by Tyler Curtis

Photos by: Jakob Sedivy

To celebrate Xmas we decided to head north to get on a few runs, which I haven’t paddled for a few years! Our first pit stop was the Rio Laja. This short section of whitewater is pure gold. It is combat paddling at its finest with little to no eddies and a continuous gradient which is full of sticky pourovers. None stop action for 3-4kms. The greatest part about his river is that you can walk the shuttle in a quick 20min.

At this point it was starting to get late so we decided that it would be the perfect place to camp for the night, enjoy some grilled sausages and beer, and celebrate Xmas eve. Nothing like a good fire, good friends, and sky full of bright stars!

I had heard about the expanding road into the Melado Valley, which is a tributary to the Rio Maule Valley and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to paddle this super remote river surrounded by beautiful Chilean Andes Mountain scenery. We first stopped in the town of Amerillo to get some beta on the water level, pick up a few things to eat for the night, and see about finding someone to help with shuttle. After some talks with the local mini-market owner, Luis Alejandro Salinas, he volunteered to join us for a night camping in the mountains to help us with our shuttle the following day!

We then spent midday in the local swimming hole hanging out with the local hoodlums and being the gringo attraction for everyone.
After a punishing 3 hour drive into the valley to the end of the road and put-in for the Rio Melado we found another choice camping location. We packed it in for the night and readied ourselves for the long day ahead..

In the morning we woke to a temperature of about 4 celcius..Cold! A quick breakfast of dinner leftovers and we were onto the water. The Rio Melado is a spectacular run. There is no real difficulty to it as it is the perfect class III-IV river with outstanding scenery. Everything can be scouted from your kayak. The whole run was about 18km in length and took us most of the day to paddle..
This was truly one of the great wilderness runs of Chile..

I will let the photos tell more of the story and the next up date is on its way.

Tyler Curtis

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Team News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.