High Water on the Mawddach, North Wales

With another wet weekend forecast I drove up to North Wales. Despite the torrential rain on the drive up levels were pretty low on Saturday. We got a few runs of the Tryweryn in and crossed our fingers for better levels on Sunday.

River levels were still low on Sunday morning but thankfully it was raining and things were rising fast. By the time we got to the Fairy Glen the Conwy was massive. We drove to the Mawddach instead and had a wonderful day with plenty of water. It was the first time I paddled it with only 1 portage (Rhaeadr Mawddach). An easy line over the rocks on the right opened up on the second main drop but was still exciting and I found It hard to put out of my mind the evil rock formations now covered in a torrent of water.

Mapledurham Weir

With all the rain that has plagued the UK in last few months, at least one group of people are happy. With epic levels on the Thames most weirs were washed out but I managed a rare surf on Mapledurham weir. It did involve paddling across a field to get to the river but once I was there it was brilliant.

If you haven't been to Mapledurham I definitely recommend it. It's a really easy wave with a big flat pool behind it, and best of all, it doesn't have the queues of the more popular weirs like Hurley. Don't go though unless everything else is too high.

I don't usually make playboating videos, I find them repetative, but I have just got a new laptop and was keen to try out the new video editing software.

Into the Unknown - First Descent of the Sandrananta

The Team, preparing for the first descent of the Sandrananta

As we had come to expect, getting off the water we were once again immersed in faff.  Our guide who met us at the get out with the bus informed us that we were late and the plan would have to change.  With only a week until our flights we could only do a rafted section of relatively easy white water.  After a very long argument he agreed to take us to our contact in a town four hours away, with whom we would stay the night, and so began the long drive.

Packing our boats for the next adventure.

As usual, the four hour estimate was optimistic.  When we reached the town it was clear that our contact wasn’t there and we didn’t have a key so we hung around for too long while our guide shouted at the house hoping that someone would appear.  Frustration finally got the better of us and we checked in to a hotel for the night without him to give us some space to reassess the situation.  That night we managed to get some signal to tell our guide we would need a 4x4 to pick us up in the morning.  We drank too much of the local beer, wine and cocktails and we Conga’d like Madagascar had never seen before, and that night we went to bed a little merrier.

The long drive to the get in.  Good job we had a 4x4!

In the morning, miraculously, we were greeted by a 4x4.  Dan was flying back a day earlier and decided not to chance a quick descent so stayed behind.  With the vehicle loaded up, we were off.  We stopped at a market to stock up then turned off the road onto a dirt track.  Hours later we stopped at a tiny village and checked into a hotel.  We paid about £2 for an ox meal and a small room made of wooden planks and corrugated iron.  Even in this tiny village hours from the nearest tarmaced road they had a bottle of Coca Cola and... a Justin Bieber poster on the wall of their hut.  It’s amazing how far western influence reaches.

Geckos

We got up at 4.00 to finish the drive and 100Km later we reached the end of the road where our mud track dropped down a steep bank into the river where some people were running a ferry service with dug-out canoes.  This was our first glimpse of the Sandrananta.  Wide with small rapids broken up by pools and flat sections, it was a lot like a big Dee.  We reached a bigger drop where we camped for the night.

A small rapid along the way.

The map we used to find this river had not been very enlightening and even showed it crossing the same contour line multiple times which made it difficult to estimate the gradient.  With a flight to catch we decided to cut our weight by leaving behind the non-essentials, like a tent!  That night, perched on some rocks on the river bank, as we were pitching the tarp the heavens opened and that’s when we realised the tarp wasn’t waterproof.

Trying to stay in good spirits after the rain.

We didn’t sleep at all.  Being winter in Madagascar, the nights were long and the time passed slowly.  I lay in a stream of cold water running over the rocks through my sleeping bag eagerly waiting for the morning.  We got up at first light, 5:55 a.m. and quickly packed away our gear.  We were on the water by sun rise and set off for the day’s boating cold and tired.  The first rapid of the day was a steep rapid which did a good job of waking us up.

Rhod, getting his energy back.

While paddling a flat section people began running after us excitedly.  More and more joined until the crowd grew to over 100.  A little further we reached a monstrous double drop landing on jagged rocks.  The portage was a nightmare, clambering through dense jungle over slippery rocks down a steep slope.  I paid some locals to carry my kayak who put me to shame skipping barefooted to the river below.

