Alps 2012

Upon arriving at l’Argentière la Bessée, much grumbling ensued as the forecast was showing rain for most of the following week.   A few people, including Alps newcomers George Hamilton and George Elderfield, jumped on the slalom course at the campsite.

Both Georges, Fraser and Rupert on the Slalom Course

On the first day of paddling, we left the Sunshine Run section of the Lower Durance for the afternoon, and instead started with the Lower Guil (where I swear the grade 5 road was significantly over-graded).   The two groups, led by veteran Alps paddlers Tom Jenkins and Ben Marshall, set off about a half-hour apart.   The bigger and faster alpine water causes some of the newcomers some difficulty, but Stella and George bring their A-game and prove from day one that they have their river roll down.   Following lunch and a miraculous change in weather, we carry on down the Sunshine Run, where we learn that Stella has a knack for leading rivers unintentionally, and that Sam doesn’t like sticking to a group order.   When we arrived back at the campsite, the drinking began while Kieran and Tom made an awesome dinner of sausage and potato dauphinoise.   Oh, and Claire made Ben eat a lot of grass….

Day 2 – the weather picks up, but the water hadn’t returned to reasonable levels yet, so we set sail for the Lower Clarée.   While I’d never put this down as one of my favourite rivers, I feel it got a bad name in my first year, where it was paddled on a “confidence building day” at very low levels.   This time round, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t dull, and it gave Craig a great opportunity to make a difficult eddy above a tree (which, to my joy, he succeeded in doing).   After the traditional lunch of baguette with meats, cheeses and salad, we went to the Briançon Gorge – a river which always gives me pause despite never having had a bad experience on it.   Well, like all good gorges, the difficulty increases exponentially with more water, so the run was an absolute blast…though Callum met with some difficulty and went for a swim.   Back at the campsite, while Harry and Fraser work on their spaghetti Bolognese, I jumped on the slalom course with no other safety presence...and promptly capsized!   Fortunately before returning to the Alps, my river roll returned, so I managed to avoid a particularly gimpy swim.   Now, something happened that Tuesday night that I cannot, in good conscience, leave out of the write-up: Sam stole a dog!   Sam stole a dog and then let it off its leash.

Tom leading the last section of the Upper Guisane

After Sam apologised for being a drunken idiot to the dog’s owner on the rainy and windy morning we went to the Guisane.   I spent most of the Upper Guisane thinking just how high this felt compared to the previous times I’d paddled it.   S-bends, as normal, was the highlight, though Mr Elderfield spent most of his time playing pinball while traversing it.   The big boys, Ben, Tom, Sam and Rupert went on to do the Lower Guisane, though Ben (as normal) forgot to turn his GoPro on for the best bit of the river, where it looks like you’re paddling into the jaws of death!   Oh well, one day he’ll learn.   While they were doing that, the rest of us paddled the Middle Durance, where Kirsty picked up her first no-swim river and Craig came awfully close, but he swam twenty metres from the end of the run.   Back at camp, after hearing tales of heroism and near misses from the advanced group, Emma and Kirsty made cous-cous while others set about playing piggyback volleyball.

Piggyback Volleyball!

After more swims than most people realised, Harry decided that the morning of the fourth day would be used for some training.   Ben shot-gunned the advanced group consisting of Emma, the Georges, Kieran and Callum, training them in some slalom techniques useful in the Alps.   Rupert took Claire and Stella, Sam put in some work with Kirsty, and Tom gave Craig a masterclass in the basics.   This was followed by a run of the Gyronde (with far less swims that usual), and finally a run of the Onde in the evening.   That night, after Ben and Claire’s “chicken surprise,” we played ultimate Bago and British bulldogs, which Claire proved to be an utter demon at!

A tender morning the next day meant that the Sunshine Run was our destination – our first repeat run of the trip.   This was not Fraser’s day.   First, upon seeing Craig swimming, he found a wonderful little pour-over, leading Stella into it, and while Stella succeeded in making her roll, Fraser failed, marking the first ‘safety swim’ of the trip.   Then, after completing the run, Fraser managed to lock Harry’s keys in his car…   Following this, we returned to the Upper Guisane, allowing everyone to get on it this time, and letting some additional people run S-bends.   Following the faff-ful day, the Georges make mixed risotto for dinner…and it was awesome.

Almost half way into the trip, the lead four paddlers decide to go off and do something tricky once more.   In the past, I viewed ‘tricky’ as being rivers like the Gyr or Chateaux Queyras…well…this time it was the Durance Gorge.   In possibly the most depressingly funny moments before they head off with Rob Pilkington, the group mumble to each other in quiet voices:
Tom: “We’re all going to die…”
Ben: “What colour are your pants this morning?”
Tom: “…brown…”
While they were off paddling their über river, we went to the Gyronde, and had our annual epic – oh well, it was always going to happen.   And rather upsettingly, I found out that while I’m normally good with a throwline, I can’t throw one well when I’m not under pressure.   In the evening, after Sam and Rupert went for a play on the Fournel, Rupert and Callum made pesto pasta for the masses while cheesy music blared at the bank of the river.

Before the rest day, it was time for everyone to up their games: in the morning, Stella and Claire got to jump on the Briançon Gorge.    Unfortunately for Stella (and her boat), she had a swim above the barrage, and after a prolonged rescue effort, we finally managed to force it down the barrage…and made her Inazone’s nose bear serious resemblance to Jaws!   Add to this that while paddling the gorge, Claire and Rupert’s kayaks also split.   Before lunch, we went to the Gyr, where I finally feel confident enough to jump on with the elite four plus Fraser.   It was awesome, despite a backwards spell that I had at one of the trickiest bits.   We all finish elated…until Ben discovers that his boat had broken on the run of the Gyr!   After this, there’s another run of the Gyronde for which I lent Stella my Mamba…and she gave it its first ever dent.   We went to Regain for the Alps meal which, as usual, was excellent.   Craig and Harry did their best to embarrass the group, with the former being overly drunk and slurring French phrases, and the latter commenting that the waitress “doesn’t speak very well” while asking Emma to order his food for him.

The rest day began with welding (given that four kayaks had been broken the previous day that hardly came as a surprise).   By lunch time we had made our plans.   Most of us decided that a day at the walled city in Briançon would be the best way to spend the day, whilst Tom and Sam borrowed Fraser to take them climbing.

Claire photosniping at Briançon

Now over half way through the Alps trip, breakfast with croissants and pain au chocolat is becoming more of a chore than nutritious.   This is Ubaye day, meaning an early get-up, a long drive, and me pleading with Tom for him to drive as I want to take photos: naturally this meant that while I held shot-gun, the storms of the like not seen since the Old Testament rampaged so I couldn’t get any good photos.   The Upper Ubaye is a ridiculously cold river, though it proved that Craig can not only hand-roll, but he’s rather adept at hand paddling too.   It also brought a cheer to many in the group when Sam went for an unintentional swim/technical exit whilst trying to rescue Craig’s kayak.   The Ubaye Race Course, which was my favourite river in my first year in the Alps, proved to be several peoples favourite run of the holiday, however, it also brought about Kieran’s first swim since the 12^th of March 2011!   He was not amused.   To many people’s despair, as we were running late, we had McDonalds for dinner.

I did get one awesome photo though :)

The following day, the Upper Upper Guil proved to be our first ‘no swim’ river – a mere ten days into the holiday.   A sizable portion of the group continues down to paddle the Upper Guil, where a number of people have a rather intimate experience with it, with Claire swimming in the same spot I swam at five years ago.   After both of these rivers were completed, most of us went back to the campsite where Stella and I worked on our Turkey Curry (that was, perhaps, a little over seasoned), while Tom, Rupert and Sam went with Rob Pilkington to paddle the Guil Gorge.   With them seemingly gone for hours, a number of people began to worry that they had gotten in trouble.   Eventually we received a call saying they had bailed off the river, and there was a collective sigh of relief.   It turns out that they had been paddling it at a level several feet above what is recorded in the guidebook (so the gentle grade three warm-up was nothing of the kind!).   And yet despite this, and despite spending an hour abseiling down to the river, while halfway through dinner I heard:

Tom: “This is my Everest.”

Now that we were nearing the end of our stay, France seemed to finally pull out all the stops and the sun split the heavens!   Returning to the Lower Guisane, I had to make a choice: was I ready to get back on the horse that stopped me paddling for seven days three years ago, or was I going to sit it out and miss one of the best rivers I’ve ever paddled?   I think I’ll give it one more year.   After an uneventful paddle of a very low Lower Guisane, it was time for the group to tackle the upper section for the final time.   This was general uneventful except for a revelation from Mr Doyle, who commented on how much more stable he felt when using the H3’s thigh rests.   Upon hearing this, Ben, Sam and I couldn’t contain our laughter…frankly, after hearing that we were amazed Craig had paddled that well!

