Yesterday Anton and I got up early and drove to Khadarjung on the upper Seti. From here we hike upstream for about three and a half hours on the premise that the river just got steeper and steeper so there should be some sweet whitewater in store for us. With the road to Khadarjung only being completed last year it's only recently that this upper, upper section has become easily accessable and from talking to Charlie - the owner of one of the kayak shops here, we're the first people to check it out.
-Some of the bridges were super sketchy on the hike up-
-Our porters are heroes, no way could we have done it without them-
-The view from one of the small villages on the way up-
-Just before we put in, Anton at another dodgy bridge-
-Another fully sketchy bridge just upstream of where we put in-
We hiked upstream from 9am until about 12.30. We went uphill, downhill accross the river about 4 times and through about four tiny villages - with only footpaths connecting them to the outside world. On the way we tried to get a look at as much of the river as we could. Everything looked sweet apart from one section which we couldn't see - where the river went around a big cliff and out of sight.
We wanted to carry on hiking but were aware of the time and trying to do the whole section in one day meant we couldn't check out the very upper reaches of the river.
So we put onto the water and headed down through mostly pretty cruisy grade 3 whitewater with the odd harder rapid, until we hit the canyon that we had been unable to scout on the way up.
What happened here was that the whole river went into a narrow canyon which unlike the rest of the river was mostly bedrock - which makes access on either side allmost impossible. We tried to get a look into it from above, but all we could see was that it was really steep, and pretty hard to get out of.
Well, Anton and I had to know what was in there so we went in anyway. It was definitly a case of 'must make' eddys and some pretty gnarly ferry gliding with each of us backing each other up with throwbags - there was no option to miss an eddy!!
-After ferrying accros the canyon first Will Clark inspects downstream-
-Photo Anton Immler-
After I'd had an initial look Anton joined me accross on the otherside of the canyon and we climbed our way as far down as we could go.
-Will Clark climbing down inside the Canyon-
-Photo Anton Immler-
-We reckon this was about 40 foot, but in these levels gnarly as hell-
-Photo Anton Immler-
This waterfall that we found was truely amazing especially when you consider that there are only a few runnable falls in Nepal. In this water level it was pretty full on - with big undercuts and crazy boils at the bottom, running into an unknown corkscrew drop then to another invisible horizon line - with virtually no way to get back out and no safety if it all goes tits up!!
But it will go, so we're gonna check it out when the water drops in another few weeks!!
We had a full on mission to get back out of the canyon - with even scarier ferry glides, and once out it took us an hour to trek around the side and get back into the river. As I put back on I had two leeches on me - this is the first place I've ever had leeches - they're strong buggers hey!!
Once back on we had an awesome section of good quality hard whitewater...
-Anton Immler on one of the most fun drops (I ran this one over the right)-
-Anton on the bottom half of 'the dodgy one'-
-Will Clark on the top half of 'the dodgy one' - neither me nor Anton hit the line we wanted on this one-
-Photo Anton Immler-
-Anton on a cool slot drop, it was getting pretty late in the day by now-
So we were finding amazing whitewater on this upper section - but the problem was we'd used too much time in the canyon and then walking back out and around it. So by the time we came down to Khadarjung - the normal start of the Upper Seti, it was 5pm. It gets dark here at about 6pm. And I'd say most people give themselves 2-3 hours for the section. We were both tired but all I said to Anton was 'Go hard and I'll keep up'. Anton did a solo mission in an hour the other day so I knew we stood a chance.
Anyway long story short we nearly made it in the light, but as it got progressivly more dark we were still on the river. At one point we had to run a canyon on the lower section - I guess it's graded 4 as there's a big hole at the bottom. By the time we ran it I was having to stay within 3 feet of Anton or else I couldn't see him and all I had to go on were shades of gray. Light gray = whitewater or big hole, dark gray = green water or maybe a rock, really dark gray person outline = Anton!!
Excuse my French but it was fucked up!! Haha, anyway it was pretty cool after we'd made it all the way down, it was so dark we could see the whole milky way!!
-Anton and Will minutes after taking out-
-Photo Anton Immler-
Luckily for us our Taxi driver was out looking for us and only 2 minutes after climbing off the river we were picked up and heading back to Pokhara for some food beer and sleep!
We're both hurting today so we're just chilling out and planning the next mission. We'll go back and do the upper upper Seti again soon but we'll take 2 days and I'll bring a torch!!
Go hard everyone!
Will.
