China’s Eastern Rivers

Tuesday, August 19th

Wow! I’m sitting in front of the TV; watching the Olympics and eating a well earned bowl of cereal. I’m the last day of a long weekend for me here.

Last week I discovered there is a rock climbing club here in Wenzhou, China, so I went and checked the place out on Monday. Out of the dozen or so friendly people there, about half spoke English! I made some new friends and was invited to come back often.

I showed them some pictures from my cell phone camera about kayaking. One of them grabbed me by the arm and said there’s my boat! He has a duckie (which for lack of everything else here, that’s cool!). Not the high quality types from NOC or anything but still, not a bad boat. Then he tells me the club is planning to go to a part of NanXi River I’ve never been to. They were all excited and promised that I wouldn’t be disappointed. They were right.

So I met up with them on Sunday afternoon at 12. It was a late start from what I was used to and the distance was much further, it took more than 2 hours. So we get to the put in, after stopping to rent a few more duckies and a raft. I brought my LL Hoss of course.

OMG! The girls… I think they all had boy friends but I was still admiring them. One girl had on a USA Flag bikini, I couldn’t resist complementing her on that. Another… had the word JUICY on the rear of her bikini bottom. I had to explain that word to some of my guy buddies. I don’t think any of them were her boy friend?

The whole section of the river is damn controlled. It is on during the day up until dusk. The first rapid was a solid Class II maybe II+. It had a great big wave train, hits the canyon wall and bounces back to river left. I was mildly disappointed no one flipped.

As we went on down we came to more and more rapids. Most were pool/drop, but some were long! Definitely a Class III in there one time. It was similar to the first one, lot of waves, some small holes and numerous eddies and a bend in the rapid turning the flow to the left. Well I had gotten comfortable and dropped my guard. I stayed close to the right wall and as I came over one big wave into the trough of another I saw something and I just didn’t want to believe what I saw, it was a big hole! It must have been 12 feet wide and the white was frothing a good 3 feet up. As I crested the next wave I saw it was real and I resolved to paddle hard around it. I tried to go left but I couldn’t clear it. I hoped to punch it and I guess I did but I ended up upsetting. I setup and rolled, Woot! Been a while since I got a combat roll. I parked in an eddy to watch the show… it dumped 3 duckies and I peeled out to help collect paddles, water bottles and various snacks that were floating down the river.

There was also an old washed out bridge/low head dam. The bridge was solidly built on the ends and in the center, like a wide low head dam but there were two wide openings where water could go underneath and I suppose there had been a bridge over the top of it at one time. So all this water flows through these two gaps and makes for a lot of fun. The left side seemed pretty easy, just a fast flow of water into a wave train. The right side, pretty similar to M-Wave, just a tad milder. I took the right side, hit it dead on, braced and braced again… I made it over or through. It was great!

The really cool part was the knowledge I was gonna see carnage! I eddied out on the right and the duckie right behind me flipped. I wasn’t fast enough with my rope to help them but the next duckie was fine and chased them down. Another few duckies all came and went okay. That changed as the last two boats came down. A duckie flipped and tossed the couple in it. I repeatedly yelled ROPE (not knowing how to say it in Chinese) until they looked at me and I let it fly. The lady caught it and I swung them both into the eddy below me. I’d just finished coiling it when I saw them pointing upstream. The four person raft flipped. It dumped them almost into an eddy just to the river right. I collected the yard sale.

It was a great way to spend a Sunday with new friends. I went to bed at 11pm and slept for 14 hours. Monday was a waste but I made up for it today!

I went back to this place. I took Angel with me. She’s got her roll now in the pool and it was time to try it on the river. We did some warm up and she didn’t hit many of her rolls. I decided it best not to run the whole section so I found a “park & play spot. It was a good place to work on ferries, eddy hopping and attaining. I put her to work pretty hard and she just kept pushing herself. It was cool to see. She upset once, missed two rolls and started slapping the bottom of her boat, I gave her a T-Rescue, luckily on her “on-side.”

Later I was setting a rope to make the attainment much easier and I felt a strong tug on the rope. I looked behind me and she was holding on, I saw her edge drop upstream and (Aww Crap!) she flipped. I was sitting in an eddy above her and I dropped the rope, peeled out into the current and chased her. She made one close try at a roll then started hitting the boating I was too far away. She punched out just as I arrived. She swam her boat into an eddy and I got her paddle. She’d torn some skin up on her foot and we were both tired. I suggested we call it a day. I set my other throw rope above her and returned with it to help her get back upstream where we could climb up the bank.

I had fortunately brought all my gear; 3 locking carabiners, 2 throw ropes, webbing, first aid kit, food and water. I put it all to use. Fortunately Angel is a former doctor and still does surgeries a few times a week. I handed her the first aid kit and explained which package had the anti-biotics in it. She took care of the rest there. I hauled the boats up and we just got home.

As we drove we stopped to take some photos. The locals often walked over to ask Angel questions and 3 different times people invited us to their homes for dinner. Angel kept declining for us, promising next time we would.

** There is a tad of bad news. I noticed today that I was taking in water. I searched for a leak and discovered I have cracked my Hoss. There are 3 cracks in the screw hole that holds the left side of the back belt in place. I saw this mentioned on the web before and I’ll go hunt the remedy.

More photos on FlickR