Darren McQuoid’s Pakistan expedition Part 3

Posted in Blogroll - by snapdragon, on 09/01/2009

We had a good night of sleep behind us and were glad to have the full team again for what appeared to be another long day of big scouts and gigantic rapids.

The adventures of the day are best told by the accompanying photographs.

It was already apparent that the Indus River did not have the long flat sections typical to big water. Between the long rapids we were glad to catch our breath in the few slow moving sections.

The days were passing by too quickly. Light fades fast during November in the Karakoram, and most days we started looking for a campsite at three, because the sun would be down by four and light would vanish only too expediently.

Just a short bit past the town we pulled out on a nice beach on the right, debating using it for a campsite when we were greeted by a large group from the town. Obviously we would not be camping at this beach.

As we hauled our gear up to the vans, Roland debriefed us on the situation. During the permit process, word of our group had spread, and from an unverified source we had been issued a police escort. The local people were confident there were no Taliban living in the area, but the escort was issued in case some were passing through.

The complication was that the police requested that we stay as many nights as possible in motels on the road. Our preference was for the pristine beaches, they were generally more relaxing than the busy little truck stops that doubled as motels. Unsure of how the situation would play out we bunked up in what proved to be a 24 hour truck stop.

What pushed the situation to be nearly unbearable was the myth that before shutting down an engine it needs to be revved to high rpms before shutting down. Generally this would happen about ten feet from our heads. For the first time we were wishing for a nice walled in section the following day…

The beauty of traveling is that each day offers up the promise of the exotic. Seeing a bull being slaughtered roadside was certainly unique, and the village looked stoked for the feast!

One of the few industries on the Skardu Highway is semi-precious gem mining. From what we gathered, it’s a temporary dangerous job that pays well. Families camp out while men mine for a few months. The children would always run down the river banks to watch us run the nearby rapids.

In route to lodgings we had seen a good chunk of the rapids from the road, and many looked intimidating. The assumption was made that we would be scouting a lot. Ben Coleman on paddling big water; “you just have to let go”.

And let go we did! Rafa and Ben would lead into long rapids, catching eddies, aggressively boat scouting as far as possible and then pushing past the point of no return. Not wanting to slow the team down we all followed as best we could, as the lead paddler would disappear behind massive waves. Drive right squeezing past a hungry hole, then quickly turn and paddle as hard as possible back to the left avoiding yet another equally scary hydraulic.

Rinse and repeat the same cycle for many miles, until we found ourselves at the portage that made the cover of Kayak Session. Rafa took a good look at it, but due to serious hydraulics and nasty caves, it didn’t get run.

While carrying our boats we all got a chuckle of the cover photo, once in location it was obviously a staged photograph. It was Rafa’s last day on the water, and this was a possible take out but it was still early in the day and we knew of a bridge downstream that we were sure to make it to.

Setting a perfect tone for the end of his Indus journey, the bridge cataract flowed through a large hole and into a river wide fold where anything could, and did happen. Some of the group came through with no problems, which some got deeper in the fold, which made for some entertaining video footage that will be in the teaser Ben is working on.

Our euphoria from running the rapid quickly faded as we were forced to bid farewell to Rafa, knowing his infectious personality, enthusiasm, and confident boating would be missed. He was forced to return for finals week in the pursuit of mechanical engineering.

We floated downstream with a keen eye out for a remote campsite that would give us an excuse not to hike to the road. Camp was found at the ideal time, so we enjoyed the sandy beach, estimating we had covered at least twenty five kilometers in our read and run frenzy.

Look for this trip in Clear H2O Film’s upcoming release: Hotel Charley IV.