Magellan
didn’t find it; a route from the Andes through
Darwin’s “Green Jungle” to the
Pacific Ocean. Could there be a way to paddle
across the entire country of Chile? After reviewing
maps, and researching it in depth, I called Chris
Spelius. With Spe’s local knowledge, contacts,
and logistics capability, we determined that it
was possible on the Rio Palena. All sections of
the Palena had been run previously, the upper
section in whitewater boats, and the lower section
a few times in sea kayaks. But nobody, apparently,
had ever attempted the entire run from the border
of Argentina to the Pacific, across the entire
country of Chile.
It
was surprisingly easy to convince my unsuspecting
girlfriend Melissa, to join in the adventure.
Before we knew it, our February departure date
was at hand and we headed out from our apartment
in New York City, in snow flurries, bound for
Chile. Southern hemisphere “Austral”
seasons are opposite to the USA, so we would arrive
in Chile at the seasonal equivalent of early August.
We connected with the overnight Lan Chile flight
in Miami, arriving in the early am in Santiago,
and then continued on to Puerto Montt, where we
switched to a small “puddle jumper”
for the final 45 minute flight to the fishing
village of Chaiten.
Melissa
was particularly impressed by the creative use
of duct tape, and the breeze from missing door
gaskets on this flight segment. I was even more
impressed, riding shotgun, by the pilots use of
a handheld GPS to navigate in instrument conditions.
From Chaiten we headed out of town in a pickup
truck on the spectacular Andes to Ocean road.
The final four hours passed quickly with the scenic
beauty of traveling down dirt roads into the heart
of Patagonia, passing by pristine lakes, hanging
blue ice glaciers and the turquoise waters of
Rio Futaleufu, one of the most beautiful rivers
in the world.
Arriving
in the Village of Futaleufu was like traveling
back a hundred years in a time machine to Telluride.
The town has electricity and Internet access,
yet many of the kids still ride horses to school.
The locals are friendly, roosters crow, dogs bark,
and each little house has its own vegetable garden.
There are more horses than vehicles in the village.
Bunking
in a comfortable but rustic lodge we met with
our guide for the expedition, Pablo Gonzalez.
Pablo is an all-around great guy, and multi-talented
outdoorsman, fluent in the local language and
culture, with great people skills and an almost
clairvoyant “sixth sense” when it
comes to reading rivers.
We
spent the next two days with Pablo practicing
maneuvers on the nearby Rio Espolon. We spent
a lot of time working on ferries, eddy turns,
edging on re-entry to swift current, wet exits
and re-entries, swimming position, self rescue
and group rescue procedures. It took a while to
get comfortable in a 2-man kayak as we were used
to paddling singles. Having to make quick decisions
and execute complex maneuvers in tandem with your
partner takes practice (that’s why they
call them “divorce boats”).
Early
the next morning we piled in a truck with Spe
and Brian Beauleaurier, and, pulling a trailer
loaded with kayaks, headed off in a cloud of dust
across Chile. Our destination was the village
of Palena near the border of Argentina. Two and
half hours and 80 kilometers later we rolled into
the village of Palena, just like a scene from
an old TV episode of Gunsmoke. As we arrived we
encountered a cattle herd being driven through
town, I almost expected Hoss and Little Joe to
ride up and tell us there was trouble back at
the Ponderosa.
After
a series of wrong turns, we found a local farmer
with an ox cart awaiting our arrival to carry
our boats to the very out of the way put-in on
the border of Argentina. Spe had sent a short-wave
message to a local contact of his a few days earlier,
and asked him to relay the request to the ox cart
guy who lives way off the grid. The system actually
worked.
We
loaded the boats, and headed off down a hot dusty
trail toward the boarder, a distance of 4 –
5 kilometers, and inaccessible to any sort of
vehicle except an ox-cart. The scenery was spectacular
with open fields of wildflowers and the mountains
of Argentina in front of us. As it was an exceptionally
hot day, on arrival at the Palena we took the
opportunity to swim from Chile to Argentina across
the narrow tributary stream dividing the border.
Spe
and Brian paddled the upper Palena section with
us in whitewater boats, mostly for fun, but also
in case we got in trouble on the big water sections.
