Saturday, April 26, 2008

Chile

(photos by Martin Norment)
Our first stop in our 2 month journey was the Rio Maipo. A high desert river forty five minutes out of Santiago. The Maipo is continuous class III-IV and provided a great jumping off point from our month long break of kayaking for the year.


Josh Bechtel

After a long drive we arrived at the Siete Tazas or seven teacups in Spanish. These seven drops were carved out deep in an amazing gorge.


Dave Zinn


Jones Cochran

The most anticipated stop of our trip was the town of Pucon. Legends have it that this area was created by the kayaking god Rahkma Kahn for the sole purpose of hucking sick drops every day. The town is located between an amazing lake and the most picturesque volcano in the world, Villa Rica. We spent most of our time on the Upper Palaguin with some runs down other runs such as the Trancura and Liacura.


Davis Gove


Josh Bechtel

A short drive from Pucon led us to the steep and clean Rio Fuy. The run started out with small class III creeky and slowly culminated to a steep section consisting of a 20 some odd footer and a couple 10 foot boofs.


Nate Garcia


Martin Norment

Our last stop was the Futaleufu river in southern Chile. This area is considered the gateway to Patagonia and is full of huge volume rivers towering mountains and vast glacial ice fields.


Nate Garcia

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