Post exams, the cold weather February brought to Aberdeen wasn’t going to put me off my paddling.
Trixi came over for two weeks, so I took her along on a club trip on the Dee, which was her first real whitewater experience.
Gotta love old club kit - Trixi suited and booted
With no swims at all, even on the grade 3 Invercannie rapid, she did really well, and didn’t even complain about the cold once! The day was only marred slightly by some abuse form a grmpy fisherman, who wasn’t even fishing! I thought I’d escaped all that agro when coming up to Scotland!
The next day some of the club paddled the North Esk, which is one of the classic East Coast rivers. This was the first time I’d got round to paddling it, and I gather levels were on the low side of medium. I’d been previously told that it was a good grade 4 trip, and heard it described as Scotland’s version of the Upper Dart – but it really isn’t. It’s a nice and fun river, but (at the levels we had anyway) there were only really two grade 4 rapids, and it was more pool drop than the Dart. Still, it’s an excellent paddle if you’re in the area, just possibly a little overhyped. Maybe with more water it would become more continuous at the grade.
The first grade four is Triple Step (or Rocks of Solitude, depending on who you listen to). Consisting of three drops with noticeable stoppers in between, the last hole is especially meaty. Only four of us ran it, and two ended up spending some upside down time in the last hole, with Nomad power seeing me and Gregseh through fine.
Me disappearing in the bottom hole of Triple, pic by Sandy Niven
Even with Nomad power I narrowly avoid backlooping back into the hole, pic by Sandy Niven
Just downstream from Triple lies Presidents Corner (apparently named after several club Presidents had a simultaneous swim there). It’s an awkward rapid with a tight move over a drop and simultaneously round a corner, which saw my first capsise since coming upto Scotland, with a faceplant into a rockshelf after catching an edge on a crosscurrent. No roll needed, but I sustained a couple of scrapes on my nuckles pushing myself upright.
The second grade 4, Fishladder, is much nicer than it looks. An 8 foot(ish) drop, the right side leads to a world of pain in a boily, surging and recirculating eddy, whilst a kicker halfway down river left gives you a perfect ski jump over the hole and out through a narrow exit. Fairly intimidating to look at, it’s pretty fluffy when you run it as long as you make the right line.
Me hitting the kicker on Fishladder, pic by Sandy Niven
Last weekend saw some more Dee action, with very low levels due to masochistically cold temperatures. Did I say I love my drysuit?! With the top six inches of water in the process of freezing over, the river resembled a slush puppy in the current, whilst the eddies were frozen so solidly you could walk on them! Gnarly!
Unfortunately, even with the bumper snow season, I still haven’t managed to get any Scottish skiing in yet. Still, with all the paddling recently, I can’t complain too much.
The first fall is triple step or triple drop, the “Rocks of Solitude” is the rock plateau to river left at the constriction by “Presidents Corner”. When teh Gannochy section of the North Esk was being explored in the mid’70s the normal start point as a seal launch from the Rocks as Triple Step was reckoned liable to destroy 4m fibreglass boats.
I would worry less about the boily eddy to river right on Fishladder and more on what is under there. The rock on river right is shallow and heavily honeycombed. When we first started developing WWS&R courses, fishladder was a popular destination as floating a boat over river right provided a vertical pin to play with. Suspect they may be too deep for the modern boat as we were using circa 3.5-4m boats and some of the pots are 3-4foot deep.
Have fun.