On our final day, we have a fairly relaxed start, and then head to paddle the Sunshine Run one last time.   Another river was considered for the afternoon, but most people just wanted to relax and let their kit dry for the two day journey home that was to follow.

Camp at Night 

Other than my first Alps trip back in 2007, this was the one with the most swimming, the greatest variety of rivers and the most learning evident throughout it.   The Alps trips for Glasgow Uni Canoe Club have never been a matter of taking the best people on ridiculously hard rivers (or I’d have never managed to make it onto one), but about pushing the boundaries of people at all levels of competence in the club.   In 2007, I was towards the low end of the bell-curve, managing to get through the basic rivers and a few of the harder ones more because of confidence than skill.   Now, it feels like that venire of confidence has been stripped away, but the skills I have picked up since then more than compensate for it.   I think that everyone who went on this trip had something they could be proud of – a ‘no swim’ river; helping out with a rescue; tackling a new river; developing their roll – and that certainly puts this as one of the best Alps trips I’ve been on.

Good job everyone, and thank you Harry.

Le Chapeau rouge

So, here is a blog of my feelings, perceptions and memories of this year's Alps trip. It will no doubt be factually inaccurate cos I can't really remember what happened when so hopefully some other people will also post blogs which are better. Day one involved driving, this is neither fun nor interesting. A bag fell off the roof of the M6 and Sam had to run into the middle of the motorway to fetch it and Ben's car broke within the first hour, but all this happened before I got picked up so were not my concern.

 Day two also involved driving which is not fun or interesting, paddling the slalom course which is both fun and interesting and eating pizza. The weather when we got there was fairly bollocks but luckily picked up.

Due to high levels on day one we went and did the Lower Guil followed by the sunshine run. Many swims were had (leading to Sweet Cheeks adopting 'Swim until you can't see land as his theme tune) but also a lot of fun. Other aspects of the day involved the owner of a French bakery refusing to sell us breakfast despite her advertising her business as a provider of pastry based products (no wonder the Euro's screwed).

Next day we did the Lower Claree, usually described as a 5km long eddy it was passably good with the higher water. It was made particularly interesting by trees with one very last minute portage to avoid a tree choke. The afternoon saw a run of the Briancon gorge which was back to its previous funness following the works on the barrage last year with the slide re opened and decent levels. It still smells of poo though and Gretel, Callum’s boat did a large section without him.

The Guisane is one river which in my opinion gives all abilities a classic French Alps experience and we got both the upper and the Lower done in a day. The lower was particularly awesome at pretty meaty levels and our notable lack of fitness became very apparent by the end. Meanwhile those not keen for the lower headed to do the section of the Durance from the campsite down. Sweet cheeks so nearly making it a no swim river but alas it was not to be. That evening while sat next to the slalom course a kind German man in very tight spedos gave me a detailed explanation of why my carrabiner was wrong, unfortunately this explanation involved quite a lot of bending over.

The next morning Harry lied to us and told us we’d need to get up early for the drive to the Sunshine run, when we were all up he announced that we were not in fact going to the Sunshine run but having a morning’s training on the Slalom course which was very useful despite his deceitfulness. After this we ran the Gyronde which all went fine despite Kirsty’s best efforts to get vertically pinned on the weir. The day was concluded with a quick run of the Onde accompanied by a strange man from Bath uni who claimed to have spent the previous night sleeping in a bush in Grenoble (his claims were corroborated by his odor), he then stole our food.

The group split up the next morning with most of the group heading off to the Gyronde which while some swim ffaff occurred I understand went well while a few of us went and did the Durance gorge. Fortunately we were accompanied by Sam’s mate Pilky so we didn’t die! In the evening we headed up to the Fournel for tea and for Pilky to show us all he’s much better than we are.

The next morning I think we did the Briancon gorge again, Stella’s boat went off the barrage and mangled its nose meaning Sam had to go abseiling (I think this is a word for a type of masturbation, but that’s not what I mean in this context if anyone is confused) to fetch it. Some criticism of the technique was received from another uni boater but it was later clarified that he’s a Dick. Next a quick and fairly uneventful run of the Gyr followed by an extremely ffaffy run of the Gyronde before heading out for a meal.

Rest day saw a morning of boat welding before everyone sobered up enough to drive at which point most folk went sight-seeing in Briancon while Fraser, Sam and I headed out for a climb. I gave the locals a demonstration of the British technique of squeezing into a crack and humping my way upwards, they seemed unimpressed.

After rest day was Ubaye day. The upper Ubaye was extremely cold and rainy but the racecourse was a good laugh and saw a freak of nature so rare even David Attenborough is yet to capture it – Kieran swimming! His paddles ended up stuck in a gorged in section which turned into ffaff mainly due to my very ill advised attempt to traverse back along a cliff to it. The plan was duly abandoned and Sam and Rupert just paddled back down the section to fetch it.

Guil day began with the upper upper which was pretty cold and rubbish followed by us getting on the Upper at the same time as team Pyranha, including Anton Immler which was a really fun grade 3+ run. The piranha paddlers carried on down chateaux Q, guardian angel and the middle Guil but got off above the Guil gorge. This should probably have told us something but a few of us decided to get on while everyone else headed back to get dinner on, fortunately Pilky came along to stop us dying again.

The abseil in took us an hour and the initial rapids which looked big from the road were even bigger at river level but they were manageable. Unfortunately it turned out that these were the warm up rapids. The first portage featured a must make ferry glide with probable death awaiting if you missed it. After this we got back on to some grade five read and run which eventually led to Rupert getting an absolute tanking in a hole before a grade five swim with self-rescue of boat and paddles. After continuing a little further and with only about a kilometre left we decided it was getting ridiculous and ran away like little girls, walking out up a very steep, long, hot path before collapsing by the road and asking a nice lady for a drink from her hose pipe (not a euphemism). We’ve since found out that it was a few feet higher than the level the guide book is based on so we feel a bit better about our yellow bellied fleeing.

Our return to the Guisane saw a few extra people get on the lower and everyone get on the upper. A good day was had by all.

Our last day was pretty easy with a run of the Sunshine run allowing time to get sorted before heading home.

Other amusing incidents included the bus being locked into a car park and having to do a spot of off roading to escape, a feud with Bangor involving a duct tape penis and Sam Gregory stealing a woman’s dog while she was having a Barry. Callum also vomited all over their tent (known as the tenthouse) but fortunately only got it on his own things while Paul Walker slept through it and Sweet Cheeks made an escape. Strangely, even though Rupert was supposedly a resident of the Tenthouse his whereabouts are unaccounted for during this incident, hopefully Claire will shed some light on this mystery in her Blog post.

A Small Etive Trip: 18/03/2012

With seven years of coaching experience with Glasgow Uni Canoe Club, it's been a while since anyone has really surprised me with their successes on a river, so I suppose I'm going to start out this post by saying well done to George and to Ross for catching me off guard.

Both of them had been looking at rivers they wanted to do, so when I invited them to come paddling they asked about doing the Middle Etive. Having paddled it a lot, I was willing to head there, but was expecting to have to portage a couple of the rapids due to limitations on safety coverage. However, Stephan was up for a jaunt to the Etive as well, so accompanied us, and was invaluable in providing safety cover while I demonstrated the line and set up cover at the bottom before switching.

Triple Falls proved to be Ross' best rapid of the day, styling all three drops, and managing a perfect boof on the third drop...though the amount of time he spent not capsizing while being pushed against the walls after the second drop was pretty funny.

We all ran Letterbox too, though I was the only one not to plug it, and George was shoved into the river right alcove by the water and had to make a technical exit onto the bank.

Ski-Jump was its usual, friendly, self - though I think it was one of the ones that had scared Ross most up to this point.

Crack of Doom was my screw-up of the day: my line in was great, unfortunately between choosing whether to run the drop at the end left or right, I went centre and then backwards down the right. On the plus side, my reverse boof/brace works fairly well. Ross and George both ran this easily. Stephan gave it a miss as his back started giving him some bother.

Crack of Dawn was it's usual portage and seal launch.

Great Waterslide was fun as always. Ross and I got the line right, Stephan just missed the wall and capsized (his flat-water beat-down did not result in a swim though), and George was our dedicated person for crashing into the wall.