We ran the upper Palena with empty boats, encountering
a lot of smaller rapids. A couple of hours into
it we encountered a 3+, the crux of the upper
Palena. It was an “S” shaped bend
with a steep drop, big rocks mid channel, and
tangled trees on the precipitous banks making
it quite difficult to get around (we portaged,
Spe, Pablo and Brian ran it). By mid-afternoon
we had paddled back to the road at Palena. We
lugged our gear down the steep embankment, and
loaded the boats. Our amigos, Spe and Brian departed
back to Futaleufu, leaving the three of us to
begin the next leg of our journey toward the Pacific.
Immediately
upon launching from Palena we were in moderate
swiftwater, mostly class 1, and nothing bigger
than class 2 rapids. Our first night we camped
in a great spot on the distant fringe of a cattle
ranch. The following morning started with a tricky
rapid, a sweeping right turn followed by a hairpin
left with a steep drop. It was one of the tougher
pitches of the trip, and the rapids continued
with only brief interruptions for most of the
day. This section of the Palena has narrow box
canyons, steep walls, very rapid flow and sustained
vertical drop. Afraid to divert our attention
for more than a moment, brief glimpses away from
the river revealed a spectacular panorama of Andes,
lush forests, waterfalls and glacial peaks. We
paddled under a huge cliff with waterfalls, followed
by a long very winding section of the river. The
water was so clear you could look down and see
the bottom flying by.
There
was no way to scout the rapids due to the box
canyon nature of the terrain, and no way to walk
around or portage most of the rapids. This was
a hairy section of river and definitely not for
the faint of heart. Paddling a loaded 2 man sea
kayak in whitewater is a cross between rafting
and kayaking. We quickly learned it was usually
better to keep the rudder up in the bigger whitewater
sections.
About
mid-day the Rio Tigre entered from the left with
a massive convergence of the two dissimilar currents.
There were many more rapids below the Tigre with
drops and turns. By early afternoon we finally
got out of the canyon and onto a wider section
of the river. It had been raining off and on most
of the day, and the rain brought much more sediment
into the river, leaving it dark, deep, and really
creepy at times with low clouds, grey skies, wind
and rain
Mid
morning the next day the Palena merged with the
Rio Frio entering from the right. The Frio was
a big high volume river spewing turbid, super
cold glacial melt water. The Palena below this
point has very swift, cold murky water, literally
racing along. We ran rapid after rapid after rapid,
some running for hundreds of yards. The biggest
waves, and the toughest rapids of the trip were
encountered in this section. We had very little
time to enjoy the amazing scenery with our attention
focused constantly on the river in front, loaded
with sweepers and snags that could nail you quickly
with a momentary lapse in attention. To swim here
might be to die here without a wetsuit on (wetsuits
or drysuits might have been a good idea, hindsight
is always 20/20). If you crash and burn in a rocky
section you’ll probably flush out the bottom
somewhere, but if one of these snags gets you….
The river here has a massive amount of current,
edging was critical. In some places big pillows
of water a foot or more above the river level
would build up in hairpin turns, and once in a
while the massive boiling swirling currents would
grab our loaded two man boat and spin it around
like we were in the clutches of some giant submerged
fiend.
Early
in the afternoon we encountered our first signs
of civilization as we passed under a hand operated
cable tram, and then the “Road to the End
of the World” (the Careterra Austral) that
crosses the river on a bridge. Nearby is the town
of La Junta though we didn’t see it from
the river. In this area there a few farms and
a couple of remote fishing lodges as emerged from
the mountains into an area of flatter terrain.
With the less steep terrain the river moderated
considerably, allowing us an opportunity to savor
the sweeping vistas and tiny rustic ranchitos
that we encountered on the river banks. This evoked
images of what the US probably looked like at
the turn of the century. We located a great campsite
near some local hot springs, and experienced a
sense of relief brought about by clearing skies
and sunshine, along with the knowledge that the
most difficult portion of the river was behind
us.
The
whole character of the river changed the next
day as the terrain began to flatten out and the
river became calmer. In this section we saw lots
of flocks of birds, with shafts of sunlight coming
down in rays from the clouds, and Volcan Melimoy
and its hanging blue ice glaciers above us. It
was like a scene out of Conan Doyle’s “Lost
World”. If dinosaurs were still roaming
the earth this is where they would be. It was
like paddling through Jurassic Park. We encountered
shallows in places, which we got around without
too much difficulty with some pushing and dragging
for brief stretches. In a few places there were
still a some hairy rapids that we ran like a giant
slalom course between whole trees and giant snags,
with sharp turns and big sweepers mid-river.
