Another great story from online magazine WideWorld today about a trip of British kayakers who traveled to Peru this summer to run the rapids on the last unexplored tributary of the Amazon River.
Paddlers John ‘Spike’ Green, Pete Caterall and Adam Harmer all work at the National Whitewater Centre in Wales. They traveled to the Andes, where they were joined by a local guide named Paul Cripps. Paul lives in Cusco, and knows the region very well, and it was he who first discovered that the Rio Concevidayoc had yet to be fully navigated and explored. With that in mind, the team set out to make the first descent of that river.
According to the description by WideWorld, the Andean terrain through which the Concevidayoc runs is wild and inhospitable. The river’s path runs through deep mountain gorges and is often covered under a dense jungle canopy. Add in a very steep gradient, which creates crazy whitewater rapids, and you have all the ingredients you need for a kayaking adventure. Judging from the rest of the story, an adventure is just what they received. Early on, the rapids were rated in the Class III-IV range, but quickly turned into IV-V and beyond. As if that wasn’t enough, the rapids were nearly constant, and there were few places to take out, and get a survey of what was ahead.
All in all, it sounds like this was quite a trip, and it’s not often that you get to explore completely new territory. This team had that chance, and it was as wild as you can imagine.
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Well done guys!
For those interested in the subject, here's the book of the legendary Tim Biggs, who ran the three other source tributaries: http://www.stevefisher.net/books.htm
Good one
Steve Fisher
So when are you booked to go!
Anything 'Amazon' must be of real interest. 🙂
DSD
Since this is the last unexplored tributary, I don't have any need to go. 😉 Maybe I need to find a lost river to explore instead. 🙂
I suggest a read called: The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise, by Ian Baker.
From Amazon:
his is wilderness exploration at its best, going far beyond the adage "because it was there" and describing a concurrent spiritual journey as intense, earnest and daring as the raw physical adventure itself. All of us who wander in the wild remote know about this inner world; few if any of us can describe it well. Ian Baker must be the most articulate nonfiction writer on the planet right now. In "The Heart of the World: Journey to the Last Secret Place", his language captures not just a visceral sense of the unparallelled Tsangpo Gorge, the hardships of an impossible journey, and the complexities of his research, but somehow manages to parallel the story-line with a most welcome comprehensible tale of an extraordinary spiritual endeavor.
I found it really enjoyable, insightful and fun to read.
Scienceguy, I own and have read that one too. Great book, really interesting. Talk about a wild first descent!