Right Angle was paddled my me, George and Ross. Only Ross capsized, and his roll saved him. He then capsized against the wall, and after a little nudge from my paddles to move him away from the rockface, he rolled up again. Despite having a sore back, Stephan decided that sliding down the drop was a good idea...

Many moments were spent later sniggering as Stephan hobbled around at the Real Food Cafe and trying to climb sideways into his car. Silly Stephan.

It's been a very long time since I've been to the Etive and no-one has swum, particularly when with people who've never run it before. So well done again to Ross and George on what was, overall, an excellent trip.

The new paddles no longer look like this though....

Things which happened to me last term

Since not much has been posted on the blog recently here is an account of the rivers and stuff I’ve done with the club and people from the club over the first term of this year. Obviously other stuff did happen but if I wasn’t there then I can’t really write about it, hopefully someone else will. It’s been a pretty busy term which is probably why my exam at the end of it went badly!

Wet west: We went to it. A really good group of Gucc headed up this year and had a good weekends paddling thanks to excellent organisation of the SCA (well worth my Grandmother’s scorn for missing my cousin’s wedding). On the Saturday an impressive number of people got on the Morriston and Harry took one for the team with a good underwater beating. Sunday was a bit more subdued on the Garry as everyone was feeling the night before! It was good to mingle in the Scottish paddling community, even if Fraser did nearly punch someone from Dundee.

Freshers’ trips: We decided to be nice this year and not just throw freshers down scary rivers, we even had a flat water introduction. The flat water was Loch Lomond and we went to wallaby island where we saw Wallabies, this was the highlight of my life!

The second freshers’ trip went to the Teith (basically flat water), the biggest hazard turned out to be water bourne bacteria and parasites – unlucky Holly! After the teith one foolish and irresponsible member of the club decided to pass the rest of the afternoon by paddling Bracklin falls on the Keltie. This turned into a demonstration for the freshers of ‘how to swim off a seven meter waterfall with rocks in the bottom narrowly avoiding a massive siphon’.

The next weekend was spent doing the lower orchy twice, on Saturday it was a nice friendly level on Sunday pretty high so a reasonable amount of carnage ensued.
North East weekend: A beginners’ weekend up in Nethy bridge which went really well with miraculously little ffaff leading to rumours that Emma has a deal with Satan. Stayed in an awesome bunkhouse and did the middle Findhorn low on Saturday and a bit higher on Sunday so really good for learning and progressing and what not. Bumped into Dundee on the river but Fraser controlled himself.

Intermediate trip: Upper Braan; never done it before was nice, quite alpine in a not sunny sort of way. Had a couple of swims but all dealt with though my driving was very poorly received.

Mach: Surf kayaking weekend which I couldn’t go on but I understand some good surf was had in between the massive levels of drunkenness. However on this weekend Rupert and I hijacked a mountaineering club trip and went paddling up around Spean Bridge. Did Pattack, Arkaig and Abhain Gulibhinn. The many miles walked with boat was character building!

Beginners’ trip pre Christmas: Did the Avon near Edinburgh which is quite nice if cold and snowy (not that this is a year round feature obviously). Don’t think we got the hang of the get out though as we had to climb through a very private looking yard over a pretty big wall.

Stuff paddled not on club trips but with club people: The Tilt-Brilliant river, the 9km walk in almost adds to enjoymet by adding to the sense of adventure. The Leny- A lot! The Keltie- one of my favourite rivers in the world including a partially successful attempt at Bracklin. The Etive- had a day when a load of us did it at a really good level, great fun with plenty of carnage! Mousewater- an excellent river really close to Glasgow which I’m ashamed I’ve not paddled before (shuttle did take longer than hoped though). Kinglas (rest and be thankful)- lived up to all the hype even if we didn’t do it high enough to be considered real men! The middle orchy- a couple of times on 5 on the gauge the guidebook does not lie about the mind altering bit! My paddles did slightly snap in half though which was a shame. The Carron- Possibly a first decent? Probably not but it’s not in the guide and asked around and not found anyone who’s done it yet, pretty good 3/4 fun with one very definite portage. I might even get round to writing up a guide for it sometime. (there were quite a few swims in there too!)

Seal pups, cuboards of lost kayaks and how to not cause carnage; a year in the life of a ‘typical’ fresher with GUCC.

I Joined the club in September as a Fresher, yey!

I’m an art student so this post will probably involve more pictures than words. But I have been told only to post up ‘fluffy’ pictures. Here goes.
Admittedly I had done a little bit of boating before I came up here including a bit in Scotland.

My course has been pretty busy this year but I’ve managed to get out paddling a little bit, although not as much as I’d like. We’ve had lots of trips out and about in Scotland, we went to the French Alps for two weeks, there’s been some canoe polo and even a couple of slightly tipsy nights out in Glasgow.

One of the things I love about paddling white water is going out and exploring new rivers. Revisiting classics like the Etive is fun too but there’s something special about going somewhere new and as great as the rivers in the South West of England are it’s nice to get out and explore new ones.

I’ve managed to tick of a fair few rivers that are new to me with GUCC including that I can remember:
Allan (watch out for seals and water nymphs)
Middle Orchy (eventually)
Upper Orchy
The lower Etive
The upper upper Etive
Dalness section of the Etive
Braan (watch out for seals and Ben http://vimeo.com/26364705)
Tilt
Caddick lane
Fyne
Moriston
Garry
Tay
Spean gorge (will only paddle this from now on when there isn’t snow about)
Leven
Minnoch
Connonish
Gyr (on the alps trip, watch out for French seals)
Durance gorge (also on the alps trip)

Once this year I even saw the legendary Chris Bell look scared. (Albeit whilst climbing)

There has been a fair amount of carnage this year. I lost some kit on a river for the first time. A boat and paddle on the Allan which accidentally fell into the river whilst we were inspecting round the corner and is certainly not funny. The boat was a red dagger CFS called Raspberry, if you see her in the North Sea on her way to Norway let me know. Personally I think she has found her way to a secret cupboard of lost kayaks. She will be missed. My new boat is a ginger Dagger Nomad who’s still awaiting a name. She is not nearly as well behaved as Raspberry was.

Towards the end of the year I seem to have also remembered the nasty habit of swimming. Twice! That will have to stop, although both times were on account of me spotting some seal pups lost amongst the maelstrom of swirling dangerous white water and getting out of my boat to rescue them. Ahem. It definitely didn’t have anything to do with having a misbehaving boat or being a wuss and pulling the gay bar. Contrary to what other people in the club think, swimming is BAD.
Generally GUCC seem to try and break or loose at least 3 boats a month, any less than that and its considered uneventful. I’m impressed that I’ve managed to write so much without offending anyone. Art students aren’t very good at that.

The canoe club is a great way of meeting people and generally they‘re a great bunch of people. Maybe one or two could do with drinking a bottle of port more often. One of the best things about the club is the large amount of ginger people. That’s very good as ginger people are better than normal people.

Things to do next year:
- Paddle with Paddy, the only ginger in the club I haven’t paddled with.
- Don’t loose any more kit.
- Don’t swim as much.
- Man up and paddle some classics, ideally the Kinglas, Nevis, Falloch and Coe before I potentially move back down south.
- Find a river that’s as good as the Dart.
- Generally behave myself about as much as I have this year. Impeccably.


Written by Ezra

Alps 2011 - the Tom perspective

This is a quick run trough of what I can remember happening during this year’s Alps trip, there may be a few mistakes in terms of which rivers got done when and in what order the days happened. Hopefully a few other people will join in on the old blogging lark and a combination of posts should give a vaguely coherent record of the trip.

We had a total of two weeks set aside for the trip, taking away the two days either side for driving and a rest day that left nine days of paddling – good shit.

The trip did not start well with the trailer lights not really working. Despite the advice of the GUSA travel convener to ‘just stick your hand out of the window’ we decided it was probably worth getting it fixed, so we went for a trip to Cat’s house. By a process of cutting wires and sticking them back together in different orders Cat’s dad managed to get the lights working while Cat’s mum gave us tea and scones, it was awesome, which is why I propose we don’t go to the Alps next year and just stay at Cat’s house for a fortnight instead. By this point we were running at the limits of our schedule and had to haul ass to Dover.

Many, many hours later we arrived at the campsite and following the erection of Cat and Emma’s scaled up version of Blenhim Palace masquerading as a tent we went for a play on the slalom course, this lead to the first swim and a shoe beer for Arran.