On
the Palena you really have to be on full alert,
watching where you’re going. We had a few
“pucker moments” with submerged snags
hidden in the eddy lines in fast water. Left or
right? We had to choose which fork to take several
times with significant consequences. Pablo’s
experience was invaluable here. A couple of times
we looked back to whisper “thank God we
didn’t go that way”. There were monstrous
sweepers and snags in places, as if whole sections
of forests were deposited en masse by the early
spring snow melt and resulting runoff. Sometimes
the only navigable openings were only a yard or
two across between the roots and branches in the
swift moving water. It wasn’t particularly
difficult paddling, but the consequences of screwing
up were large. This was true of much of the Palena.
The danger factor was usually created by the objective
hazards of the sweepers and snags, less so by
technically complex rapids.
Later
in the day the terrain flattened even more with
the towering peak of Volcan Melimoyu with its
hanging blue ice glaciers now slowly receding
in the distance behind us. With about 55k to go
on the still swift river we camped above a gravel
bar, up on the sand, with a driftwood fire. We
spent a beautiful night camping under clear star-studded
skies under the Southern Cross. Only one more
day of easy paddling between us and the Pacific.
We
awoke to a beautiful warm, dry morning and the
best weather of the trip, light breeze and missing
boats. Holy shit, no kayaks. We had carried them
a long way up the gentle gravel river bar, but
with only some mysterious footprints in the sand
our kayaks had vanished sometime in the night.
Apparently the local gypsies, perhaps with the
unexpected tide, had absconded with the boats.
A newly constructed road was visible in the distance
so, having no viable alternative, we set off by
foot through the jungle-like terrain along the
river.
The
bushwhack took several hours lugging all our gear
with jury-rigged harnesses made from belts and
stuff sacks tied into make-shift packs using plastic
bags as slings . This was a difficult and unpleasant
slog. Visibility was limited to a couple of meters
by the dense foliage. We would leave Melissa with
the gear, then reconnoiter for viable routes through
the twisted roots, vines, and slime filled ravines,
shouting back and forth to keep our bearings.
It evoked images of pit vipers, creepy crawlers,
and the jungles of Vietnam except, thankfully,
nobody was shooting at us.
We
eventually emerged on the roadway, re-hydrated
at a small waterfall, lay on the rocks resting
for a while, and then hiked down the gravel roadbed,
still under construction, and not yet a traveled
way. A short distance farther we came to a gravel
slope used by the workers to access the river
where we miraculously found Pablo’s kayak
and paddle. We learned afterward that a local
fisherman from the village had found it in the
bushes downriver and kindly towed it up to the
gravel bar near the road, assuming correctly that
someone might need it. Some of our gear had been
pilfered, but at least we had our boat back.
What
had looked like utter defeat began to show a ray
of hope. We felt like the Argonauts of mythology,
pawns in a giant chess game being played by the
Gods. Viewing the recovery of the boat as a miracle
of sorts, we agreed that one of us should complete
the trip we had set out to do. At 5:00pm Pablo
set off down river in an effort to reach the Pacific
Ocean while I backtracked to the waterfall to
retrieve supplies we had cached there after getting
out of the jungle. Amazingly, an hour or so later
Pablo came paddling back upstream toward us, towing
the double kayak behind him, which he had found
in hidden in bushes a couple of kilometers downstream.
The
good news was we had recovered both boats; the
bad news was that we had only one paddle, the
others stolen or washed out to sea. It was after
6:00pm, we had two boats, one paddle, and we were
headed to the Pacific, which we would certainly
reach long after nightfall. But the weather was
good, skies clear, no wind, and we had come so
far that quitting now just wasn’t an option
we were willing to embrace. With almost no discussion,
we collectively decided to push on; experimenting
with towing rigs enroute and taking turns paddling.
We found it worked best paddling from the stern
of the double boat, pulling the single behind
on a short tether.
Later
that evening, just as dusk was turning to darkness,
we entered a narrow channel of the Pitipalena
Estuary, overhung by dense vegetation at the base
of the island of our destination village. While
paddling through the canal darkness enveloped
us completely and we paddled onward using a headlamp.
We exited the canal into a dark abyss maybe an
hour later. At this point we realized we were
in salt ocean water, evinced by the glittering
bioluminescent phosphorescence in the water, and
high salt content (by taste). The sea conditions
were totally calm, like a giant mill pond. We
soon realized that we were near low tide, and
as a result were on the wrong side of a multi-mile
long mud bar extending seemingly endlessly into
the dark void. Reconnoitering from the ridge of
the bar, we could make out distant lights that
we presumed were from the village of Raul Marin
Balmeceda. Because the village electricity is
supplied by generator, we knew we had to move
swiftly before the generator was shut down for
the night, which would cause us to lose our guiding
beacon.
