THE RIO GARICHINE

The rio Gariche is one of the few unscathed rivers along with the Gualaca and the Mijgual, which flows from the mountains in the Province of Chiriqui down to the sea without the interruption of any Hydroelectric schemes. Starting in the mountain town of Volcan, right at the base of the Large stratovolcano Called Baru, it plunges off the plateau at 1400 meters down to the ocean, passing under the interamerican highway on the way down.

I had my eye on the upper and middle sect ions for some time, being pretty sure they had never been explored by Kayak before and as the river seemed to pass through a section of Chiriqui which has no real road access and that seemed fairly untouched, at least that is in the river valley itself.

The put in was at a convenient bridge at 1320 meters of altitude, and the first real take out, without the drama of cutting through the forrest was at the next bridge over the river at 260 Meters above sea level.

This latter bridge allows access to the lower section of the river which is a long fun grade 3 down to the take out at the Inter American Highway, halfway between the small town of Concepcion and the Frontier of Costa Rica at Paso Canoas, this being around 100 Meters above sea level, I had run this a few times before and it was always worth the trouble.
So this left the upper and middle section of the river and a drop of 1060 Meters in 32 kilometers, an average of 33M per kilometer.
It had to be done in the hight of the wet season to make sure there was enough flow and as it turned out even then it was fairly low, one had also to time it that the river was not in flood, as I knew little of what to expect once in the Valley and committed.

From personal observation every river is different as to what kind of rapids and obstacles you may encounter, Gradient plays a big part as well as volume but consider this, a river made up of placid sections which lose gradient over short distances, ie pool drops can be a very different beast than a constantly dropping river with long interlocked rapids. The rock which the waterway cuts through plays a prominent role in the make up of the types of hydraulics encountered, hard granite will be cut with narrow gorges and waterfalls and can make the rapids very powerful, whereas soft volcanic rock can cut very deep gorges with fewer waterfalls and constant white water.
From poring over the air photos of Google Earth it seemed that the upper section from 1320 meters to around 750 meters of altitude had the greatest inclination with the crux being 1100 meters through to 750 meters, there seemed to be quite a few gorges also.
To be honest it looked like at least three days if not four to cover the distance and drop, which meant carrying a lot of gear, apart from the regular kayak stuff there was camp gear, warm clothes, cooking equipment, ropes and climbing gear as well as the usual cameras to record it all.

By the time I had it all together there was over 70 items weighing a total of over 16 kilos, I had shaved it right down, half a toothbrush, half a comb, one pair of shorts and lycra pants with a T shirt, A hammock and flysheet, a small alcohol warmer, 40 meters of rope, harness karibeeners bolts and hammer, drill etcetera. This was going to make the kayak heavy for sure.
So it was during mid October a few days after some heavy rains had swept through the mountains, that I arrived at the put in with all the equipment stashed in the back of the Blazer, having got for up at 4 am to get this thing underway I was able to have everything out on the road by 7-30am at the little road bridge.
The caretaker of the small farm adjacent to the put in kindly allowed me to park the truck inside his field which saved me the problem of taking it back into town some three kilometers distant, it also got me on the creek pretty fast.
The water flow this high up was pretty dismal and the creek itself was hardly six meters wide at the most.
So after packing up the equipment and food in the kayak and promising That I would be back for the truck in three days it was time to launch.
The creek started out uneventfully, and I was quickly to find out that the biggest problem that I Was to encounter, was the large quantities of wood and branches brought down by landslides caused by the recent rains. The creek dropped steeply and the trick was not to get swept into some of these sieves, they were thickly matted and full of bits of garbage, but the current swept through the dense traps with some speed and power, getting out would be unlikely and it would be a sticky end.
This meant I had to stop and scout quite a lot especially if it was particularly steep, or the creek disappeared around a blind bend.
The generally low water flow was therefore a bit of a godsend, and I am not sure It would have been possible with higher flows, as it was I nearly got decapitated by some barbed wire strung across the river, just getting under it in time.
Despite these unforeseen difficulties good time were made dropping 150 meters in altitude fairly quickly, there was some pretty good creeking also, where the rapids were clean it was fast technical and fun.
I have to explain here as it will shed light on the following events, the kayak was an old, that is three seasons old Dagger Mamba 8.1, a great kayak, but now with quite a few repairs, of which I had melted steel mesh into the cracks and then welded them, There was still a very large dented section in the bottom from the previous years bad pin, you get the picture, it was not a picture of health.
So it was no surprise when with the beating it was now taking that a couple of cracks should open up, there was little I could do and so kept going.
This meant that the boat took water, and as the days unfolded it got worse and worse. At this point though it was not too bad and I most certainly was not about to abort the mission for this small detail.
So throughout the day the altimeter in my watch unwound, the kayaking was fast and fun and I was able to stay out of the clutches of the dreaded wood jams, also the garbage was becoming scarcer as I put distance between myself and the town, not too bad.
So in the afternoon around three o clock without much of a break I was starting to think about giving it up for the day, the altitude was about 980 meters and the river was pretty steep at this point. I had guessed the crux would be around the 1100 meters to 700 meter point and it was pretty much working out that way.
The creek dropped through some steep boulders and powerful water directly ahead and after negotiating these I could see that the walls were closing in and the water flow went hard to the left, dropping down a grade four rapid some five meters.