Day one proper saw the compulsory first river being the Sunshine run on the Durance, which was low (the Rab wave was more of a Rab hole) followed by the upper Guisane which was also low and full of rocks. After these two fairly uneventful runs we decided to squeeze in the lower Guisane before six. This didn’t happen and as we thought we’d better wait at least a couple of days before engaging in criminal activity we got off before getting into the guts of the run.

Day two began with the Briancon gorge which was low and had building works blocking the slide on the barrage – the highlight of any Alps trip which was a shame. Next we actually managed to get the lower Guisane done. It was on the lower end of the scale but still really fun and quite technical with a lot of rock dodging. Noteworthy incidents included Fraser being upside down and lacking paddles before recovering and Dan having a bit of a swim (another shoe beer). For the final action of the day we had a wee jaunt down the Gyronde, it was low but a three river day’s a three river day.

The following day we headed up to the Guil as there was more water up there than in the Briancon area. We started with the upper gorge section which was fairly high and had a few fairly meaty holes on it, a fun river which was only slightly ruined by Sean pissing in my mouth off a bridge. Emma had a swim as well which lead to a shoe litchi and passion fruit gay juice.


Day three of Alps trips traditionally ends in carnage, which raises the question why I decided to run triple step, a drop with a large cave half way down. However despite assembling literally everyone in kit with throw lines for me to spend ten seconds running one drop no carnage occurred and I managed to wash the brown colour out of my shorts before anyone noticed. After watching a few rafts run down, also with no carnage, we left disappointed.

The next day saw us heading to the Ubaye. The gorge looked a bit easy so we didn’t bother and went and ran the upper instead, a really long fun bouncy stretch of river in the sun. In the afternoon we ran the racecourse section with a little help from an utter lad of a French raft guide who was soling it at the same time as us. This was a very cool bit of paddling with a bit more volume that the runs we’d done up until that point and a truly awesome bit of scenery at the end as we paddled into the entrance of a huge gorge under a Roman bridge.

By the time we got back to the campsite Emma’s car was making some concerning noises so the next morning a recovery van came and took it to a Toyota garage in Embrum who in testament to the work ethic that France is famous for, took only a week to fix it! So with only one vehicle we were forced to stay close to L’Argantier. Fortunately a bit of rain had picked the levels up so we hit the Onde followed by the Gyr. The Onde saw Kieran looking slightly concered for the first time despite having been paddling less than a year (not that concerned though) and the Gyr had swims for Ezra and Harry. Ezra’s boat had to be retrieved from a barrage and Harry’s came back full of stones but otherwise all was well. For a quick last run we did the Gyronde back to the campsite. Nothing happened that evening.

Saturday was a rest day which gave us a chance to recover from the events which did not happen the night before and sort out a hire car to replace Emma’s for a couple of days.

Sunday saw a return to boating but I can’t remember exactly what rivers we did. I think we did the Lower Guisane in the morning (Cat manned up) and quite a high Gyronde in the afternoon. The lower Guisane was made interesting by the nose of Sean’s boat almost completely falling off and the Gyronde caused Kieran ever so slightly more concern. The evening’s entertainment involved boat welding.

A return to the Guil the next day saw good water levels yet again. We ran the upper gorge again, this time with everyone getting on. Kieran at one point had an expression which looked border line scared, but this was probably just my imagination. After this we ran the lower section of the middle Guil from ‘le tunnel down’. This was pretty cool and we felt quite proud of ourselves until some crazy Germans turned up having paddle the whole of the Guil from Guardian Angel down and made us realize how futile and pathetic our paddling achievements really are.


Tuesday was Sean’s last day, so in celebration Sean, Ezra and I along with some strange people from Bath Uni, one of whom kept calling himself Dragon, went and did the Durance gorge. This sounds impressive but it was not. It was really low and not very hard at all but none the less a pretty cool place to be and a good day out. While we did this the rest of the group ran the Onde and some tree related incidents occurred. Cat also caused some poor unsuspecting boy from Newcastle to fall in love with her before cruelly breaking his heart. That evening we waved a teary goodbye to Sean and Dan sobbed pathetically all night.

On the last day the weather was crap but we soldiered on and went and ran the Briancon Gorge. Yet again it was low and smelled of poo but this time we made friends with a crane driver half way down which made it all worth wile. Callum and Arran had a swim each and were given a good shoe beering. By the time we’d had lunch everyone was too cold and wet to be arsed with another river so we went back to the campsite and stood in the shower until the rain stopped. That night we dismantled Cat and Emma’s mansion and they were sent to stay in Dan’s tent to make them realize what its like to sleep in a tent which does not cover a medium sized French parish.

The next morning saw most of our lives take a turn for the worse as we had to leave the Alps. Our journey home involved driving, some ferrying and fun games involving listing rivers which start with every letter of the alphabet. Emma, Gregor, Fraser and Dan stayed out for an extra couple of days before driving back in the car which had been speedily repaired by hard working, sober French mechanics. From what I’ve heard their journey involved, trespassing, nearly getting kidnapped and eaten by dogs, public drunkenness and Dan freaking people out in Paris by waving at them a lot.

It was a good trip.

Terrific Tummel

This trip was one with Ross Barnie and Kieran McAllister, both of whom have suffered a few trips with terrible weather recently, so it’s about time that we got a beauty of a day. With the sun quite literally beating down on us, the car was packed, and our course set for the Upper Tummel. On the drive up the side of Loch Tummel, we had a rather entertaining encounter with a herd of cows...though at one point I was worried about the safety of my wing mirrors.

Arriving at the Upper Tummel, Kieran and Ross both agreed that my proposed shorter run of the upper section as it cut out two kilometres of flat water for a single grade 3 river at the village of Tummel Bridge.

The Upper Tummel consists mostly of small and medium sized drops without anything too technical about them. The exception to this is a grade 4 rapid about half way down. Z-Bends is a two piece spectacle and has a tricky entry, a sharp right turn before encountering the main drop ending in a plunge pool that shoves you river left into a slightly undercut cliff face. Unfortunately, with only three people to work with, we decided to give it a miss and take the river right portage – the worst part about that decision is that I still haven’t paddled this section, and Ross has....urgh!

The last rapid that we took is a grade 3 sitting river left. This rapid, both gentle and fun, is a wonderful way to end the river, but bungling the walk back to a good filming point meant that I managed to fall into the rapid with my camera running. Bit of a fail to be honest.

Seeing workers at Clunie Dam, we decided to skip the easier sections of the Lower Tummel, instead getting on shortly above the first grade 4, S-Bends. Ross and Kieran jumped out to double-check the line on the rapid while I was running it. Nothing eventful happened here, though Ross’ line wasn’t as good as his previous one had been - considering how much better a paddler he is now, that's pretty bad. Kieran, despite a good initial line and an attempt at a bow rudder was shoved onto the rockface and spent some time trying to get out.

Next was the Linn of Tummel. This grade 4, two tier rapid is all about the entry - provided you make the right entry, you'll be fine; screw it up and you're on the rocks. Once again, I demonstrated the correct route, and much as last time annoyed Ross by making it look easy. When Kieran and I were set-up for some safety, Ross took to the river and, despite being utterly terrified, mostly styled it. The reason for this 'mostly' is a bit of a Burning Man pose that I missed at the time, and could have been problematic had his line not been almost perfect. Kieran, having had a great day and knowing we were likely to return two days later opted for the better part of valour, only tackling the drop without the worry of the run-in.

With our day complete, we paddled back in the blistering heat to the picnic site, where drinks and snacks awaited our successful return.

Low Low Lugar

A few weeks ago, I decided that I'd quite like to explore some new rivers, in the hopes of finding one that the canoe club doesn't do normally, but is in fact, a classic.

To that end, I compiled a list, and some of those rivers were looked at as possibilities for this trip: the Lugar; the Ayr, and the Middle Doon.

The guidebook says that if the get-on for the Lugar looks paddleable, the rest of the run will be too: this is a lie. If the get on looks runnable, the rest will be a scrape. I imagine that if there was more water around (if "Where's the Water" shows the Ayr as on high) then this might make a good trip. As it was, we often had more fun on the flat bits than on the rapids, as we had freedom to move.

The entry to the river was quite fun, with a sliding wier that everyone ran and enjoyed (and I think Stephan went back for seconds), unfortunately, this was the best we were going to get for quite a while.

Whilst I found the other rapids combersome, I had nowhere near the same issues as Peter, Stephan or Ross (though as their kayaks are either heavier, or more prone to pinning than my Mamba, even that doesn't say much). The river did provide two positives: Elspeth is now less afraid of river (I'm not going to call this white-water) paddling, and Peter has now had a swim-free river trip!

