Pakistan, Part 4

Posted in Blogroll - by snapdragon, on 02/02/2009

  Contact was made with Roland during breakfast, and he informed us of a large gorge downstream that would warrant road scouting. There would be a bridge access above the gorge, so we packed camp into the boats and hit the water.

After just a few minutes on the water we pulled into an eddy above the bridge that hung suspended over a colossal rapid. Blasting for a new road directly above us took our attention away from the river, and we scurried up to the road and safety, not knowing if the workers had seen us.
Back at roadside we enjoyed corn flakes with Haleeb “The Thickest Milk” and while road scouting proceeded to be awed by the size of the river as it wound through the only true gorge we had seen.
 The scout made it apparent that there would be an initial walk around the bridge rapid, followed by at least two more questionable portages in the gorge, and several mandatory rapids as large as anything we had run.
My decision was easy. Still not fully recovered from the flu, easy downstream progress was priority, in this case a quick walk up to the vans. Chris was not feeling too swell either and accompanied. Ben and Phil deliberated and decided to go big and get into the gorge while we would provide moral and media support. The bonus was that because the Karakoram is high desert, there are basically no trees and great roadside photography (better than on the river).

First up after the portage and seal launch was a big set of rapids, where Ben and Phil went big and head great lines.   I got a few shots and we drove on to the next rapid, one that had been pondered over during the road scout. It looked bad from all angles, but Ben walked to river level and declared it good to go down the left. Phil and Ben pulled up and scouted from the left bank, but quickly returned to their kayaks and ferried back to the right. The left side was too perilous, all the flow pushed into a sieve.

 From high on the right bank the duo pronounced the hole was passable, but big. Phil led the charge while Ben filmed, and he had no problems with the monster hole and Ben followed, styling it without a roll. The final of the gorge was a walled in rapid that had two terminal looking holes, and they ended up making a creative portage down the right into a massive seal launch. This was a big day for sure! Chris and I were glad to join them for dinner and camping, and feeling better physically already we were stoked for the next day on the water again.
Our team was happy to camp on yet another perfect sandy beach by the Indus. Boulders of large proportions littered all the beaches, offering up snug little alcoves for us to sleep in. We awoke full of expectations, and fired up because of the standard set by Ben Stookesberry and Phil Boyer the previous day.
On the water with the whole team again we ran some nice read and run for a short time before arriving at the first considerable rapid which was, rather considerable. The main line ran into an absurdly large backed up hole, and there was a “sneak” that sloped down into the hole too…I wasn’t sure what the boils would do.
In the name of keeping our portages down, and just being Ben Stookesberry, he fired away at the big sneak line while we portaged, and he had no issues with slaying another beast. Our day went by quickly as we scouted more rapids and made typical big water “stay the hell away from that hole!” moves. The canyon was deep here, blocking out any trace of direct sunlight, so no zoom lens for me, but the photos do show the dwarfing size of the rapids.
At this point we were all starting to feel at home in the big water. Deep in the gorge we found some of the most epic waves we had ever seen, all large enough to cause second thoughts. We regressed back to grade school and taunted each other with the immortal “I will if you will” wave surfing challenge, and we all ended up trying out some sweet waves and almost getting accident surfs on some of the lead in moves.

We were glad to have another day of the river behind us, and be that much closer to the confluence with the Gilgit River, our eventual take-out that was taking much longer than expected to attain.