The sun has finally started to break here in Pucon, Chile, which has led to warm temperatures and high water on the snow fed rivers such as the Puesco, and had allowed some of the rain fed rivers like the Nevados and Coilaco to start to drop a little. Pucon, Chile, is a class V kayakers paradise offering big clean drops to manky boulder strewn river beds that require your A-game. It also offers a relatively warm region to boat in during the northern hemispheres winter months. Pucon has had relatively dry summers (the northern hemisphere’s winter) for the last few years and well that’s changed this year. With over 12 feet of rain already this summer the rivers have been quite high. However last week the weather decided to dry out a bit and the sun has been shining.
With a group of Demshitz and Kayak Pucon employees we headed out to the Nevados early in the first week of December. After a class V shuttle up a steep dirt road we made our way down to the river through cow pastures passing some calves on the trail to the water. A quick warm up leads right to large horizon line that is created by an awkward boof into a large boiling eddy that feeds into fast smooth slide with a kicker that will send you airborne at the bottom if you are not careful. If you aren’t feeling it at this point you may want to consider walking out. After another little chunky rapid you eddy out on river left to see your next horizon line. Dropping into low angle left to right slide (making sure you don’t get pushed right) you come to the lip of Wall Falls, a 20 footer that lands with the river making an immediate left hand turn ten feet from the lip. Make sure to eddy out here and look back up stream to watch your buddies drop in to this amazing gorge. At this point there is not much turning back. You are in the heart of the first gorge which isn’t very long but has some nasty holes that need to be punched with the final hole having a great boof of the right side (you don’t want to fall in on the left side of this one). After a few class III rapids you come to an eddy where you can scout the mandatory 20 foot TDUB crack drop. From here you have a the perfect auto boof into a recirculating eddy where you can get out and portage the Epicocity portage rapid or if the level is low enough you can make the ferry and run the rapid. Shortly after the portage rapid there is anther portage rapid which has a very awkward hard to catch small eddy on river right. Downstream you have Dulce Amore which is the best boof on the river coming left to right and boofing off the right wall into an aerated pocket feeding to the next manky rapid. Boof the coffee tongue (those of you not familiar with Rodrigo’s directions a coffee tongue is a rock boof) to avoid the disgusting pocket hole backed up by an undercut wall on the right and very little room to recover before the next manky little rapid. If you can catch the eddy on the left after the coffee tongue boof the left channel is open avoiding the manky rapid. A few more little rapids and then make sure to catch the eddy on the left before the next horizon line which is the rarely run Demshitz drop which has still been too high to run this year.
After a stout day on the Nevados we went in search of an easier more mellow day. The Desahue is supposed to be similar to the Little White, pushy water with clean drops and big holes with a clean 30 footer (the Ojos). However once we got to the upper put in Nate Garcia admitted that the level was higher then he had ever seen. Higher then the day in which their group had two swimmers and lost two boats about a month prior. With a marginal rapid just above the mandatory portage Muerte we decided to drive down and hike into the portage trail on river left to see what that would show us. Upon getting back to river level at the put in below the portage there wasn’t an eddy in site and every rock was underwater. Okay, we decided the our best option would be to just head down to the take out and hike up the last four or five drops and route the 30 footer at the take out a few times. What we were treated to was some very fun ledge drops with some stout holes. I missed timed my boof stroke of the second drop and had to fight my way out of the backwash of the hole just in time to see a paddle being thrown through the air towards the next drop. John apparently had hit the hole and lost his paddle hand rolled up and Nate had tossed him his paddle just as he was about to go over the lip of the next drop, a perfect left to right fading boof off a diagonal at the lip. Chris wasn’t so lucky as he tried to plug her deep and came up missing a third of his paddle. Impressively he rolled up with one blade and made the hard ferry with one blade back to river left where our vehicle was and opted on shooting photos for the rest of the day. The Ojos had a rolling reconnecting entrance that you tried to punch through the seam at the lip in order not to get taken deep at the bottom. As a tourist attraction there were plenty of trails and stairways that made multiple runs quite easy. Although it wasn’t that easy to break through the seam coming off lip to get your boof stroke, the landing was very aerated and quite soft. We all had some really nice lines and some that went over vertical. One blown skirt in the landing and another broken paddle by Andy but all smiles.
The next day we headed back out to the Puesco. This time to run the whole thing upper and lower sections. Shortly after putting on right before the biggest rapid of the run Tres Troncos I got to test out the flotation and swimability of my Green Jacket (thank you again for such a great pfd Astral). The upper Puesco at medium flows is high high water West Prong, the common description of the upper Puesco rapids was “just get ready for fight club”. No eddies, 1,000 boofs, holes that you want nothing to do with on a river you do not want to swim on (I consider myself very lucky for where I did swim), and don’t expect to see anything as you will have water in your eyes the whole time. Find someone who knows the upper to follow and don’t expect to be able to follow their lines exactly. The Puesco is a hard run to portage rapids although most rapids can be scouted there are plenty of undercuts, sieves, and wood to make for a very stressful day. Needless to say I felt some relief when we made it to the lower that I still had a good recollection of. After the awesome wave boof to punch the two holes down the left (my favorite rapid of the lower Puseco) I ended up splatting the left wall and getting cartwheeled in a hole. I rolled up with a grin on my face happy to be out of the hole and in the eddy until Nate informed me that I was now missing a blade on my paddle. The rest of our run went with out incident and paddling out the boogie water we were treated to some of the best views in the area. After such an intense run it’s nice to be able to unwind and float while taking such natural grandeur that surround us in the Puesco valley. It was also pretty easy for us to get a shuttle back up to the car by hitching a ride with the local road construction crews. The Puesco pass in the process of being paved all the way from Pucon to the Argentina boarder.
Another day on the Nevados then we after receiving news two days ago of the expected passing of my grandfather we thought the best way to celebrate his life and all the teachings I learned from him was to grab a bottle of wine, do a bit of exploring and park and huck the salto Coilaco. With some marginal directions we were on our way out of town and winding through dirt roads littered fields that all looked the same. Our directions were not those from the guide book. Ours were, take the road after the puente de Coilaco and park along a field and jump the fence and walk to the falls. Well the hole road was fields from one bridge to the next which only left about five kilometers of field to search. Upon receiving word from a local at the bus stop there was a cascada just up the road from where we stopped to talk to him drove up to a 30 foot water fall coming out of a very tight log filled mini gorge that we later found out to be the un-run mini gorge of the Alto Coilaco. Back to our original plan scour the fields along the road until we found the falls. It was worth it though. The salto Coilaco is a perfect 30 footer with a nice eddy right above the lip that led to a left stroke down the tongue and tuck into the deep pool at the bottom. As a southeastern boater now we have very few waterfalls to practice on so I took full advantage hiking up and running her eight times that day. I couldn’t have thought of a better way to celebrate the day, running a beautiful waterfall many many times and sharing some good red wine with some good friends.
I’m feeling the 240 feet of vertical that I dropped yesterday and I think our whole group is in agreement a day of rest is in order. Boats need to be repaired, bodies need some rest, and updates and contact with home always feels good. We are continuing to have fun down here in Chile, everyone who has thought about making the trip, it is well worth it. Thank you again to Astral for providing such great safety gear for all of us out here that find the need to push ourselves.
Ciao-
Adam Bixby
I learned a lot and will be more prepared when I swim next…we are always in between swims.