The last rapid on the river, even at this level, I'd say is worthy of a grade 3- rating, and would probably be 3+ if more water went through it.

At roughtly 8km long, that this river needs more water was a lesson learned the hard way, but in the end we had an enjoyable day, paddled a new river, and learned the merits of having a little more water in the area.

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

The Awesome Awe (yes, I know it's an overused joke)

It's been a while since I've been asked to lead a club trip, so it made for a nice change of pace, what I wasn't expecting was for my back-up to be someone I'd never paddled with before (in fact who had never paddled with the club) and Ross!

So first thing in the morning, we three (well, more Stephan and I), discussed where we should go: the Upper & Lower Orchy; the Nith; the Middle Etive (which I veto'd); the Lower Tummel... The list was a lot longer than I'd expected, but in the end, the Awe was the decision, and based on our day, it was the right one.

After loading up the boats, we set for the Awe, with the sun shining and the skies blue as far as the eye could see...until we arrived at the river when it began to rain and hail. Running the shuttle, Breffni and I got help from Alex and Haydn of Strathclyde Uni Canoe Club fame, which dramatically improved our return time.

Once we were on the river, the weather settled, and we headed down. With Ross doing safety for the first time, and with neither Stephan or I having paddled the Awe in nearly three years, we took it slow. There were times where we got out and inspected a rapid to make sure it did what we were expecting: sometimes we stayed there to indicate a line; sometimes we noted the line and went back; and at least once it was a false alarm entirely!

The first real rapid (I think it's called Magnetic Rock) was where most of the interesting stuff happened. Breffni and George both got tangled in some rocks, but wrestled their way out (George doing probably the strangest roll in history!), Peter found himself upsidedown on top of a rock, and flipped himself back up, only to capsize and start the swim count for the trip. Shona got a very good line through the rapid, much to our delight, and from this point onwards it was mostly plain sailing.

Everyone on the trip did well, and even tolerated the two races that I set up (which were actually disguised ferry glide training). George deserves a mention for his....interesting?....roll on one of the first rapids of the river. Breffni deserves one for trying to pick her own lines, Shona for going from two swims on her last trip to zero, and Peter gets one for putting a cone on SUCC's minibus. Oh, and thank you to Stephan and Ross for helping with safety.

All in all, a good trip.

yon trip

Sunday the 30th marked the first club trip of the year where we weren’t affected by ridiculously high water levels, instead, we had the exact opposite problem. Low levels meant a trip to the Upper Tummel, in a hope that the compensation release would provide with a bit of h2o induced fun.

[STANDARD CHAT ABOUT FAFF, PACKING THE BUS AND DRIVING]

Due to lower levels it gave some new paddlers the chance to lead the trip down the river. An improvised safety talk lacked the usual fear inducing quality that has become a staple aspect of previous ones; mainly due to the fact this one was done via interpretative dance. Harry was our leader for the day with Gregor assuming his usual role and driving from behind. The first few slides eased us into the day without any problems and we started the long scrape down the river, our only respite from this were the HUGE stretches of flat water now and again. The first test came at Z-falls, a gnarly, double drop rapid (rumour has it’s called Z-falls because Anton Immler’s left leg was in the shape of a Z last time he tried to run the rapid and swam).

Ben set up camera after the first drop and we all cautiously negotiated the first drop, safety standing idly by as we styled it one after the other. The second drop (more of a chute) was survived by most, apart from the cruel beating it imparted upon Euan R. Some say that it’s been so long since Euan swam he’s forgotten how to, and that last time he did actually swim he was plucked out the river by a Diplodocus. Other members of the group (Anthony) were so shocked this had happened they ploughed down the rapid to get a close look, almost landing on top of Euan – classic crazy, French guy! Everyone was back in there boats and we continued down the river until something of an equally amazing quality happened. Sean, only on his second river trip, went off a ledge, caught an edge and tipped in. His paddles popped out from under his boat and we all feared the worst. Yet with a hip flick Shakira would be proud of he rolled himself back up, so quick I question whether he actually got his hair wet.

The last slide provided no victims and everyone had a play around in the hole at the bottom of it. This resulted in two further swimming incidents, one from myself and Anthony chipping in with another. Both as equally gimpy as each other.

An enjoyable day was had by all, we made the best of the levels we had and Euan got to remember what it felt like to have to dry himself after a days kayaking, something he hasn’t had to do since they used the hides of a woolly mammoth to dry off.

fradizzle

Quite the day out

A few of us decided to go out for a paddle on Saturday which turned into a pretty eventful day which I feel should be recorded for posterity. It was such an eventful day that I’ll probably forget some of the events but I will try to remember the best ones.

We set off from Glasgow in the pissing rain with the intention of paddling the Ducharay water but as we got nearer and it kept raining and the roads were flooding we decided it’d be too high so changed our plans to go and paddle the Monachyle burn. Upon arrival we discovered that it was humping and flowing largely through a veritable arboretum so we ran away. The plan now changed to an intention to paddle the water of Ruchil. We got there to find it looked huge but probably paddleable so began heading up the Glen. The road was however covered with patches of thick ice with deep grooves cut into them where water had been flowing. This proved unfortunate as Ben got the wheels of his car stuck in the channels leading to him needing to be pushed and towed out. At this point we gave up ad decided to go and do the Knaik instead. (Oh, in between the Monochyle burn and the Ruchil the boats all fell off Ben’s roof).

The Knaik was also at a level which would have made Noah head off to B&Q in search off Gofer wood to construct an ark but we felt it was worth a shot. We were forced to abandon this plan by a large puddle which made shuttling impossible. Having more or less exhausted any other rivers in the Central Scotland section of the guidebook we went to the Allan Water which I am reliably informed never gets too big. We got on, paddled down to the first weir and got out to inspect. It looked munching but runnable. Chris, Mark and I ran it first and got on fine. Around the corner was apparently ‘nothing’, which is entirely accurate if ‘nothing’ is the new word for ‘big hole’. To my horror I spotted a group of baby seals getting worked in the hole so without a second thought for my own safety I threw myself into the midst of this churning maelstrom and began hurling the poor creatures from the hole to freedom. Chris joined me in this effort and together we saved them all. We were both forced to swim and I remained in the hole for a while longer while out of my boat and checked the river bed in detail for any Seal pups we had missed. Chris and I lost a boat each and I lost my paddles but it was worth it to save those adorable little creatures. Some would say we were heroes that day but I’d like to think that any other decent, seal loving person would have done the same thing.

Happy in the knowledge that the seal pups were safe Chris walked back up to his car and drove down to the bottom of the river in the hope of catching our kit while I walked the rest of the river to see if any had been caught up. The rest of the group paddled on. Further on down the run the river split into two channels where the flood water ran across a wooded field. The main channel was nice and clear with no trees, while the new channel was full of trees, Sean chose to paddle through the trees. This resulted in him swimming, his boat getting pinned and him being forced against a branch clinging on with his head just above water. Ben ran to his aid and the two of them shared an embrace so tender and poignant that it made the Lassie films look callous and unemotional, before Sean and his boat were pulled to safety.

Meanwhile at the get out, the police had taken an interest in goings on and had come over to have a chat with Chris, Harry and Gregor. Mid way through his description of the lost kit Chris spotted my boat floating past, dived into the river on live bait and began swimming after it but ran out of rope and the boat ran away, he was then pulled back into the bank where he continued his interview.

Due to the fact that the river was flowing so fast and eddies were few and far between those left on the river were having to get out and scout quite a long way ahead to find the next eddy. It was during one of these scouting trips that Ezra’s boat and paddles slid into the river and floated away never to be seen again (except by the sizeable crowd next to the weir in Bridge of Allan who seemed quite entertained by events). It is important to note that no one at all finds this funny.

That night I spent the evening trying to impress girls with tales of my heroic seal rescuing. It did not work.

Freshers' trips Part 1

On the first weekend of term we had two consecutive beginners' trips. In a break with tradition both days were nice and sunny and we didn't give anyone hypothermia. We are very pleased with our neew recruits so far, they seem to have a high standerd of chat and everyone seemed dead keen out on the river.

