Paddling in Patagonia by Mary Hebrank
| River: | Other |
| Skill: | Intermediate |
| Trip Date: | 01/01/2004 |
The rivers of southern Chile have now replaced those of Costa Rica and a few closer to home, like the Chattooga and New River Gorge, in my affections. I splurged and spent a major portion of my carefully saved dollars on an NOC trip to Patagonia in February, and had the best paddling vacation yet. I'll try not to gush too much, but here are some of the details and highlights.
Getting to Patagonia takes a while, since flights to Santiago are overnighters. In the Santiago airport I met my partners in crime: Michael Dee, from St. Louis, and Greg Huff, from the Dallas suburbs. I quickly realized that not only was I the only female on the trip, but I was also the oldest (by a margin big enough to notice). Neither was a problem for me, though, since: 1) I would be guaranteed my own rooms, with more space to spread wet stuff out to dry; and 2) as my daughter recently said to me, "Mom, no one your age can even keep up with you for an hour, much less a whole day." Besides, I like younger people. They usually have better senses of humor and adventure than most of my contemporaries.
So we three proceeded to tiny Balmaceda, a 4-hour LanChile flight away. There NOC instructors Matt Jennings and Jon Clark met us. I knew Matt from a course I took the previous summer, so I had some idea of what I was getting into. Greg and I collected our paddles and duffel bags, but alas for poor Michael, his stuff didn't make it. Nevertheless, we continued onward, after meeting our affable driver Tuto and his small bus with a rack full of kayaks on top.
We headed to the nearby town of Coihaique to hit the supermercado for last minute provisions (beer, wine, and Pisco, the Chilean national liquor.) I'm sure it was the only supermarket within a 100-mile radius. Patagonia, I was soon to find out, is a remote place. For nearly all of its one thousand miles, there is either one north-south unpaved road, or no road at all. But rattling along at 30 mph on a traffic-free gravel road just didn't seem like a hardship when the scenery varied between snow-capped mountains and volcanoes, clear blue fjords, lush temperate rainforests, turquoise lakes and rivers, and rolling grasslands dotted with cattle. Homesteads and villages were often few and far between, and our travels took us through national parks several times.
But I'm getting ahead. After leaving Coihaique we made the short drive to our cabins on the banks of the Rio Simpson, a pretty, Nantahala-like river. We did a short warm-up run, but spent nearly an hour at one play spot. It was after eight in the evening when we took off, but since it isn't fully dark until after 10 p.m., it mattered not. We staggered up the bank and hillside, admiring the llamas, and before we could even put our boats down outside the cabins, Tuto handed each of us a cool, frothy "Pisco Sour." This delightful concoction is made of two parts Pisco (white wine that has been distilled to 35% alcohol), one part fresh squeezed lemons, one egg white, and a quantity of powdered sugar known only to Tuto. The effect was immediate and warming. Later that night, well after dark, we feasted on a meal cooked by Tuto over a large barbecue pit, accompanied by plenty of Chilean red wine, of course. This would not be a good trip for vegetarians, or non-drinkers.
The plan had been to head north to Rio Manihuales for our second day of paddling, but instead we had to stay close to the LanChile office in Coihaique to await the arrival of Michael's luggage. So it was back to the Simpson for a longer run, and then back to town to fetch the luggage. Eventually we headed north for an hour or so to a tiny frontier village of about 30 homes. There we had dinner and stayed the night with a family that lets out rooms to travelers. It was the papa's birthday, so there was a fiesta in the backyard that started cranking up about the time we went to bed. It was noisy, but we were all tired enough that we managed to fall asleep anyway.
The next day we had a very short drive to the put in on the Rio Cisnes, which was a good step up from the Simpson. There were two rapids that merited shore scouting. The first was a narrow chute with a U-Haul truck-sized boulder defining the right side, and a pair of smaller, staircase rocks with a nasty hole in the middle between them defining the left side. The landing from the chute was into the fluffy water of a non-keeper hole. The second scouted rapid was 100+ yds long, containing lots of offset holes with narrow passages between them. It was not difficult to negotiate, though. This was followed by the final 8' drop where the river constricted. A chute and a boof over a small hole on river left avoided the huge ugly hole where most of the water was flowing. The rest of the rapids were easily boat scouted from eddies. Like the Simpson, the scenery was spectacular, and the water was an amazing, crystal-clear turquoise.
