The boys put in some hard work to make our third day on
the Middle Alseseca possible. On day two they ran one serious kilometer
long section that will be covered when I get pictures come in, as I was
sick that day and hiked out. That will be considered day two of on the
water exploration. If you’re adding up the numbers from
previous
posts you would note that in two days we covered about three
kilometers, not the six kilometers planned. Thanks to great liaison
work by our local shuttle driver Israel, he had figured out two access
points that were not on the map. One of these points was a Trout
Farm/Restaurant owned by the amiable Pepe, who let us use a trail on
his property for river access. The second day the group had hiked out
at the Trout Farm, feasted at Pepe’s restaurant and decided
that
the next portion of river dictated a full days scout, which was
completed while I was recovering from illness for another day in
Tlapacoyan.
Scouting all day revealed a large entrance drop, followed by a gigantic
waterfall that required a throw and go or rappel portage, and a blind
corner that eluded scouting. The topographic map showed that shortly
after the major portage there was some gradient and a canyon, then a
confluence and things should mellow out to the gradient of the road
side
section. That’s right,
on the Middle Alseseca the mellow,
borderline flat-water sections promised gradient like
that.
Stories of the entrance drop had me nervous, the report
was of a tricky, folding twenty footer into a sixty to seventy foot
slide with a questionably clean landing. Eric Seymour and Phil Boyer
were both out due to illness, but Eric came along to shoot video and
stills from the canyon rim. Our group was down to Ben Stookesberry,
Rafa Ortiz, Nick Troutman and myself. We quickly made our way down the
trail, seal launched in and only twenty yards into the run were out of
our boats to scout the big slide. We ended up spending a lot of time at
the slide, getting filming and photography angles set, as well as
discussing how clean the bottom was. From up on top it looked pretty
bad, a large jet of water was spraying up at a forty-five degree angle
from the bottom left side, and the previous scout revealed the bottom
right side didn’t go at all. To me it looked like there might
be
a rock shelf slightly underwater in the landing, but Ben was sure it
was clean due to the age of the river, basalt riverbed, and was
convinced that the spray was from the velocity and angle of water on
impact. He sure can make that Geology Degree come in handy on the
river. The inherent danger involved in a drop of this height, combined
with the danger of a line that has serious consequences, added to that
the entrance drop was not trivial posing quite a hazard on its own,
made this drop stout to say the least. The entrance was composed of a
folding, twenty-foot waterfall into a small punchbowl. All of the water
from the base of the falls was moving into the left wall, and then
after pushing into the wall it divided a small amount of water
downstream to the slide, and most of the water went back into the
waterfall, only to go down deep and emerge on the alleyway into the
slide. All these dangers aside we felt the drop could be run with
relative safety, and we setup as much safety as possible to extract a
swimmer from the initial punchbowl. In reality we all knew swimming up
against the wall was not an option, but felt we could avoid the
situation.
Ben
Stookesberrry and Rafa Ortiz scouting “Trucha Falls”
Nick Troutman was fired up about this drop and
stepped up
to the plate once Ben, Eric and I were ready to shoot and Rafa was in
the safety position. Nick cleaned this drop with no problems, and
although he did get pushed into the left wall of the bowl he had no
problems moving back out into the current and getting left again on the
slide. His line is in the trailer, bright green Mega Rocker on the big
slide in the middle of the trailer.
Nick
Troutman with the fitting name on “Trucha Falls”
Nick’s clean line got Rafa all stoked about that drop, as if
he
wasn’t already, and he headed to his boat and nailed a
similar
line.
Rafa
Ortiz on the entrance drop of “Trucha Falls”
Now
it was my turn, and I was having second thoughts about running this
rapid. I was pretty worried about running the entrance drop, I had made
a large mistake on this expedition. I had heard horror stories of
flying with a kayak, and in light of that I brought down a beat up
Pyranha Burn, Small, that I had only paddled a handful of times and
only marginally liked before coming down, planning to leave the boat in
Mexico. Once in Mexico I quickly figured out that this boat was way too
small for me to expedition boat in, resurfacing was becoming a huge
issue, as were ledge holes and getting stuck in the bottom of most of
the waterfalls we ran. The pure size of this drop was too, with my
largest drop before a comparably paltry thirty to thirty-five feet.
With the folding entrance drop I knew I would go deep, but would I
resurface before being on the left wall? Eventually with some
encouragement from Ben and realization that this is what I had come to
Mexico for, I headed up to my boat. I did go deep on the entrance,
resurfaced about six feet off the wall and popped a quick roll before
contact with the wall. As I made the move left across the lip of the
slide I had no time to notice how big it was, I was too focused on
keeping my boat left and straight towards the bottom. Right before
hitting the boil at the bottom I got a small skip from the slide and on
contact with the water had my paddled ripped out of my hands. I tried
several hand rolls but wasn’t able to roll, swam, and found
myself standing in three feet of water off to the right of the slide. I
quickly drained my boat and grabbed my camera to get pictures of Ben.
Ben had a bit of a bold plan for “Trucha
Falls”. His plan was to take down all the ropes we had used
to
move people up and down the cliff for safety, then seal launch in from
fifteen feet above the slide, land in the alleyway entrance and drop
the slide. Ben reassured us all that he had been practicing seal
launches for the last year and was all about this. I got setup at the
bottom and sun came out, giving us spotty lighting on the slide.
After
a few tense moments we heard a whistle blast and then Ben came
screaming down the left slide of the slide.
High fives all around, and we paddled forty yards
downstream to the lip of the monster waterfall. Nick gave it some
serious thought while we all worked hard and persuading him that the
twenty foot sliding entrance would give you an auto-boof off the eighty
to one hundred foot waterfall. Scouting revealed that rappelling would
be a pain due to thick jungle growth down the cliff, and the throw and
go would be enormous because the jump spot was above the lip of the
waterfall. We quickly decided on the jump due to ease of use, and
comparable safety to rappelling with a machete to clear out the
undergrowth. I led the way on the jump and it was much larger than
expected, even with a perfect landing it was a painful impact.
Rafa Ortiz jumping the auto boofing big boy.
He
jumped from the rock at the very top of the image.
Nick
Troutman, getting some off the same jump.
We were all wondering what we would find downstream, did all the
gradient get eaten up by the monster waterfall, or were there several
more significant drops before the confluence? The pool from the
waterfall drained into what looked like a boxed in twenty footer, and
we all got out to scout.
You might wonder what’s going on here,
as pictures
and video can’t do justice to this abnormality. The water
falls
off a beautiful twenty-foot waterfall, directly into a lava tube. It
then proceeds underground about fifty feet, and resurfaces directly
above the confluence with a tributary that dumps water off multiple ten
to fifteen foot waterfalls into the river. Spotty lighting made
photographs worthless, and words do nothing to describe the beauty of
this spot. At the confluence the river curved around the corner
dropping a sizable amount through vertical walls. A quick scout showed
us one of my favorite rapids of the whole trip, a fun slide that
dropped about thirty feet, was big and splashy with a large friendly
hole at the bottom. The gradient really did mellow out after this, and
we ran boulder gardens that still necessitated scouting due to the
vertical canyon walls, and were all relieved when after a kilometer of
boulder gardens we were at the footbridge that wasn’t on the
map,
but was discovered by Israel. We rejoiced to be done with one of the
major gradient sections of the Middle Alseseca, and hiked out a steep
two miles to road access.