Saturday: Lower orchy and Awe

Two river days on freshers' trips are practically unheard of, but this was one. We began with the lower orchy which gave us plenty of opportunity to go through breaking in and out, ferry gliding and facial injury (amber's nose got a bit friendly with a sharp rock). After this we headed off and had a quick (interupted by many swims and Chris going hypo) blast down the awe. Swim total: 16

Sunday: Teith

The Teith is shit

Dragon Weekend
As part of a long held annual Gucc tradition (started last year), we had a nice little trip to Wales for a paddle at the National white water centre, Canolfan Tryweryn. Unfortunately it would seem that the environment agency think that stopping people’s houses getting flooded and making sure they have water to drink is more important than kayaking so there was no dam release on the Tryweryn on Sunday and we had to paddle the Dee.

Anyway the minibus left Glasgow on Friday at some point and began the very long drive south, I was not on it as I was already in Wales, which was good as six hour bus trips are shit. The bus arrived at a campsite which had already told us we weren’t welcome but then let us in anyway because they were nice, not like the bastards at Ty’n Cornel campsite last year. On Saturday morning we arrived at Canolfan Tryweryn to find they have introduced parking charges, an outrage. A few of us, along with some pikey from Bath uni, had a quick blast down the top section before meeting up with everyone else to paddle the section from the centre down to Bala. This is a very nice little jaunt mainly grade two with the odd grade three most of the way down. We only had one swim, which is so unusual on club trips as to be almost spooky. At the end of this section is Bala Mill falls, a nice (only just) grade four. Only Louise was man enough to paddle the leet at this point with everyone else taking the easy option of running the falls. Louise did well making up for her swim at this point last year and everyone survived despite Fraser almost running it upside down.

In the afternoon everyone got on and ran the international section, a fun and short 3+/4-. No swims occurred and all was well, we even survived the rafts. After a walk back up to run it again we headed back to the campsite and then out to sample the nightlife of Bala. The night life of Bala was so good that we were back at the campsite by 10p.m.

On Sunday we drove over to Llangollen to paddle the Dee. They charge you to paddle the Dee, which is a joke and makes me ashamed to be Welsh. We got on above Serpent’s Tail where we had the odd swimmer but nothing major before heading on down to have a play at the slalom site by the old mill. The river didn’t really have all that much water in it but it was fun enough. After this everyone else had a really long drive home, I didn’t.

An Alpine Adventure: 2010

An 11am meeting at the main shed saw Glasgow University Canoe Club set out for our annual trip to the French Alps ahead of time. A horribly long drive, with as few rest breaks as possible, saw us arrive in l’Argentier la Bessée late in the evening. Quickly pitching our tents, we headed for our reward: our first proper meal in France.

In the morning, we faffed around a bit, moving tents and generally recovering from the journey down, before heading to the Lower Durance and paddling the Sunshine Run as our first river. As ever, the first run of the holidays claimed a paddler: Emma. After some lunch we returned to the campsite, and a few brave souls descended on the slalom course…soon to be chasing Fraser’s vacant kayak down it. Just as we were having dinner, the lucky sods that’d gotten to fly across arrived.

Day two saw us return to the Sunshine run, this time it was Michael who ended up swimming, as he and TomTom collided while surfing. This one was unpleasant as he ended up having to jump back in the river to reach where his boat had drifted to. The Upper Guisane was next on our hit-list of rivers, and it proved great fun! Running significantly higher than normal, it presented a manageable challenge for the Alpine virgins in the group. Arriving at S-bends (the one named rapid on the river), there was an increased sense of trepidation than normal, and our group (Alpha Squad) had bank support set up as a precaution. Seeing the steps being taken, Emma opted for the better part of valour, and walked round the rapid. Everyone in Alpha Squad got down successfully, with Bravo Squad close on our tail. They all got down the rapid alright, but some instructional confusion caused Harry to capsize and swim, while Sean’s over-zealousness to rescue him saw him drift into a tree, jam his paddles in said tree, capsize and swim clear, followed by some of his outfitting. Seeing the carnage unfolding here, TomTom and Mike stayed behind to assist in the clean-up. Everything was tidied up in short order, and we continued down the river, arriving rather abruptly at the weir, which sucked Emma back in and capsized her…only for her to manage her first ever river roll! Tom’s cheering, along with Emma’s beaming smile at this turn of events, lasted the remaining stretch of river.

Following the success of the previous day, Ben decided that we should try and get three rivers done in one day. To this end, we headed to the Gyronde (in the hopes of paddling the Gyr and the Onde afterwards). This did not happen. Within a few hundred metres of the get-on Amy capsized and swam. While attempting to get across to the eddy I had slid into, Emma capsized, and despite another successful roll, she capsized again and swam. Just after being sent up to get the bus keys and stop the other group from getting on the river, I saw something else bobbing past: Fraser’s airbag…closely followed by Gregor’s kayak. Eventually everyone was located and collected, and most of the kayaks pinned in places where they could be retrieved on a second run of the river – but Amy’s kayak had drifted past me half-an-hour earlier. Upon returning to the camp-site, and confirming Edinburgh Uni had seen it go past, Mike, Harry and I jumped in the minibus to retrieve it before it went into the lake at the bottom of the valley. Mike’s freakishly good eyesight spotted it pinned on some rocks only a few kilometres below the slalom course, and after some near-off-road driving and some ninja-rope tricks, we were driving back, victorious, with Amy’s kayak. A major welding session took place that evening, with Fraser and Amy both repairing their kayaks, and Gregor popping a dent out of the nose of his. In fact, despite the sheer level of carnage, the only casualty was Fraser’s airbag and left shoe!

After this day of carnage, another three-river day was planned: this time the Middle Clarée, Lower Clarée and the Onde. This was scuppered pretty quickly, as the Middle Clarée put off all but two of those allowed to get on. The Lower Clarée proved to be a nice warm-up river for Cat who had arrived the previous evening. Cat and I had been on this river once before, and remembered it being a twelve kilometre long drift, and though this time it was easy, it wasn’t quite that easy. At the end, discussions were had about where to go, and it was decided to return to the slalom course and do training. When we arrived, it started to rain, so rather than getting on the river, we decided to play volleyball. This was great fun, until a block by Sean caused Fraser to fall hard, leading to a hospital trip and some bad news: he’d broken his foot.

With the water levels dropping slightly, we realised that the Brianҫon Gorge. Arriving there, and seeing the cacophony of water ploughing through the barrage, only a few brave souls decided to take on the challenge. A successful, no-swim run, and we decided to head back to the Upper Guisane, where Emma’s weir stuck again; this time causing her to swim. Still having time left for a short river, the convoy made its way to the Onde, onto which only seven of the group got on, two rolls and a swim halfway down encouraged two of them to get off. This tightly packed day left everyone shattered, so we had our meal out. We went to Guillestre, to a small restaurant called Chez Antoine, and the meal was amazing!

The following day was our rest day, which normally means only one thing: go karting! Unfortunately, as this was not a weekend, this was not an option. In the morning, Tom Jenkins decided that he didn’t want a rest day, he wanted more kayaking, so set off with Leeds to do the Lower Clarée and the Gyronde. In exchange, we got Mike, who had battered his head on some inconspicuous section of the Upper Guisane the previous day. Since go-karting proved to be an impossibility, we headed to Brianҫon to explore the castle…though this proved to be on too much of an incline to be practical for Fraser. Ben and Sean organised a barbeque for the evening, with one part of it being used more as projectiles and stink bombs than as food. Anthony arrived late at night, completing the group.

For our seventh day, and as a post-night-out paddle, we headed on what could only be classed as a mini expedition, paddling the Lower Guil and Lower Durance (23 kilometres worth of river) in one go. We headed back to the camp-site to watch the slope jam, only to discover that it had been postponed due to high water. Instead we played Leeds University at volleyball, and despite our previous efforts in hospitalising our good players, schooled them.

No two days of kayaking can be productive, so we spent forever messing about the next morning, before finally making our way to the Upper Guisane. Only the section to S-bends was paddled before Anthony swum, going down most of the daunting rapid out with the protective cocoon of his kayak, catching the whole thing on head-cam. So that was hospital trip #2 – though at least it only led to some pain killers. This was also the evening of the Boat-o-cross, for which we had three entries: TomTom and Mike in the Intermediate Mens, and Amy in the Intermediate Womens. TomTom could have won his race, if not for an unfortunate eddy-line capsize, followed by an even more unfortunate encounter with a rock (which led to hospital trip #3 and another set of crutches!), while Mike and Amy each finished about half-way up the field. Undeterred, Mike then went on to win the Inflate-o-cross, celebrating by revealing nearly all in a mankini. A poorly thought out party spoiled the atmosphere generated by the event, but pizza from the usual hut made up for it.