I eddied out to the right and looked at this hydraulic, it looked do able and I nearly went for it, but smartly decided to investigate a bit better, I am glad I did, the water squeezed between the small canyon walls and then dropped out of sight.
I was with some difficulty able to climb up the rock wall to the right hand side, and then drop down to the base of the first grade four rapid, it was really slippery and the going was a bit sketchy, but it got me a view of the next section. The creek dropped over a ledge some four meters into a powerful cauldron, and then straight over the lip of a large waterfall, which proved difficult to scout from this point.
The best thing for me was to porter the falls to the right by climbing straight up into the jungle and then try and make my way along and around the cascades, with this in mind I made my way upward leaving all the gear at the rocks on the side of the creek. Very quickly I ran into a wasps nest and got the crap stung out of me, there was no way past it, these small black, almost invisible little sods pack a punch and are pretty territorial, the first you will know of it is the pain they inflict.
Getting round them made the path a bit more difficult but generally luck was with me as I encountered a small jungled terrace above, this lead in the direction I wanted to go. Retracing my path I was able, with a lot of exertion get the kayak and all the gear up to this flattened section then in the direction of the river flow that was right below me, and by the sound of it I had been able to get past the falls, albeit still quite a way above the river now.

It had been a good day all in all, the weather had held perfect and I had managed to descend some 420 vertical meters of good boating at class four, So with the way ahead being now blocked by a vertical cliff down which came a thin cascade, I decided to make camp, and quite a spot it was.
The thundering main waterfall was pretty much right below, and by going upward I was able to get good drinking water out of the stream, before it plunged down the cliff ahead of me, the ground was relatively flat and the jungle not too thick.
Howler monkeys could be heard on the opposite side of the canyon, which was much steeper and thickly forested. The whole place had a primordial atmosphere.
After setting up camp and eating a basic meal of Chinese noodles and dried meat I turned in.
Sleeping in a hammock, under a flysheet I passed a wonderful night with the water hammering away below, the moon came up around nine pm bathing the forrest in its silver lighting with the trees casting their dark shadows, Being tired enough to sleep well, certainly helped.
The morning was dry and cool, after a quick breakfast I broke the camp and got everything ready to make the next move, this was basically to let the kayak and myself down about a 33 meter face of mud, trees and loose rock to the the small creek, which joined the main river near the base of the waterfall.

Using the climbing gear I had brought along it was easy enough to maneuver the boat down the cliff and then abseil to the base of the waterfall of the tributary creek, the only mishap was dislodging some lose rocks down onto the kayak, luckily no real harm was done.
I was able to jumar back up the rope and then by letting myself back down on a double rope and by using a convenient tree midway down, made it to the bottom in two abseils.

Making my way to the main river, I found that the waterfall which had barred my way the day before, poured some twenty meters down into a large pool, which in turn was raised up some five meters above the creek level where I now found myself. Unfortunately it was too difficult to climb up and get a look at the depth of at the base of the falls where the water impacted the pool, this would have been good to know, because although it would certainly be a serious move, I felt as long as the pool had some depth then this could have been run at grade 5+, a grade five lead in to the lip of the fall would mean dropping the grade four rapid and then a boof into the cauldron above, before going over the lip of the falls to pencil into the pool below, one can but dream.

In saying all this, the five meter falls from the pool above me, dropped into no more than thirty centimeters of water, so no guarantees of sufficient water depth in the pool at all, this is something I have seen before here, twenty meter falls dropping into water at most one meter deep, so nothing can be taken for granted.
Back to reality and the river now seemed to descend without sign of another large cascade, I got the boat down the last of the tributary creek and prepared for a good day on the river.

The altitude now read some 840 meters or so, the whole falls seemed to have dropped some thirty five meters in all and presented a powerful overall picture.

At this point the river had cleaned up and was again in the pristine state which all nature should be found, the garbage was largely now gone from the river and the kayaking although somewhat bony was enjoyable, some of the problems of the excess fallen wood had receded and the only shadow was the sinking boat.
The few cracks in the bottom were joined by friends, so there was a positive party of the damned things, which meant I had to stop every twenty minutes to let the water out, the already overloaded boat would become sluggish and unresponsive not to mention difficult to turn, this would then mean upending it on the bank to open the drain plug and let the water out.
Along with regular scouting of steep sections it was pretty exhausting, but I was making good time nonetheless the altimeter on my watch unwound.
The kayaking was technical, the rapids fast and the scenery outstanding, the rest was just unimportant.

