Last weekend it rained. A lot. If you broke away from watching kayaking videos at home, you'd have noticed that the road outside probably looked at least grade 2. So Earnie and Liam decided to go boating. As I was so keen to go boating too, i offered to tag along too and take photos, but the river was always going to be too hard for me. The river of choice was either the Etherow, or Heyden Brook, and maybe to squeeze in something a bit easier later on, but we didn't find time for that as you'll find out!
We headed over to the other side of Manchester to the Etherow and walked up to check it out. It looked GOOD! It was up on just below a six at the bottom weir, and raining a lot, (which continued literally all day!), but that was plenty enough water for this spate river to be officially classed as 'scha-weeeeet'.
Heading up to the top, we got a few looks at it, and then kitted up. I set off running down to get ahead and about a kilometre or so later bear grylls-ing it over rough, thick, wet, steep, crappy, wet, rocky, wet and wet ground, I was effing scorching in my drysuit, and still not at the top of the main gorge yet. Eventually the troublesome two came sauntering down and got out a bit further on and we traversed the gorge. Holy crap this river was good.
I set up to get some photos of the first drop, then we scouted the second. Liam and Stu both whizzed down effortlessly despite it looking sketchy as hell on first inspection, while I filmed, as they disappeared round the corner.
I hopped up, and set off bounding down the banks and spotted Liam in a tiny eddy backwards arguing with a scrapey rock, then carried on further to see earnies boat upside down, bridged across the river. Earnie had already calmly popped out and self rescued (see the gopro footage!), but was nowhere to be seen. Naturally I presumed he was dead when his boat finally washed down and he wasn't there or anywhere in sight, then had to scale a few rock faces before I got to where Liam had chased after him to see where the hell he'd gone. Sure enough he was alright even though it turned out he'd broken his thumb on another drop higher up the gorge section, but we were helpless to watch his boat disappear downstream while we struggled to scramble over the terrain. Earnie carried on to investigate while Liam rescued the paddles, and I climbed up to the road with all my gear to see ahead.
This river had so little in the way of eddies, so Earnie eventually stopped around the bend to spot an eddy for Liam to grab and get back out and search. While standing there looking at the eddy, he noticed a very faint flash of orange under the surface, which turned out to be his boat, completely submerged by a large rock at one end and a slab at the other, actually forming the eddy and a pushy drop!
At this point I realised in the panic my camera had got soaked, and when I Tried to take a photo, the screen went blugh and it died. For good. Its lived in a bag of rice for the last week, but hasn't recovered. I filmed from high above on earnies camera while they freed the boat, which was completely invisible underwater, struggling with fence posts not actually in the ground and the incredibly strong torrent. From where I was, the boat looked fine, but unfortunately, as you can see, it had a big ol' dent in the middle, and a very inverted nose!
I decided to head down the road to the get out to catch the boys paddle the last section, receiving many odd looks from drivers, clearly confused by my walking down the road in the middle of nowhere in drysuit, BA and helmet, carrying a peli case for one camera, a tripod, another camera with a hefty lens....and a badly bent brolly (for the camera!). I stood at the bottom and waited for Liam and Earnie to show. And waited with camera and brolly in hand. And waited. And waited. ...I knew as soon as I turned to leave, they'd surely appear and I wouldn't get the shot! An hour and a half later, the midges were biting. I was COLD. And miserable. And more rained on. And more cold. Finally, Earnies car appeared behind me, with an Earnie in it who'd presumed I was dead somewhere by now. Turns out they'd scouted the last section (which looked apparently awesome), but with broken thumb and boat, they'd decided not to run it and climbed out of the steep gorge to get the shuttle.
Anyway, with two confirmed alive, one boat confirmed in-need-of-a-nose-job, one camera gone to camera heaven, but great spirits after a fantastic bit of adventure boating, we headed home with not very many more hours left in the day! Despite my camera being deaded, I had a great time, and I didn't even get in a boat, so I can only imagine how good a day the others had! I look forward to being able to paddle the brilliant Etherow hopefully soon enough!
Adi
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