As
the minutes ticked by we huddled and decided it
would probably be more efficient to drag the loaded
boats across the mud flats directly toward the
distant lights, instead of paddling further outward
an unknown distance to round the end of the bar.
The whole day was beginning to feel more and more
like an episode of “Survivor” gone
bad. With jury rigged cord harnesses we dragged
the boats for 50 paces or so at a stretch, huffing
and puffing until our heart rates were maxed out,
then we would rest for a couple of minutes, and
repeat the process over and over again. The distance
seemed endless, but was probably a bit less than
half a kilometer, which took nearly an hour of
serious aerobic humping. If any of us had been
predisposed to having the “big one”
it would certainly have happened there.
In
another time and place it would have been a beautiful
evening. Cool, clear, broken clouds overhead.
It was easy to imagine sitting on a porch somewhere,
sipping a beer with your feet on the railing.
The mud was loaded with bioluminescence and each
of our footsteps created a brilliant blue green
flash radiating outward as if we were wearing
giant iridescent snowshoes. Once we finally crossed
the bar and got back in the water we figured the
hard part was finally over. Not quite, however.
We next encountered head currents so strong we
came to the unfortunate realization that, though
still paddling, we were actually going backwards
when carefully marked against the distant shore.
The only way we could make progress was to take
turns paddling sprints with the lone paddle in
an effort to get closer to the shore and out of
the main current. Pablo and I took turns paddling
furiously, while Melissa served as coxswain from
the single boat behind. “Come on guys, give
me ten more, you can do it…paddle, paddle,
paddle” A seemingly endless time later a
moored fishing boat emerged from the darkness,
ever so slowly, like a ghostly apparition from
a surreal mist. Somewhere ashore a dog barked.
A
short time later we paddled up to the embankment
of the village of Puerto Raul Marin Balmeceda,
several wooden fishing boats on the beach, and
a lone light bulb hanging from a post. Dragging
our boats ashore we could make out a small traveled
way leading to a munchkin-like cluster of dwellings.
Accessible only by boat, this storybook village
is unplugged from the “real” world,
built on a broad sand spit between the Palena
and the Pitipalena Estuary. We had finally completed
our trip and reached our goal.
Minutes
later, at midnight, the local generator sputtered
to a halt and the few lights in town dimmed to
an orange glow, then vanished in the darkness.
The night became quite still. Then, as if on cue,
the canine residents of the village one by one
joined in an impressive primeval “group
howl”, like an extended family of wolves,
slowly reaching a crescendo under the dim moonlight
of the Patagonian sky.
-----
The
Rio Palena, like many other large rivers in Chile,
is threatened by massive hydropower projects,
so the opportunity to do this trip may not last
much longer. Your voice and support can make a
difference, and an outstanding grass-roots local
group supporting preservation of these rivers
is www.futafriends.org
I
was glad to have had both sea kayaking and whitewater
experience prior to the trip, and believe mandatory
preparation for this trip would include a minimum
of several days of serious whitewater training,
with at least two days of that training in a sea
kayak. While certainly helpful, ocean or flat-water
kayaking experience alone isn’t sufficient
preparation. You want to have a feel for fast
water, and plenty of practice in maneuvering heavy
loaded boats, ferrying, eddy turns, etc. It turned
out to be a great expedition, and a real adventure.
On average, we paddled about 8 hours a day, and
ran many, many sections of whitewater (maybe 60
-70 rapids total on the trip...we lost count).
The upper Palena has a class 3+ rapid. Most of
the rest of the Palena is class 1 & 2 with
an occasional 2+. The danger factor was usually
created by the length of the rapids, and the objective
hazards created by sweepers and snags, less so
by technically complex rapids. We estimate the
total distance run at about 225 kilometers, over
the 5 days.
This
trip is ideal for paddlers with intermediate to
advanced experience in both sea kayaking and whitewater,
with a genuine sense of adventure. Expect fabulous
scenery, blue ice glaciers, waterfalls, flocks
of birds, and primeval forests. At times we felt
like we were paddling through Jurassic Park. Also
expect rain and wind, and lots and lots of fast
water and rapids. The Palena is not without an
element of risk. To plan a trip get in touch with
Expediciones Chile. If you’re up for it,
go for it. The adventure of a lifetime awaits. |