The weather was now overcast and threatening some rain for later on and I did not want to loose too much time, but the kayak was also taking a lot of water so I decided to stop and at least try and effect a repair, weighing the time this would take against the advantage of reducing the water flowing into the boat.
To do this meant taking everything out and drying it as best I could then sticking duct tape over the cracks, unfortunately getting the thing dry enough to get the tape to stick inside, proved too difficult, so in the end I made do with placing various strips over the cracks on the outer shell and calling it good to go.

Well it did get me about half an hour to an hour of respite before the tape was torn off by the rocks of the shallow sections of the riverbed, then it was back to draining the boat at regular intervals.
In fact it was becoming obvious that this was going to be a race between the river, altitude, distance to run and the kayak sinking, which of them was going to win was at this stage was anyones guess.
So with all this in mind when I braced heavily against a rock and heard a pretty audible crack from the paddle it did not help, as the thing is pretty heavily taped to help with the grip, it was not immediately obvious what had occurred, but with the loose action of the righthand blade I was fast coming to the conclusion it had snapped.
When I first got the paddle I had cut off the blade to change the angle from some 45 degrees of feather, to zero degrees feather as that is what I use. Feather being the different angle from one blade to the other, which is used on flat water paddles to reduce windage and has unfortunately, in my opinion stuck around for whitewater kayaking, my view being why complicate things right side to left, they should be equal, which in turn makes reaction faster.
It had snapped where I had re glassed it using carbon fibre tape, luckily I had used a sleeve and it was this that was now saving the day, so to get through I stopped and used electrical tape which was packed for this sort of emergency to re bind the blade, this worked albeit with a little wobble.
It was well into the afternoon, I ate some food and got going just as it started to rain I kept on until a large tributary came into the river from the east which almost doubled the water flow.
This immediately placed me on the map and I had now reached the altitude of around 500 meters and from this point on the kayaking changed with the face of the river, it became a grade three to four affair and was just fantastic, the scenery was pleasant the rain had reduced to almost nothing and it was just plain fun.
The kayak though was now requiring emptying every fifteen minutes and I was becoming exhausted, so at around four pm I found a flat section of riverbank some fifteen feet above the river at a large rapid which was going to be the mornings first challenge.
Unfortunately the waterproof dry bags were not up to being constantly submerged in the back of the leaky boat so all the camping gear was wet, I got the flysheet and hammock up, but the sleeping bag and my spare clothes were sodden.

I changed into them anyway to use body heat to dry them, the rain had also made everything dank, so it was not as comfortable a camp as the previous night, but due to the lower altitude it was not too bad.
I ate pretty well and got some hot chocolate down, for this a small alcohol food serving warmer was used, they are really lightweight and reliable although they do not have the power to actually boil water, but get it warm enough for Chinese noodles and hot drinks.
I carry water sterilization tablets as a clean supply of drinking water is not always available, as was the case here where it was the main river water that I was drinking.
I was pretty cool and stiff in the morning, the previous days exertions were making themselves felt, and the night had been little cold especially towards the early hours of the morning.
There was no chance of fixing any of the cracks on the kayak as everything was too wet and there was little chance of drying anything in the tepid morning sun, so I broke the camp and got going,

the water flow was good and it was straight into the first rapid which pretty much flowed straight into the second, this stretch being pretty a consistent grade three+.

Apart from having to stop more frequently to administer to the sinking boat, it was really great going, the river was beautiful, deep canyons, waterfalls and consistent but fun rapids made the lower mid section of the Gariche to be the jewel of the river.
I pulled the boat out on the bank as the sun was now pretty powerful, which dried it pretty quickly, I had a couple of small tubes of epoxy which were brought as part of the repair kit, along with the duct tape, repairs were made using this and allowed to dry for an hour,The paste seemed to have dried fairly well, though I doubt it could be called completely cured.

This lasted almost two hours before the cracks opened up again and then it was back to the draining every ten to fifteen minutes on the the water.
The only consolation was that it looked like I was pretty close to the finish line, another creek came into the river from the west and this placed me at some 320 meters of altitude and figuratively a stone throw from the take out bridge at 260 meters.
I entered a long narrow canyon where there were no serious hydraulics and the kayaking was linked grade three whitewater, just enjoyable

One last serious rapid which ran along a curved and undercut wall at grade four was the final serious challenge, and around the corner there appeared the dark iron suspension bridge, a car noisily traversed its length the steel decking clanking high above me, the paddle clapped on the side of the boat, the water sloshed, I stopped and remained still allowing the kayak to drift with the current, savoring the moment, knowing it would soon pass. The car was the first contact with our overcrowded world in two and a half days, it seemed a profound moment to be honest.

It was over aside the shouting so as to speak, the boat had remained afloat just long enough to make it, the paddle repair had held, it was a good feeling.