Paddling with the kids,
The adventure continues, one group leaves another shows up, the group dynamics change again. Some for the better some for the worse, but always entertaining. My latest adventure to the Florian and Gol Gol was with a extremely young group of paddlers. The group consisted of Kyle Hull age 20, Jake Greenbaum age 21, Steven Forester age 18, and my self Chirs Baer at age 31. With a big age and experience difference you know there is going to be some major differences in group dynamics. With as much deference as there was, we have in common something much more important, we are all good paddlers, and we were going to tackle some great rivers.
We rented another truck this time from Rodrigo Tuschner, (Rodrigo is the active partner and face of Kayak Pucon). The fact that we just rented a kayak vehicle made me a little nervous (kayakers aren't known for there meticulous vehicles). My suspicious about the vehicle were confirmed immediately when the rest of the team brought the truck over to the coffee house. The first things the crew said was that Rodrigo said "don't be going over 90k, and check the oil, don't ruin my shit".
So the journey began all four of us pilled in the truck and rallied at 90 kph for, four hours. We stopped for gas and the truck didn't start after we filled it. So, we simply push started the truck again and were on our way. Once we got to the Florian, I strategically parked the truck so we could easily roll start it down a good sized hill.
Once at the Florian we started our hike in, crossed the bridge and put on. This time on the Florian the gauge was reading 45 cm. This is 10 cm less water then last time we where at the Florian. Immediately I knew that the 50 footer was going to kick a little more, and the double drop might be runnable. We headed into the canyon and ran the first fun drop, everyone had smooth lines.
Jake in the first rapid
Steven boofing through the first rapid
Then as we were headed through some in-between class 4+ Kyle got pinned, pinned bad. His whole boat was under water, I was only feet away but unable to help. I had immediate thoughts of bad accidents I had been around before, but Kyle was wasting no time. Kyle was fighting hard, pushing off of rocks squirming around, and plan old "giviner hell". Quickly the water surged the boat shifted and the water was curtaining right over Kyle's head. It was at this point Kyle finally decided to get out of his boat. Kyle was very calm and precise about his movements. He got his knees up, and in one motion stood up in his cockpit and jumped into the pool below. A few minutes later Kyle was able to reach into the drop and unpin his boat. Once again we were on our way.
Kyle and his nasty pin rapid
The next drop is the double drop that we portaged the last time I was in the canyon. This time it was looking a little less scary and one by one we decided to hire it up. There was a myriad of lines from Jake's far left, to my far right, Kyle's underwater, and Steven's over rotating. Everyone was treated to a different experience, and everyone was ex-static to run a truly difficult rapid.
Jake slipping into the mealy
Kyle boofing the 20 ft exit drop
Steven over rotating off the bottom 20
Next rapid up is a fun 20 ft slide everyone just bombed down and that brought us to the 50 footer. Like I had said in a previous article, this 50 footer is not clean. There are flakes of rock the whole way down the drop looking to grab your boat, and flip, tip, or just slam you around. The group was solid, everyone came over the lip and road the drop "proud" (sitting tall in your boat and anticipating, the unexpected).
Riding proud gives you the best chance of correcting what ever those flakes in the drop decide to do to you, this time. Everyone dealt with thee bounces and had relatively smooth lines with low impacts at the bottom. From the base of the 50 footer it is just another couple hundred feet to the take out.
Kyle at the lip of the 50 footer
Steven in the depths riding proud
The take out trail SUCKS, it is at a 70 degree pitch, is all loose mud and rock, and covered in bamboo shoots that get tangled in every thing. Once on top of the ridge we tried a different technique to get back to the truck. We hiked river right up a old road to the bridge we put in on, across the bridge and back down to the truck. This route is definitely the better option. With this less brutal hiking option, my overall rating of this run has now been greatly improved. So if you are looking for a park and hike and stout hucking and then a decent hike back this is actually a damn good run.
Please remember there are hot-springs at the put in, they cost a little money and be nice to the land owner, the access here could easily be taken away.
p.s.
After the Florian the truck started and we went to another park and huck. The water was too high and we tried to leave, this time the truck didn't start. We tried push starting it, and we tried again, and again, and we had pushed the car the better part of a mile. During this process I popped the hood and found one of the positive leads had come loose, with trusty multi tool and gorilla tape in hand I got the lead jimmied back on. The truck still didn't start. Finally a guy gave us a hand by towing the truck, and after two minutes with the clutch out if finally fired up.