After taking off the river we went on a short hike in the Parque Queulat. At first we walked through a mossy forest that looked like something out of Lord of the Rings. This opened out into a steep boulder field, where we did lots of rock-hopping and scrambling until we came to a high cirque. Fifty feet below was a blue-green lake about a quarter-mile in diameter. Steep mountains rose around the other three sides, and the portion directly across from us was topped by a glacier. Huge chunks of the glacier had broken off and fallen into the lake. Matt and Jon managed to leap from the shore onto small ice floes, and from there onto larger ice sheets until they got more than halfway across the lake. Later we took our lodgings within the park in a cabin big enough for all of us, and our host and hostess prepared a huge salmon for us in a wood-fired oven.
For our fourth day the plan had been to start with a longer hike up to another glacier, but as we drove north along a Pacific fjord, we saw a few dolphins out in the water. So we abruptly changed plans and our clothes, unloaded the boats, and headed out toward the dolphins. It took a while for them to decide we were worth investigating, but eventually we had at least 20 of them swimming around us. They would go right under our boats and emerge just a dozen feet in front of us, and they let us stay with them for nearly an hour as they slowly moved down the shore. When Matt did bow stalls it never failed to elicit more leaping from the dolphins.
When we had had enough, we dried off and continued up the road for a short hike up to another glacier-fed lake. This time we followed a thundering, high volume class V creek that flowed out of the lake. When we got to the lake we took a ride in a hand-made skiff equipped with a 15-hp outboard, which took us across the lake for a closer look at the glacier. By the time we got there, though, the low clouds completely obscured it, but at least the boat ride was fun. Eventually we made our way to a cabin amidst a working farm overlooking beautiful Lago Verde, where we spent two nights.
The next day the weather was still cool and gray, and we headed to the bigger volume of the Rio Figueroa. There were two rapids that needed to be shore-scouted, and I elected to walk the second of them, a very long rapid that just had too many places where I could mess up. Fortunately Jon paddled my boat down through most of it — otherwise it would have been a class V portage — and I didn't have any trouble paddling the last part. We were all cold when we took off, and we had to kill an hour or two while we waited for the road to reopen after being closed most of the day for repairs to the drainage system. So Matt built a small fire under the bridge that marked the take-out, and we had a nice time sipping our Pisco sours while enjoying its warmth.
The sun returned intermittently the next day, our first on the big, pushy Futaleufú. I love this river, with its huge wave trains, crazy, boiling eddy lines, and diagonal waves that will typewriter you just where you don't want to go if you're not paying attention. We paddled the Terminator section, so named for the class V rapid of the same name, which only Matt and Jon ran. My favorite part was the back-to-back rapids Khyber Pass and The Himalayas. Kyhber pass consists of a few holes that need to be missed as you work your way right to left to line up on The Himalayas, a huge wave train with trough-to-peak heights of up to 15'. Since the waves were so big, I had to actively muscle my way up them, and I found myself breathing hard by the time I got to the eddy at the bottom.
The Bridge-to-Bridge section we paddled the next two days was similar in nature: nice big wave trains, some big-water surf spots, ridiculous boiling eddies, and a rapid called Big Pillow that I managed to flip in both days. We only needed to scout one rapid known as Mundaka. This was similar to Khyber Pass in that it was another work-right-to-left to line up for a huge wave train, but the difference between Mundaka and The Himalayas is that the biggest wave in Mundaka is an exploding one. Despite my best efforts to paddling hard, I still got pushed into the meat of it, where the force of the breaking wave flattened me onto the back deck before I went upside down. I'm glad I've got a decent roll, and I'm sure Matt and Jon were, too. In fact, nobody swam on the whole trip.
It was very sad to have to leave the Futa. By now we had worked our way north nearly 200 miles from Balmaceda, and we spent our last night in a hotel in the coastal town of Chaitén. The next day we took a 9-seat Cessna up to Puerto Montt, where we spent the afternoon shopping and eating fabulous seafood. That evening we said our goodbyes and flew up to Santiago for the overnight flight home.
I hated to leave. If I could have figured out a way to do it, I would have gladly stayed longer.