First tier of the portage, imediately above...

...the main event!

The river was easy for the rest of the morning, never getting above grade four.  Around mid day the sun came out and we took this opportunity to dry our things.  We stopped on a small rocky island and spread our sleeping bags and clothes on the ground while we ate lunch.  An hour later things were just wet rather than dripping so we continued on our way.

Mandy's hole.

This river is very remote.  The people in some villages along the way had never seen white people.  At the end of one of the rapids was an island with a group of people sat on it.  As we approached they frantically tried to get off it back onto the main land.  In their haste they were tripping over each other.  A woman fell over and clung to a rock up to her neck in the river.  A child was washed about 10 metres downstream before he managed to swim to the shore.  It was hard not to help, but they were terrified of us and paddling towards them would have made things worse.  We passed a few groups who ran when they saw us coming.  Most though, were just curious and would watch from a “safe” distance.

Further downstream we had a very different reaction.  On a flat section a man on the bank was manically waving at us.  We tried to paddle by without stopping.  We had already been hounded by so many people on this trip.  He jumped in a dugout canoe and chased us, still shouting and enthusiastically waving his arms.  The big clapping actions he was making with straight arms were particularly concerning.  Was there a crocodile downstream?  We stopped and waited for him to catch up.  He didn’t speak any English but was clearly concerned and seemed adamant that we shouldn’t continue down the river.  Eventually we realised that he was telling us that the river downstream was too dangerous to continue.  When he realised that we were not getting out he quickly paddled to the bank and ran into the jungle.  We continued downstream wondering what we would meet.  Five minutes later we were greed by the same man and the inhabitants of the village that he had brought along.  We could see the river narrowed and funnelled between some rocks so we approached slowly.  As it happened this raging torrent was just a wave train, about grade 3, but the locals were suitably impressed.

Boulder rapid

That night we stopped early at a sandy beach to finish drying our sleeping stuff.  Thankfully the weather stayed dry.  According to the GPS we were six metres above sea level.  Soon, this expedition would be complete.

Drying our kit on an idyllic beach in the jungle.  A contrast from the previous night.

Surprisingly, the next morning produced some really good quality rapids.  We descended much more than six metres with numerous rapids dropping more than two vertical metres each.  The river was also a lot bigger at this point with more volume.  Combined with narrower rapids it made for some powerful white water.  The last rapid of the day was next to a school.  On a sweeping right hand bend the river dropped into the most difficult rapid of the day.  It looked like the novelty of these strange white people with their bright clothes was enough to close school for the day and the mud hut classrooms emptied so the children could watch us.  There were a few lines down this one.  A sneaky left line against the rocks or a long charge left to right down the main line avoiding the big hole at the end.  Both amused the crowds who followed us for the next couple of miles of flat water.

Rhod paddling a ledge

The School Run

We finished early enough to teach the local kids at the get out how to paddle and once they got over their initial fears of us everyone wanted a go.  I’ll never forget the panic when Dory stood up and how quickly the street emptied as he approached the circle of children that had gathered around us to offer them our remaining nuts.  Perhaps they thought that they were the second course.  We waited for our guide to show up for hours.  This was a good chance to see life in the Madagascan countryside.  Madagascar is a very superstitious county.  A circumcision party danced through the village with all the excitement of a carnival.  Later that day the grandfather would eat the severed foreskin to “transfer the power”.  Years from now, when he comes of age, his father will have to cross the river.  If he is eaten by a crocodile or fails, he will be shunned for life.  The boy will probably become a father by 16 and die before his 62^nd birthday.  If he fathers twins he will have to choose only one to live according to the taboos of the island.

As night drew in a woman cooked us pasta and egg and when it got dark we were offered somewhere to stay behind a shop.

Teaching the locals to kayak.

Unfortunately our guide arrived during the night and we were forced to get up and leave.  Bleary eyed, we squashed into our bus along with some other people who we were forced to pay for their unspecified services while we drove the wrong way to drop them off at some remote location.  We then drove for hours to a grotty hotel where we finally got to go to bed.  The next morning we set off on the long drive back to Antananarivo.  We just had enough time for some sightseeing in the capital before our flight home.