The following morning, a number of people were suffering from hangovers, but we managed to set off at a reasonable time for the Guil. The ‘Cripple Car’ went to hospital for TomTom, while the other car and minibus went to run some rivers new to (nearly) everyone present. This proved to be an absolutely excellent day, as the first river (Upper Upper Guil) was a pleasant bimble, while the Upper Guil contained a somewhat more manly gorge. After the kayaking, we headed back to watch the Slope-Jam on the Fournel, but arrived just after it finished due to lack of confidence driving along a seemingly endless road up a mountains face!

Our final day of boating was definitely the grand finale that the group had longed: starting with a successful return to the Gyronde, and concluding with a hardcore run of an impressively high Gyr (with a fourth ‘red herring’ hospital trip thrown in for good measure).

Number of rivers paddled: 18
Number of swims: 14
Miles travelled: 3096

Paddling with the Dark Side

This was mainly a Strathclyde Uni trip but Paul Walker and I were allowed to tag along for a paddle and Louise and Alison were recruited as wielders of photographic equiptment. We set off for the Moriston in the Walker mobile and the drive was long, fortunately I discovered The Pigeon Detectives on Louise’s ipod and it turns out that they are awesome. Our car arrived about half an hour before everyone else due to our superior ffaff busting abilities which gave us a chance to check out the river and for me to become progressively more terrified. By the time we finally got on the river I was whimpering like a little girl and had lost pretty much all man points.

The top drop is usually pretty eventful and so it proved for us. I had a roll at the bottom after a fairly unimpressive line, Gordon remodeled the nose of his burn, Chris had a swim for which I think he could fairly claim a deck pop as a contributing factor if he wanted and I think someone else had a swim? Paul Walker however took arguably the line of the day, grinding perfectly down the left hand slab. The near beating he had at the bottom detracted somewhat but all in all a top notch piece of paddling.

After this there are a few rapidy things before the next main drop. As long as you get some sort of boof off this drop you’re fine, apparently if you do not you spend quite a long time in the bottom of it. Everyone was fine on it, maybe a roll or two but nothing major. Form here the next rapid has two options, go left of go right. Some went left, others went right, all were fine. The river then flows through a narrow bouncy channel and it is here that Gordon swam again and broke his very shiny, very expensive helmet. The top section ends with a pretty big ramp down into a wave/hole and out into flat water, it was good.

Paul decided he’d had enough at this point but the rest of us walked back up for another run. I can’t really be arsed to write out the whole run again, but by far the most noteworthy event came on the second drop. Steve decided to drop off it doing a Demshitz style bear claw with his hand. This caused him to capsize and swim and his boat to get very pinned on a rock. We sent Steve out to get a line on his boat, which looked painful but then again it was his fault. After a bit of a play around with prusik loops and a Z pulley we got the boat free. This was all captured on film, which I imagine would be quite embarrassing.

After finishing the run we drove down to run the lower section of the river. I was not going to get on until Dave Martin told me to man up, which I’m very glad he did. The top drop has a very manly left hand line or alternatively an easier set of little drops down the right. Most of the group took the right, I chickened out and got on below (I’m really not sure why because it really isn’t a very difficult run but there we are). After this is a rapid called the gutter which is quite frankly brilliant, it’s a really long steep rock slide with a hole half way down which flushes through nicely. I ran the second half of it backwards and Haydn had a bit of a gimpy swim at the bottom but otherwise all was well. The last two rapids are a bit more continuous than the others on the river but pretty straight forward as long as you have enough speed hitting the holes which are at the bottom of both.

After walking back up to the cars and loading boats we got The Pigeon Detectives back on the iPod and headed for Glasgow. We arrived back at about one o clock in the morning feeling absolutely buggered.

Photos and possible video to follow.

BUCS Canoe Polo

Gin, cider, sunshine, polo balls and cowboys and indians.....

We left Glasgow on firday night in a classic GUCC rush with just Cat and myself trying to pack everything onto the newly renovated mini bus roof rack.

After picking up cath and booze then Ali, Ali and Brian in Lockerbie we were off.
5 hours after leaving the shed we arrived in darkest doncaster pumping the tunes on the ipod and were greeted by Robbie from Scumdee who had saved us some camping space, which was good as it was past midnight by the time we and rachel arrived and we got tents up and cracked open our first cans of cider.

We made it a sensible night and went to 'tent' before 1am 'super excited' for our first game at 7.20 am. (Which is just one reason why Sus is far better than bucs!)

Getting up in the morning was not good. Who ever suggested playing polo at stupid oclock in the morning outside in the freezing cold was a moron.

However finaly all the team of fab GUCC Ladies were on the water having our first rather sleepy pep talk from Brian who had come along as our Ref/coach/pink panther.

First game was against st andrews so in true Sus style we spanked them 6-0


Bacon rolls were our well deserved prize and we were back on the water again as the sun came out mid morning to play Cardiff. Another stunning game and we beat them 3-0.

We might have gotten a we bit cocky after that as we decided that a lunch time booze run and a quick pre match G&T was a good idea, which may have aided us in us loosing our next 2 matches to Birmingham 1-2 and then lancaster 2-3.

On a possitive note, we played pretty well and all enjoyed having a diffiult match for once.

Thinking we were done for the night we started planning showers and drinking when brian told us we had another sodding match at 7.pm. 12 hours of polo is really pushing it but we manned up and beat manchester 3-0. We were far too nice to them and didn't push them in cos none of them could even T-rescue properly. Shame really :P


Fiiiinnnaly we lined up for our free dinner. This was a big mistake. Total crap, not worth even writting about, but we got takeaway pizza with Dundee which fixed all grumpy hungry people :)

To celebrate the beautiful sunny day and our 3 wins we got dressed up and headed out to the amazing tent of Dj "One more Tune". Despite the crap music, crap D.j and hilarious dancing we had an awesome night. Some brilliant moves were busted, a lot of gin was drunk and our GUCC pants got a well earned outing :)

On sunday we were treated to a lie in and had our first match at 11 when the rain had just stopped and the sun come out to cheer us on. We were playing Bristol to decide 7th and 8th place and after a bit of an "I'm about to vomit in the lake" warm up we played them and beat them 2-1 in one of our best played matches of the tournement. The horrific hangovers obviously didn't damage our performace, confirming my age old theory that if your not playing polo drunk or hungover then you are doing something badly wrong!

We hung about after our match and supported dundee who had been our adopted boys for the weekend and ex member Charlies team from London who ended up wining the b team competition.

After a final Girly portirait we got on the bus for the long drive home. The rain kindly washed all the sand off the polo boats for us as we drove up north and gave us one less job to do back at the shed. We stopped for a gourmet MacDonalds in Penrith just to add to the healthyness of the entire weekend. We crossed the border with Caledonia pumping out the speakers and Brian looking happier than he had all weekend to be back in the promised lands.

After dumping all the kit in the shed and hanging it all up neatly where it belongs. (as everyone should do :P) we headed home. Waking up with a very husky voice on monday i don't think i was the only one having trouble getting out of bed for uni.

Frigging awesome weekend tho!
Thanks to Ali Dicker for coming along and joining the team, and Brian for being our Ref and to the one and only bus driver Miss Catriona Dykes for her heroic effort to get us home before midnight. :)

As many folk as possible should come along next year. Wil be banter :)

Amy
xxx

A Tale of Two Halves

Canoe Club trips are (almost by definition) going to have delays. These are accepted by all organisers as an inevitable event – but this trip is going to put all others to shame with the insane vastness of hold-ups caused!

8:30am, nothing but a concept to many, and I (Paul) was still waiting outside Euan R’s flat while he searched for a phantom karabiner, when who should text but the fourth person in our party: Mark Mulrain could no longer come. When Euan finally arrived, having given up his search, we discussed this ‘man-down’ problem, and I suggested we invite Ben. Always up for kayaking, even given only moments notice, Ben agreed. This was going to work out after-all, but Euan then remembered his keys were still in the Stevie…so we went there, only to discover it was locked until 10:00am. This was getting us no-where, so we stopped off at Ben’s flat, collected his keys, then finally collected Fraser (who ironically had actually arrived on time), and headed to the shed to pack. This was done at break-neck pace, Ben was collected, a food stop was had, and we were still out of Glasgow before 10am…good job!!

A long banterous journey, with Ben doing everything he could do to ruin the music stored on Frasers iPod, and Euan trying his hardest to gross the car out, saw us arrive at the get on for the North Esk.

And it was here, at the get-on, where the first beating of the trip happened: when it was discovered that Mr Richardson hadn’t packed spraydecks for him or Ben.

