Tyler Curtis in Norway
Posted in Blogroll - by snapdragon, on 12/07/2010
After and epic few day and mid summer night in Trollfors we started on the creeking adventures. We headed toward the Norway Sweden border in search of a few rarely paddled rivers and perhaps a first descent or two. During our drive we caught a glimpse of a nice looking drop just off the road and after pulling over to check it out it looked good. We then referred to our trusty maps to find that a small dirt road ran near the river to the lake 4kms downstream to where the river emptied into it. Perfect. A short shuttle and a new adventure. Later we would learn from some research that this short creek was named �Umnas River� or at least that is what we have named it. This short little run turned out to be quite epic with a ton more whitewater and drop in elevation that we expected. There we nice slides (with chunky rock) and one of which located in the middle of the run was a three-stage 100 meter long beauty. We also enjoyed numerous small boofs, a few very tight and technical lines, an absolutely perfect twisting 8 meter drop, and the final drop was a sweet 6 meter waterfall. After a short walk back to the van we were packed up and on route into the snow covered mountains and our next creek�. Of course the next epic adventure will be posted soon so stay tuned.
After completing a random pit stop and potential first descent of the Umnas River, our next stop was Lake R�ssvatn and take-out for the Krutaa River. Our camp location turned out to be the most epic camp location I have seen in a long while. The perfect place to spend July 1st Canada Day! We were surrounded by snow-covered mountains, an endless rock pebbled shoreline on a massive lake, a large supply of dry drift wood for a campfire, and presented with continuous 24 hours of daylight. Epic and not a place we wanted to leave! We woke to another day of sunshine and a perfect water level for the Krutaa River. This river is one that I have spoken about with the Suomi (Finland) paddlers a number of times and I was going to add another river to my ever-growing list of personal descents. As we were sliding into the river for an amazing section of boofs, slides, and monster holes to plug, I couldn�t help but take a moment to reflect on the fact that there is nothing else in the world I would rather be doing than living the life that I am! The water was clean and clear and every rapid a masterpiece. It is one of the rivers that required you to continually take a look back upstream after running a rapid and check it out, smile, and record the memory. We could paddle ourselves all the way into the lake to finish the river and start taking about how sick the river was and what we would paddle next.