The take out village

All the photos on this page were taken by Jo Meares

A new day on the Faravory

The view downstream

Rhod, thrilled while protecting an undercut in the gorge

Day 2 on the Faravory was quite different to day 1, with steeper and narrower rapids.  At one point we reached a deep gorge which was difficult to inspect.  We spent some time picking our way between the boulders beneath the towering rock walls.  This river had some powerful holes and this whole section reminded me of the Guardian Angel gorge in the French Alps, complete with the undercuts.  Amongst the many ledges and chutes was a small drop into a big hole.  There was a funky line which involved riding up onto the pile down onto the hole; getting carried right to avoid the undercut rocks blocking the left side.  We all got through with varying degrees of success.  Dory had an exciting moment when he pushed too hard left at the top and hit the undercut.  He managed to hold himself in the micro eddy the wrong side of the house sized boulder with water gushing passed him into the jaws of doom.  Rhod eventually got to him to hold him steady as he climbed out.

Dory entering the gorge

The rapids continued for most of the day with a variety of features.  After a short flat spell we reached another horizon line.  I jumped out on a rock in the middle of the river and saw an incredible view as the river dropped away in front of me.  The first waterfall was a wide, near vertical slide with two different lines.  Either sneak left of the entry hole and drop down at the edge, or punch the hole at the top and run it centre.  This was a drop we all wanted the first descent of so we used the classic method of “rock, paper, scissors” to decide.  Jo won and styled the first descent down the left.  We all paddled this one and both lines saw descents.

Jo's enjoying a first on the first waterfall

By now an audience had grown and looking downstream there were groups of people watching us as far as I could see, and I could see quite far because at the exit of the plunge pool the river crashed over a second, bigger and more jagged drop which quickly flowed into a long and horribly choked rapid.  The rapid was probably runnable but we didn’t take the time to properly inspect it, opting to portage instead.  The waterfall looked good though, and without any other contenders for the first descent I got to claim this one.  From the pool at the top I couldn’t see anything.  It was very difficult to recognise my line with only sky ahead and no markers, and hitting my line was important because on the left the river landed on sharp rocks and on the right it fed into a deep slot against the wall.  Between the two was a huge bump creating a perfect kicker, if you could find it!

As I got close enough to see over the edge I knew it was going well.  With a big right stroke I pushed the front up onto the peak of the bump then I took a big boof stroke, crunched forward and landed flat to the right of the rocks with enough momentum to carry me straight into the eddy.

Me, boofing it

Mandy on the waterfall section

Rhod ran it second, taking the same line with a big boof.  Next up Jo, who slipped off the side of the mound down into the slot and into the unknown.  Luckily the landing was deep and she resurfaced still smiling.  Mandy followed Jo into the slot landing hard on her side and wrenching her shoulder but luckily didn’t do any damage.  Nothing that a cocktail of painkillers and some scary rapids wouldn’t take her mind off anyway.  Last up was Dan with another big boof off the kicker.

Always an audience

The rapids continued past the cheering crowds at the village below, and onwards deeper into the jungle, gradually getting harder as the day grew longer, or perhaps as we were getting more tired.  We desperately looked for a beach to camp at, not wanting to get caught in the dark.  As the sun sunk in the sky we grew less fussy and kept an eye out for some grass, or mud or even somewhere flat.  At a sharp ninety degree left hand bend where the river plunged far into another deep gorge we gave up and pitched camp amongst the long grass and stick insects in a small clearing amongst the banana trees.  It went dark quickly.  We were exhausted which made pitching tents, cooking food or even sorting through our stuff difficult.  We watched the fire flies dancing in the darkness before climbing into our tents, collapsing with fatigue.

Me, somewhere on the Faravory

A hideous boulder choke

The third day started well with continuous grade 4 rapids.  After a while it eased off and there was a lot of flat occasionally broken up with short boulder rapids.  There was one very long boulder choke which took the best part of an hour to climb through and over until we reached the point where the river bubbled up again from beneath the rocks.  We paid local people 5000 ariary (about £1.60) each, more than the average Malagasy daily wage, to help us with our kayaks.

