Huge Experiences Blog

For our Student trip Sam, Tino, and I planned to get to two new rivers, the Gul Gul and the Petrohue.  We ended up spending one day on the Petrohue and two on the Fuy.  We got to the Gul Gul and could only find two drops that were a little too scary to run so we headed to the Petrohue.  We got on the upper section stoked to be kayaking.  The first few rapids were simple and didn’t require any scouting.  After that we rolled up to one rapid that took some thinking.  We scouted from our boats and found that this big water rapid consisted of a big nasty hole that we had to book it to get left of.  Then a huge pillow a little further down stream that pushed us around the rock to the right channel.  The next rapid had three main channels that all were difficult.  We ended up finding an easy slide on the river right channel and taking that line except Tino, who took a harder line on the river right channel.  (c)Matthew WestThke out of the Petrohue.        At the take out we decided to head back north to the Fuy River.  We had already paddled the Fuy with school, but it had dropped allot since then and had become a totally different river.  It had become much more technical and creeky.  The first rapids were narrowed down to one line rapids that were full of boofs and fun drops. The big 30 ft drop had become a true thirty footer, loosing most of its rolling lip and gaining a stronger hit at the bottom.(c)Matthew WestTino drops the big 30 ft drop.      The next rapids were back to back and fun.  The first was a 12 ft boof over a rooster tail followed by a slide that required a hard left line and had a fun little boof at the bottom.  The next was an 8 ft boof over a hole with a pool at the bottom.  The coolest part though was the cave we found on river left that was just tall enough for us to paddle into and went 30 ft back into a rock.  (c)Matthew WestSam, Tino, and Me just chillen’ in the cave.       After that we came up on a 16 foot drop that was fun and simple.  This was the last big rapid on the run.  (c)Matthew WestTino decides that he dosn’t need his paddle for this drop.         This trip was a great example of how a river changes with the water level.  We had to take it slow and scout allot of rapids even though we had done this run a few weeks earlier.  All the rapids were totally different, in places where there were open lines there were small slots, holes turned into rocks above water, and entire waterfalls dried up.  It was still a great run though.

Posted by New River Academy