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