation, but we all felt lucky to have had the chance to get on this classic river. It may have only had 2 kayak descents, but hopefully it will see a few more before it’s dammed.

Delhi and beyond…

The team of 6 arrived in dribs a drabs over the course of three days, so the earlier arrivals had chance to check out Delhi…Things are different here!

Once the team had assembled in Delhi, we loaded our 12 seater van and headed off with 2 drivers who spoke not a single word of English. We emerged from the smog of the flatlands of Northern India in Rishikesh where the foothills poke out from the clouds of smoke and dust. We dropped off one driver and picked up a young Indian raft guide and beginner kayaker, Laxman, who is acting as our cook, logistics technician, translator, etc…OK we have a servant for the trip too!

The Himalayas had been ravaged by heavy rains, which caused many large landslides to damage the fragile roads, so progress was bumpy and slow. We headed towards the Yamuna River, which was running at about double it’s normal flow for this time of year. Driving up the valley, the river gets steeper and steeper, and passes through many gorges. We picked a good looking class 3-4 section of River about 7km’s long and jumped on the river.

We put on at the site of a severely damaged half constructed run of river hydro scheme, feeling lucky to have the chance to paddle this creek before it’s diverted. The air was cool, the water clear (you could see the faeces floating), and it felt good to be on the river. We drove further up the valley, until the water looked too steep and chossy to paddle. This would be our put in for the next day’s fun! We camped at a grassy clearing, which we decided was going to be our take-out for the next day.

The locals, via Laxman, told us that no-body had paddled this very upper section of the Yamuna, which is always a nice bonus! The whitewater was pleasantly challenging and continuous, with short gorges and boulder choke rapids stacked up for 8km. A few of the team were a bit shaky on the water, but no major dramas were had by any.

We arrived at our takeout (and camp spot), which is at the confluence of the Yamuna and a creek called the Hanuman Ganga, named after the Monkey God, who’s temple is at the confluence.

We’d been alerted to the potential run-ability of this creek by Laxman, and after a short scouting mission, we shouldered our boats and headed up to the Hydro-electric power station about 1.5km above the Yamuna confluence. The super classy whitewater was enjoyed by all, and the locals got a good show too. Two 1^st D’s in a day! Can’t be bad for day 2 of the trip…

Well, it seems that the locals didn’t like the show and we were essentially kicked out of the valley, before we had got the chance to paddle the classic sections of the Yamuna. We drove down the valley feeling a bit cheated, but the Tons Valley just to the West also has much whitewater.

We arrived in the Tons Valley, to find that the road had been cut off by a large landslide a few weeks ago. This didn’t prevent us from finding some excellent whitewater. The Supin and the Rupin Rivers combine to form the Tons River. We were a little limited in our choice of river sections due to landslides, and the only section of the Supin that we had available was a 10 km long, extremely deep gorge that we didn’t know anything about and could not see from the road. We have reasonable 1:200,000 maps of the area so we all we really knew, was the elevation loss and the distance of the trip…250ft and mile.

With few other options for kayaking Toby commented, “This seems like the best way to get some kayaking in. And if we end up having one hell of an adventure…well that’s what we came here for isn’t it?”

With this mindset we packed for a light overnighter and headed down through never ending rice and dahl paddy fields in the blazing heat, until we finally got to the river. We paddled for about 200m and started a long, gruelling portage around a massive landslide that had produced some horrible looking water.

It felt like we may have made a mistake, but quickly the whitewater improved. The trip ended up being an absolute classic, with big, burly water and sweet lines through the whole gorge!!! We made it to our arranged rendezvous with our van with an hour or two of daylight left, and big smiles on our faces.

Our takeout was at the confluence of the Supin and Rupin, and since Lexman grew up here and his brother still lives in the small village at the confluence we decided to camp in a rice paddy next to the river that belonged to a friend of his.

The next morning, we checked on the state of our legs and decided to hike up (yes, this road too, was destroyed by landslides!) the Rupin for as far as we could and paddle back down to the confluence.

The Rupin is a beautifully green river (still probably toxic), with stacked steep boulder field rapids, making for some amazingly enjoyable paddling. We emptied the local shop of all their packaged nuts and bujha, scoffed some butter cookies, and reflected on the convenience of the corner store at home. After a moderately energising lunch stop we carried on down the Tons river, which was a big, bouncy joyride!

Flowing at an estimated 120m3, we were all loving the big water feel of the class 4 boat-scouting. Predictably, our take-out became our camp spot, and also the next day’s put in! I love boating in India!