Dan, buried in a long rapid

Rhod on some slides

By early afternoon we were getting hungry and not wanting to risk running out of food we stopped to ask a man at some banana trees if we could buy some.  They took Rhod away, and he emerged twenty minutes later with a bag filled with hot boiled green bananas which tasted like potatoes.  They had taken him to a small house made of sticks with a palm leaf roof where the owner of the plantation had given him her evening meal and refused to let him pay.  We must have looked very weary!

Refuelled, we paddled the last few miles of easy water down to the Mananjary completing the second ever descent of the Faravory, with numerous first descents of individual rapids along the way.  I think it’s fair to say we were all pretty excited to reach this point and know there was only another seventeen kilometres to the takeout.

The Mananjary was very different in character.  It was enormous.  Over one hundred feet wide but deep and flowing through relatively open land it was far less intense than the Faravory.  It was also flowing much more quickly and we soon reached the first rapid.  We opted for a small channel taking us over a rocky ledge, rather than the enormous hole to its right, or wasting time inspecting the other channels.  The water above was pushing hard into the main line so it was difficult to hit the channel in the middle.  Dan scraped his way down the jagged wall jamming his paddle in a crack.  After paddling down Jo had to hold my kayak steady as I scrambled out and up onto the rock splitting the channels to dislodge it.

 

Soon we reached another rapid and I was glad of Jo’s big volume experience to pick a line, and Mandy’s big volume experience to go first.  It was HUGE.  As I dropped over the horizon line, staring down the green tongue into a crashing wall of water I was sceptical.  As I hit the hole I put all my energy into fighting left so as not to get swallowed up by the bigger hole further down on the right.  We had mixed lines on this one too; Dory emerging at the end with a split helmet.

Local transport

That evening we camped on a big sandy beach.  Again, the locals paddled over in their dug-out canoes to watch us.  In the morning we paddled another two hours.  The first kilometre had some grade two rapids, and then it was flat until we reached the take out at mid day. 

The road and village at the take out

 All the photos on this page were taken by Jo Meares

River of Gold

The Team (left to right)- Dory Sifford, Geraint Anderson, Josephine Meares, Rhodri Anderson, Mandy Chan, Daniel Crowley.  Photo courtesy of Dan Crowley.

We drove back to the house in Antananarivo to meet Dory, the last member of our team, who had flown out later than everyone else.  I also had to swap my kayak for one that still floats.  We were told that there was another 2 Dagger Nomads with no holes or welds in but they were located in Ranomafana.  Our next river was a little further on from there so leaving Jo, our first guide, we set off on our nine and a half hour drive south.

Lemur spotting on the way to the Faravory

Being a passenger in Madagascar is a scary experience.  The horn is an essential, otherwise how else would you let anyone know you’re coming when you are overtaking on a blind corner high on a mountain road.  We passed lots of impressively damaged vehicles like a lorry in a ditch with the entire rear axle another fifty meters up the road.  All the cars and busses had cracked windscreens.  Our bus had completely bald tires resembling formula 1 slicks more than something you would use to combat a muddy dirt track road.

Palm leaves drying in the sun for thatch

We arrived at night and parked on the busy main street where our driver spent a long time on the phone before walking off and leaving us for an even longer time.  Eventually a man turned up peering in through the bus windows and walking around the vehicle a few times.  After unsuccessfully pretending we hadn’t seen him Dan eventually slid the window open slightly.  I’m not sure who this man was but he knew our next guide and set off to find our driver.  He then showed us the way to the guest house owned by the rafting company.  We got there, faffed a while, faffed some more, then finally someone turned up at the house to tell us that there wasn’t any electricity and we should go to the hotel further up the road.

Brown Lemur

After dropping off our stuff at the hotel we were taken to a pizzeria which was the furthest restaurant away and didn’t do pizza.  It was a decent place though and sold cheap Zebu (Ox) and rice.  Like everywhere else, it also sold very big bottles of “Three Horse Beer” (THB) which did a good job of de-stressing us.  As we ate we watched the geckos running along the walls.  We then went to inspect the kayaks back at the guest house that we weren’t staying at.  We were led through the darkness to a small room with two inflatable kayaks, and nothing else.  We also found out that our plan had been changed and we would do a different river.  After unsuccessfully trying to call our contact who was arranging some of our logistics we returned to our hotel for more THBs and bed.  Before going to sleep Dan did manage to get through on the phone to find out that one of the Dagger Nomads was “Non operational”.  The other would be there in the morning and was in good condition.  He also managed to change our plan back to the original.  This seemed to be the theme in Madagascar.  Whenever we went more than a couple of hours without going over the plan it would suddenly change and we would spend the next couple of hours trying to change it back.

