Intermediate Weekend

When the Intermediate Weekend was announced, I was sceptical of its ability to separate those who are beginners going on intermediate, and those who are intermediate and looking to up their game. And it turns out I was both right and wrong on the same count, for while not all of those invited to take part in the trip were of intermediate standard, those who weren’t at least had the mentality to get down to business and paddle.

Without bothering to list all the times that faff bothered various people, or the intricacies of the drive to Fort William, the debates on where to go, or the facilities in the hall, I shall jump right to the get-on for the Spean Gorge: a good intermediate river, with two advanced rapids.

Our newly elected commodore, Harry Brickell, was feeling the worse for wear (we still don’t really know why), and decided to get off within the first 100m of the river. This particularly cold March morning then decided to press the matter home with some snow after we’d tackled a couple of warm-up grade 2 rapids.

In this section, the only people who were being watched over closely were Kieran (who’d only ever paddled one river before), Ameila (who hadn’t paddled rivers in a long time), and Peter (who tried valiantly to win the award for most swims two years in a row). However, all of them were having a good time of it, and though Amelia in particular was nervous, Amy was keeping a close eye on her, and providing ‘encouragement’ when necessary.

Eventually, we did have a swimmer, and it was Peter. With a loud shout and some cursing he used up the breath he had for a roll and began our swim count...however it was soon joined by many, many more.

We reached the first named rapid of the Gorge, “Fairy Steps”, and here Kieran at last succumbed to a swim, joined by Callum and others. I feel part responsible for this as I was leading him down, but I don’t think I could have picked a nicer line. That Ross rolled following Kieran’s line may mean that they were, in fact, slightly off the one that I’d picked out.

Anyway, this introduced a number of our 18 paddlers to how cold the river was, and many more were to discover this first hand as we moved into sections of the gorge with weird, twisting eddy lines in the middle of the flow. Kieran, Emma, Stephan and Callum all succumbed to these at various stages, and the day was still getting colder, with snow piling on.

Ezra and Tom both ran the grade 5 rapid “Headbanger” (I’m sure Chris would have if he hadn’t escorted Amelia and Louise off the river earlier as it was too cold for them) and both styled it. The later grade 5 “Constriction” everyone walked. As Tom described it, “Constriction is in fact highly unrewarding, highly dangerous, flat water.”

By now most of the interesting stuff on the Spean Gorge had been paddled, and it was a long paddle to the egress point. Normally this is a nice, relaxing stretch – but with the extreme cold and continuing snow, we were trying to race through this – so it was far less enjoyable than normal.

The get-out was ridiculously cold, and it was a race to pack the boats and get back to the hall (with all thoughts of a second river swiftly forgotten).

Saturday night’s snow swept away all chances of another river in Fort William, so it was a race back down to Glasgow in the hopes of paddling the Middle Orchy.

Passing by foot high snow drifts, it was evident that ‘cold’ would not adequately describe any river we were to paddle. Upon arriving at the Orchy, only Tom, Harry and Amy were in a mood to paddle, jumping on at Sore-Tooth, planning on heading down to Witches Step. The minibus headed down to Witches Step, and once there, Stephan, Dan and Arran decided that they’d be up for running it a couple of times. This led to Arran’s one swim of the weekend. On their second run, they came down with the main group, and with six successful drops by the side of the central rock, it was time to pack up and go home.

This marks a GUCC first for 2010/2011, with Amy’s discovery of a set of paddles at the side of the river, we returned with more kit than we set out with.
So, with 17 genuine river swims, and 1 gimpy swim from Gregor, this weekend almost rivalled the North East Weekend for its carnage.

Roll on next year :)

Paul