Aire Waves: North Wales 16th-18th Feb (or "The Valentines Paddle" as referred to by Martin)

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Aire Waves

Leeds Canoe Club Blog. We paddle... lots!
Airewaves used to be Leeds Canoe Club's magazine letting people know what the club was upto. Its quite hard work pulling together a publication letting people know what the club is doing and publishing dates in advance is always hard as things tend to change. Step forth the blog.. Push button publishing for the masses. So here is the idea a few people in the club take it in turns to write up trips and talk about things in the club.

Monday, February 19, 2007
North Wales 16th-18th Feb (or "The Valentines Paddle" as referred to by Martin) - Day 2

So, onto Day 2

With not much water in any of the valleys near to us, we decided we would go to the Conwy and run it, assuming it hadnt dropped any more.
Sadly, on arrivial, it had dropped even further to just 1 on the gauge. Knowing it was just about paddleable at 2, we decided we should maybe try something else.

That something else was the Ogwen. We had no idea if any of the Ogwen went at this level, but we thought we would just give it a go anyway.

This time there was some Duo action, with me and Jess the occupants. The two of us, along with Greg Drew and Sarah started off by running the "Gunbarrel". It looks very different at this level, but still looked runnable, although very tight in some places. We all managed to get down this upright, although us in the duo ended up hitting a rock and turning round just above the main drop at the end, thus taking a very bouncy route down the main fall backwards. Was still fun though, if not a little scary at the time!!

From here, the river then got really scrapey, with barely enough water to float. Thankfully, the river did start to narrow down a bit after this, enough to not keep running aground on the riverbed. Most of the drops were runnable, although very rocky, and all involved some sort of rock bouncing to get down.

We eventually reached the bridge at the start of Fishermans Gorge, deciding if its worth continuing down or not.
Esme had just took a swim before the bridge, and we got her out river left. We were then approached by someone on the bank who appeared to be a member of conversation group looking after the land on that bank. Greg managed to talk and diffuse the situation, and we eventaully decided we would give Fishermans Gorge a go, including me and jess in the topo!!
The thinking was that at this level, the worse that could happen is that you get pinned. With not much water, this wouldn't be dangerous, just annoying!! So off we went...

Sadly, Esme took another swim soon after starting, and decided it was probably best that she got out and jumped in the car that we had left at the bridge. The rest of us continued, on what turned out to be a very fun and interesting paddle!!

In any decent flow, the Fishermans gorge is a very continuous and technical grade IV paddle, one of the best in the country (My favourite section of river in the UK). With very little water going down this, we though it might get a bit easier, with more time to make the directional moves needed.

Not as easy as we thought.....

Moves were quick, gaps were tight, and pins were aplenty!! Getting down the river took a lot of concentration, and a lot of rock bashing. It sounds like an absolute nightmare, but in some strage way it was really good fun!!

It was especially fun for me and jess in the topo. With no manouvrability at all, direction was difficult. Our main plan was try and pick a straight line through rocks, and just paddle over any that were in the way. After all, we had the momentum to do this unlike those in their own boats.

There were a number of times where we in the duo got pinned, and some of them were bloody difficult to get out of. We were leaning so far upstram on some of them, that it took some guts and staying power to get ourselves out of the sitaution.
Everyone got pinned at some point, but everyone got themselves out of it evetually, with Sarah only needing outside help once.

We eventually reached the bottom of Fishermans Gorge, and everyone was so happy that we had decided to run it.
However, the river wasn't over yet, and we still had the lower section to do yet.

The lower turned out to be a real scrape, and made for really hard work. The gorge had took all the energy out of most of us, so this section seemed really long and never ending. We eventaully reached the end at what must have been nearly 5pm, as there wasnt much light left.
Everyone looked completely shattered, but still glad they did the trip. It was just the drivers who really didnt want a 3h drive home after doing that!!

If you are ever in North Wales, and there is no water about, we can recommend doing the Fishermans Gorge section if you dont mind some bouncing. The upper and lower we decided just weren't worth the effort.

With that conclusion, everyone headed off home, some straight home, while some detoured into Mold to grab some well earned food, under the guidance of Jess (since its her home town, she knows where everything is!!)

# posted by jh_dempsey @ Monday, February 19, 2007

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