Our truck broken down in the middle of the road
We where on our way again, this time to the Gol Gol, as we drove it got late, and started raining. We were approaching the Gol Gol, at two in the morning, and it became apparently clear we needed sleep. I started starring out the window and then I saw it, a little covered bus stop with just enough room for two of us to sleep under. We slept in the stinky wet and slug infested bus stop, for a few hours and then headed to the Gol Gol. When we arrived at the Gol Gol, we were tired, hungry, and putting on soaking wet gear. We were about to have a great day.
Chris Baer hungry, homeless and happy in Chile.
So its still been snowy, icy, and cold down here in WNC which has made for some good snowboarding and chilly kayaking, however it has been some good kayaking. Been out to the Nantahala Cascades , North Fork of the French Broad, Yellow Creek again, and Scotts Creek. Also we discovered North Fork Creek which looks like it would take a lot of rain, has tons of sketchy undercut drops, however they are some really cool looking sketchy drops. As per Scotts Creek its logged and trashed out like crazy and I had to do a dry land "swim" onto a log, however it was pretty entertaining and I am fine as is everyone else who was there. So now we have two summer projects Scotts Creek and Yellow Creek for some clean up. As per North Fork of the French Broad we had a good day at a nice level and I got a bit trashed in a hole but rode it out so it was a good time, and as per all the boatertalk posts saying there is wood in the way at the time of our trip none of the wood was in play. The pictures are actually from the top and bottom of the drop known as Submarine on the North Fork of the French Broad. IN MORE RECENT NEWS CHEOAH IS RUNNING THIS WEEKEND AND LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING PEOPLE THERE! However I will end with some pictures from my exploits. Stay safe and congrats to Shannon Bahrke on the Bronze rocking the helmet! Thanks WRSI, Peace Paul
trying to beat the storm, SURE!!! with the help of our loyal Dolphin and our great ice pilot, joel we made it safely to phoenix where good beer, friends and the mexican market set us up for the country of the "topes" (bumps), Mexico. Down thru Nogales and all the way to Mazatlan things weren't all that exciting, although the places where we slept were definitely better than any 5 star hotel you can put us in. As soon as we left Mazatlan we got onto the most amazing road I've seen so far. Steep cliffs right off the road made the landscape even greater. At times it felt as if the Dolphin all of the sudden got wings and we were suspended a couple of thousand feet up in the air, but the feeling only would last until the next dangerous turn (there's a reason they call the road the "spine of the devil"). To do this couple hundred km of sierras took a whole day and one of the main reasons for it was the amount of accidents. one of the most impressive accidents we saw was a semi that had rolled over.
The roof of the trailer came off and some how the merchandise, shortly after the incident, was "gone." We drove thru some beautiful cities until we got to Ciudad Valles. Here we ran our first river, a very short section call Cascadas de Micos, and couple of days latter a Argentine named Che from Fede's home town brought us to the rio Tampaon. After some 
The very next morning, as Fede is working on getting some charge to the battery a very short guy call Sergio show up at the dolphin saying he was... THE MECHANIC! We manage to get the car to his shop after got lose and ran out of battery. The shop had a tool box smaller than ours, but with his three tools Sergio manage to get the alternator out and found the bad part. The best came when Fede ask him if he could accompany him to buy the parts, his answer was almost not surprising, "Not a problem, lets go catch the bus." They rode the bus for about 20 minutes until they got to the city where we would find the parts. After one and a half hrs of walking and riding buses looking for the parts they decided to buy a new alternator and head back. This was the day Fede got sick but so much work made him forget about it. About a half hr of amusing drama went on around the dolphin, first Sergio trying to fit the alternator, then a neighbor, than a friend, even a little kid came over to try to figure out the dilemma. finally Fede with almost less than a clue got underneath of the car an got it on. then Sergio though the belt adjustor screw wasn't going to be necessary, but we got that on to.
definitely, one of our highlights of the trip. Spent christmas eve somewhere in the mountains next to a corn field and on christmas day rode into Guatemala. That night we got lose once again after the dolphin got altitude sickness and made us push it up a hill, barley made it to a camp. we woke up to the sound of the indigenous riding donkies right by camp from where we could view a maya village and behind it an imposing volcano. We're here in guatemala, in the half-gringo town of Antigua eating bagels, and we'll be heading southeast, continuing through central america.