It was eventually, after a long arduous debate that would put even Tolkein to shame, decided that Euan and I would run the river first, with Ben and Fraser running down the bank, and then we would swap over, and they’d get on the river at whatever point dwindling daylight would allow.

Thus began our tale of two halves.

Euan and I had a rather uneventful trip down to Rocks of Solitude, where Euan decided that Gregor’s “Hero line” from previous weeks was the way to do it…unfortunately no beating followed this mess-up. My (somewhat less planned) line worked surprisingly well, and we continued our fun, yet simple paddle down to the get-out at the Fish Ladder.

The second half of the tale consisted of me (Fraser - note the change in author) and Ben’s fantastic descent of the river. Nothing of any note occurred until we reached Rocks of Solitude, bar the fact that Paul Walker’s deck is tighter than Scrooge and needs the super human powers of at least 2 people to fit on which materially contributed to our impressive amounts of faff.

First real rapid up and our Steve Fisher style “fully trained safety crew” were in position for a heavily anticipated swim from Ben. Alas it did not occur and therefore it was my turn to navigate this grade 6++ rapid. After fitting the deck that must have been designed to fit round a yoghurt tub, not the cockpit of an H3 (or the Mamba for which it was bought), I embarked on this terrifying run. With huge amounts of style and grace/luck and clumsiness I survived all the drops until being cruelly sucked back in by the bottom hole after a short battle/teasing from the river. Unfortunately for Mr Jenkins I must inform him I did not receive a beating, no matter how much it may have been deserved. After being flushed, a spectacular roll attempt/“quack” and a hero dive from Euan I once again decided to bail, gimpy I know. The worst part of this swim meant having to stretch what was basically a swimming cap over the cockpit of my boat, again.

Fraser on Rocks of Solitude

After experiencing the freezing cold water you would think I would be less likely to want to return to it, yet after watching Ben run the infamous President’s corner I decided to come out the eddy and fall over. That was it, no brace, no reason to fall over. (If you are intrigued to find out more about this ridiculous capsize, Mr Walker has attached below the video he took from his newly acquired iPhone – I can think of better ways to spend the money....) Running this rapid on my head resulted in not much really, apart from a knock on the head...my own stupid fault really.

The Infamous Stupidity....

Finally what could be regarded as the most spectacular event of the trip occurred and caused my final swim, although I shall regard as a “technical”. There has been much speculation as to what occurred here but for once and for all I shall lay the matter to rest. Paddling along I heard the cry of baby, looking up I saw it tumbling through the sky. Doing what any self respecting boater would do I reached out and grabbed the baby, moments before a certain death. In doing so I slightly unbalanced myself and due to other imbalances (such as my helmet being squint etc.) I was unable to overcome this and I fell under once again. I held the baby above the surface of the perishingly cold water and then pulled my deck so I could reunite baby with the adoring mother on the riverbank. This all occurred before Ben turned around to see me swimmingly along, this is the truth. Paul’s reaction to this amazingly heroic story was “What was the baby called?”....pillock. We then floated down to the get out at Fish-ladder falls.

Euan descending the final rapid

Our tale of two halves complete, we decided to reward ourselves for our kayaking efforts by heading to McDonalds on the route home…meaning Fraser (yep, it's Paul writing again) and Ben had been there twice in two days, the fat b****rds.

All-in-all, an excellent day and an excellent river, but next time we should probably take the spraydecks.

Tip Top Tummel

The Tummel is one of our clubs most paddled rivers, so I was enthused when I heard that instead of heading to the normal section (the Lower Tummel), we were headed to the Upper Tummel, a section which neither myself, nor most of those on the trip, had ever done.

A surprisingly quick boat loading session (where Ben decided he was leading the river in a play-boat), a slightly mutinous food and music stop, and a pause for a cry of utter dismay when we saw that Loch Tummel was frozen over were our only delays before arriving at a PWL Upper Tummel.

Here we had a first, as Marissa managed to successfully swim before the start of the trip...ominous, considering the recent spate of high carnage trips.

Yet things held together well, with many little drops and chutes leading us down towards one of two notable rapids on the river: Z-bends. This nasty rapid seemed to be in a good mood however, with only two swims, both noteworthy. Anthony’s for his refusal to be beaten by it, returning to style the rapid, and Fraser for the unfortunate way in which he was caught out: despite landing upright, he failed to paddle away quickly enough from the hole at the bottom and was summarily capsized.

This lovely, scenic and bitterly cold river carried on with its shallow rapids for some time before we saw the horizon line to flat water marking the end of our trip.

The last rapids were...interesting. The gradient increased greatly, causing difficulty for Bex, Marissa and Dan as this was either their first river trip, or their first in many years. Bex unfortunately caught a rock, capsizing and hitting her head (though avoiding a swim). As those who had already run the rapid checked to make sure she was OK, Fraser paddled down...and also capsized, though his led to a swim. Now it was my turn to jump on the ‘safety’ bandwagon as I went and rescued Fraser, boat and paddles before they all ran the last (and best and biggest) chute on the river.

Finally, order was restored, and it was time to tackle the final rapid. This is possibly the most fun water slide I have done in a long time!! Unfortunately, here, after all the rapids had been paddled, and the trip was pretty much over, Marissa decided to round off her day as it had begun: with a swim. Bex and Dan joined her as they successfully ran and in succession swam at the chute, joining the ranks of the days swimmers after all the rapids had ended.

A short climb revealed the minibus, and a headcount proved we hadn’t lost anyone. Only eight swims, and we were off the river before five!!!

Whoever said PWL rivers are a bad thing?

Paul

Love is in the North Esk

In an attempt to make up for my pathetic level of singleness on Valentine’s Day I organized a trip to the North Esk, which is a very long way from Glasgow. We left at seven thirty which is a very painful time of day if you have been in the Hilton getting poor until three o clock that morning. We made good time despite the inability of the club to have a trip which does not involve stopping to pick up food on the way and managed to meet up with various parties who were meeting us at the river. Having got on the river we found even more people to paddle with and I still have no idea who they were.

The river starts off fairly shallow and rocky with a few little grade 2/3 things on it and we had relatively few swims, most of which were my fault. On one occasion I got in Suzan’s way and pushed her in and on another I gave the instruction ‘Go right of the rock’ without specifying which rock (seemed pretty obvious to me but Ally’s using it as an excuse for a swim). There were a couple of other swims on this section which were not directly my fault but they’re not really that interesting.




After a while the river flows into a very sexy gorge which is where most of the swims took place. I caused one of these again by getting in Ross’s way and pushing him in, and because he had no air bags in his boat took quite a while to get rescued. After a couple more swims Ross started to look a bit hypothermic so we fed him chocolate and gave him some man hugging which warmed him up a bit. Swims from pretty much everyone else also helped add to the fun of the day. Probably the best rapid in the gorge is Rocks of Solitude/Triple step (depends which guide you read) and is a fairly tricky grade 4 with two small stoppers leading into quite a big stopper. Chris went first and absolutely styled it in a playboat which made me very excited. I don’t think everyone else appreciated just how well he’d run it so looked a little puzzled by my excited wooping. Others were less successful with quite a lot o backloops and quite a lot of swims.








Gregor’s line was noteworthy as it was rubbish, however he got through it the right way up.

Just after Rocks of solitude is a little constriction where everyone felt the need to paddle into a wall so we had five swims here. After this there are a couple more small drops where we had yet more swims before the gorge opens out into a shallow rocky river again with the only real feature being Fish Ladder falls which is one of those rapids which is fine if you get the line but looks pretty painful if you don’t. Chris ran this blind, Euan and I chose to inspect before running it and everyone else decided not to do it, probably put off by the horror stories of Amy swimming down it the last time the club had a trip to the North Esk.

At this point the fading light forced us to give up on paddling and walk back to the bus, an event which is becoming commonplace on club trips it would seem. Upon arrival at the bus we discovered that Aberdeen had written ‘AUCC rule’ on it which is both unimaginative and as we know from SUS untrue. On the way to pick up the cars from the get in, Ally ate my cereal bars, this is unacceptable and he will not be allocated a space on any future trips.


- Chris Bell with his love rock.

I should also note that not all swims are listed here in detail so here is a rough estimate of who swam:
Fraser: 4
Suzan: 2
Ally: 2
Gregor: 1
Harry: 1
Ross: 6
Gregor’s friend Jen: 2
Gregor’s friend Neil: 1
Random old guy in a spud: 8
Random guy with Sweet Rocker: 6