Dan paddling some slabs

We rose early the next day and went over to the house to check out the kayak.  True to his word, a new kayak had arrived in the night to replace the inflatable.  Unfortunately this Dagger Nomad was actually a Bliss-Stick Mystic giving us a problem.  There were two tall people and only one big kayak.  Rhod, with his smaller or more flexible legs drew the short straw and squeezed into the Mystic while I used the Nomad he had used for the first river.  We packed the kayaks, gave the guide instructions on where to meet us, asked for four wheel drive vehicles (which would be absolutely necessary for the next river) and set off for a multiday on the Faravory.  The Faravory had seen one descent before ours.  It was soloed, but none of the rapids had been attempted.

The view downstream from the put in

The drive to the river wasn’t too bad, once we finally got going.  We were first taken back to the guest house, then drove around for a while and then taken to the town hall.  Some time later we were finally travelling in the right direction.  The road was generally good, mostly tarmac with only the last couple of hours along a dirt track.  At one point we all got out to make the bus lighter to get over some particularly bad pot holes but most other holes had been partially filled with big rocks.  We reached a rickety old wooden bridge high above the Faravory, meandering over the sand far below us.  As we packed our kayaks a crowd gathered; a situation we were getting familiar with.

Locals panning for gold

At mid day we finally set off.  Like the Sahatandra, it was a wonderful feeling paddling under the bridge leaving the chaos of the towns and roads behind.  The first part of this river was completely flat and, worse, shallow.  We spent some time sliding our heavy kit laden kayaks over soft sand.  Looking down through the clear water we could see flakes, and sometimes small lumps, of gold glimmering in the sun.  It seemed like every corner we turned for the first few miles hid people panning for gold.  Entire families lined up in the river as the Dads in the front jammed huge wooden poles into the river bed and bounced on them to disturb the sand, hopeful that they would uncover a nugget.  The others, women and children, stood up to their waste scooping the disturbed sand in their wide metal pans.

Praying Mantis

Mandy picking her way down stream

After a while the river changed character and started to get steeper.  Like the Sahatandra it was horribly siphoned.  Unlike the Sahatandra, the rapids were good quality.  Fun and sometimes intense, but almost always easy to scout from the boat.  The first main rapid of the day was long and complicated ending in a big enclosed ramp with an unprotectable hole.  Anywhere else this would have been fine but here, with our heavy kayaks, so far from help and not wanting to risk getting our kit wet again, we walked it.  The portage was awful, first clambering through thick bushes then climbing over slippery rocks taking us far from the river.  We followed a small stream dropping steeply over and around big boulders.  Here I saw my first of many praying mantises of the trip.  I also saw other odd looking insects.  We passed our kayaks down a six foot waterfall into the shallow pool at the bottom where I saw frogs and even fish.  A little further along I got back into my kayak to cross a deeper pool, limboing under the spider webs disconcertingly low to the water.  After more than an hour we emerged back at the river.

Giant spiders.  This type was typically the size of a hand.

Me on a boof ledge

Some more rapids took us to our lunch spot where we ate bread above a terrific horizon line.  Here the river plunged over a thirty foot ledge which almost looked good if it wasn’t for the enormous hole between both tiers of the double drop.  This portage complete, the rapids picked up and as we learned how these heavy boats handled our confidence grew.  Jo bagged the first descent of a small ledge drop, with a worrying cave behind the curtain, by pulling off a stylish flare against the far wall.  This was a good confidence builder helping us realise we could still throw these heavy boats around.

Siphon!

Not wanting to risk paddling in the dark we stopped reasonably early to camp at a small uneven grassy patch which even had some wood for a fire.  As soon as we arrived we were being watched.  A group of about thirty people came and sat about twenty feet away to stare.  They stared as we changed, as we pitched our tents, as we cooked, as we ate and as we sat around the fire.  When we woke in the morning they still sat and stared, and they stared until we paddled off out of sight.

Packing up on our first morning, with an audience

 All of the photos on this page were taken by Jo Meares.