Rio Cofanes Mission: Part Dos.

"First Impression" Jake deep in the Cofanes Gorge.

When we went to sleep, the sky was clear and the stars were shining.  When we awoke, everyone except for Jake "I´m the best and most prepared camper in the world" Ament was soaked, as it had rained for the majority of the night.  We decided it was best to pack up and get a move on.

Picking up where we left off, we paddled through some beautiful lava canyons, consisting of mostly class III and IV drops.  The beginning of our day was pretty mellow, but the scenery was absolute amazing.  Huge waterfalls dropped in from either side.  As we got deeper and deeper in to the Cofanes Gorge, the gradient began to increase and the flows became more and more channelized.  As it continued to rain, class IV became class V, and I began to wonder what we were getting ourselves in to.

Not a bad way to start out the day.

Walled in.

Crazy pink rocks.

Jake on some Cofanes boogie.

Dano enjoying the scenery.

When we began our trip, we had some very general beta on this run.  We know, for example, there was a single portage, which was very obvious, and was on river right.  We knew just below said portage, there was a 20 foot waterfall, which was clean.  We knew below that, the Cofanes converged with the Rio El Dorado.  And we knew that below the confluence, there was approximately 4-6 hours of whitewater before the take-out.  Other than that, we were on our own.

Snyder, Abe, and Brandon had about 1,000 cfs at the put-in, or about 200 more cfs than we did when we put-on.  As we continued down stream, the rain continued, and the gorge walls closed in around us.  After an hour and a half of warm-up,  we found ourselves running class V drop after class V drop.  Luckily for us, the region had been so dry, the water was not rising significantly...yet.

The dynamic of the river changed from giant boulder gardens to constricted, vertical drops, back to boulder gardens, and the gradient was not letting up.  I was out in front, with the portage in the back of my mind, but nothing obvious appeared for miles and miles.  At one point, I hopped out, thinking maybe we had arrived at the portage, but Jake dropped down and found a reasonably clean line through a big boulder garden rapid.

Finding a clean line.

Getting deeper .

Charlie boofin'.

Just downstream, we arrived at the portage, and understood what Brandon had meant by fairly obvious.  The river constricted down amidst giant boulder sieves and wood, so we hopped out and scouted out the best portage route.  Rather than scrambling up and down slippery boulders by the river bank, we opted for the high ground, which meant climbing through the jungle for an hour.  The rain increased as we portaged, and we wondered if it was going to flash before we had a chance to get to the confluence.

Portage...obviously.

Jungle portage.

As we finished the portage, we looked downstream to see the 20 footer.  Knowing it was clean, we spent minimal time trying to scout it.  Dano fired up the drop first, followed by Scotty, Charlie, Jake, and I.  Sweet!  The water had risen, but not in such a dramatic fashion that it prevented us from continuing down to the confluence.  Little did we know, our epic adventure was just beginning.

Scotty B. droppin' the 20 footer.

My line, Photo: Scotty Baker.

 

Arriving at the confluence, we found the El Dorado flooded, flowing at around 10,000 cfs.  It was HUGE!  We routed through the first rapid, dodging giant holes and crashing through giant breaking waves.  It took a rapid or two to adjust from creekin' mode to big-water mode.  We stopped and ate lunch, and discussed our game plan.  The water was rising, and we had about 3 hours of light left.  We decided to charge and cover as much ground as we could, hoping to arrive at the take-out before dark.  (We assumed at these flows, we would arrive at the takeout faster than our predecessors, I found out later they had similar water flowing in at the confluence).

Reminiscent of the Reventazon in Costa Rica, I lead our group through one huge class V rapid after another.  Craig ¨The Hammer¨ Parks taught me well, and I was able to read and run without any close calls.  After about 2 hours of non-stop big water action, our crew was exhausted, and decided it was a better idea to stop and camp for the night, rather than continue on and take the chances of exhausting our remaining daylight.  We finished day 2 with about 15,000 cfs pumping down the El Dorado. (Unfortunately I only managed these 2 photos of the big stuff.)

The bottom of a HUGE El Dorado rapid.

Scotty floating between rapids.

We found a spot with clean water and wet wood.  The rain had subsided, but the water was still rising.  Our gear was soaked from the previous night, so we spread our stuff out, in hopes that it would dry.  After widdling twigs for an hour or so, we got a fire going.  The water stopped rising as the sun set.  We ate some dinner, and crawled in to our sleeping bags, hoping for a dry night.

At about 1:30 a.m. it began to rain.  Scotty, Dano, Jake, and I sat up waiting for the rain to stop.  If it didn´t stop, we would have to make for higher ground, which would mean grabbing all our gear and climbing up in to the jungle.  Fortunately, it stopped raining after about an hour.  We fell back asleep, only to be woken up in the morning by more rain.  Over night, the water had dropped significantly, and rather than give it an opportunity to rise again, we rallied and pushed off to face the remainder of the run.

The rapids were still huge, and the canyon walls began to close in.  At one point, the river constricted down and jammed through a 10 foot wide slot, surrounded by undercut lava walls.  Sketchy, but no problem. After about an hour the walls fell away, and river flattened.  We had not only survived, but styled this run.  Awesome.

We cruised through 20 plus km of flat-water, and a final few km of huge water (pretty crazy), and arrived at the bridge of few miles outside of Lumbaqui.  We figure at the end of our run we had about 20,000 cfs or more.  Not bad.  We caught a super comfy bus, with AC and soft-core porn playing on the TV´s, and passed out until Baeza. What a trip!

Until next time...
Joe