Rio Colca

I just got off the Colca yesterday, and now I´m in the town of Cotahuasi getting ready to leave for the Cotahuasi river tomorrow. We hike in with mules tomorrow and camp at the put in.This is either the deepest canyon on earth, or the Colca, which we just did is the deepest canyon on earth. Either way, they´re both pretty friggin deep.

The Colca was awesome! First we hiked in with mules for somewhere between 14 and 20 km... there was a discrepancy in the distance.. .it felt like 20. We descended 6,000 feet in 8 hours. My knee was buggin by the bottom. It was one of the most spectacular hikes I´ve ever done.

We spent the night by the river the first night and were anxious to see what we just got ourselves into. It was pretty bony and shallow until we reached the confluencia with the Mamacocha river. That added about 500 cfs, which was just what we needed. We stopped and offered some coca leaves to the gods at the confluence for a safe trip. From that point, the rapids only got bigger.














The winds picked up at 10:30 on the dot and they were a gustin´. Our first rapids we came to were 1, 2, and 3, and the scout took about 40 minutes of gnarly hiking about 1,000 feet above the river. So we scouted and then ran it, and everything I had planned to do wasn´t actually possible to do.. ha ha. We were relying solely on kayakers paddle signals. It was awesome! This was class 5 rafting!

We spent our first night above what was the biggest rapid yet of the trip in the middle of a tight gorge. The whole river had changed since the last time Gian Marco was there and we were in a new set of rapids, with the biggest one being the newest one.

I guided most of the time with Hootie and Emily up in front paddling and a pile of gear in the middle. It made it hard to get used to manuvering in the technical stuff. It was so sweet though! Emily fell out on the second day, in one of the biggest rapids on the trip. She swam over a 3 or 4 foot ledge onto some shallow stuff and messed up her knee. She just got bruised up real good. We named that rapid Rhodes Rodilla (Rhode´s knee). (Hootie was guiding that one... ha ha).
Later on the 2nd day, we hit a wall and flipped. The other raft flipped in the same spot. 2 upside down rafts and 6 swimmers.. ha ha... and a dog. Wairo the dog got the first doggie descent on the Colca.

Things move fast in the Colca. Lots of blind droppy stuff on the 3rd day. Drew had a gnarly swim too, in another bigger rapid on the 3rd day. Tons of excitement. It´s basically like rafting with 7 safety kayakers though, so it´s cool.The whole trip was pretty epic. We entered Chocolate Canyon on day 3, then went into Green Canyon, where all the rocks were green. So cool.

We had two major portages on the 3rd day too. There was nowhere to go in the first one, except down. We portaged under the rapid! All these huge boulders had fallen in, making the whole river sieve out into this huge cave. The whole left side was under rocks, so we portaged under them. It was epic! The second portage was really long. We had to do 4 fire lines of gear, and it took us a little over an hour. That section of river was all sieved out too, but we had to go up, over, and around the rapid.

The last day, we had a short paddle out, and the Garabato (our shuttle driver´s name was pasted all over our vehicle) was there to pick us up. We drove into the town of Cotahuasi all night, up over a pass over 15,000 feet. We drank rum, pisco, and cervesa from like 10 in the morning when we got off the Colca, until around dinner time, so we were all hung over by the time we went over the pass and finally got into town. Good times.

Now we´re leaving for the Cotahuasi river at 6 am tomorrow. I´m riverboarding for 6 days now, and I´m really excited!! Should be epic too!