The water has finally arrived in the Avon river.  With a few last minute phone calls I met Mark and Andy at 6am in Bells rapids car park to start the car shuffles to go up to Posselts Ford where we started our valley run.

It was pretty cold at around 3 degrees in the fog that hung onto the river.  We got paddling and soon warmed up.  To the first rapid, super shoot – I fell in.  Amazingly the water was warmer than out!  I was a bit miffed at falling in as I had expected to have better balance this year compared to last with all the sea paddling I have been doing, but obviously not.

We made it down to Emu falls, this is probably one of the harder rapids on the river.  Not crazy but a few nasty rocks that catch you out easily, we go out and had a look at it to try to remember the lines through it

By the time we had been looking at it for a few minutes we were all shivering uncontrollably.  I hadn’t been this cold for some time.

Andy took the honours and went through.  He cleared all the hard bits but managed to bang into a rock at the end which tipped him in.  I made a mental note to avoid that rock.

Next up was Mark – flash twat got through it no worries and made it look easy.

Then it was my turn, a few star jump and sprinting on the spot to try to get some warmth back into the body

Got my line perfect, thought I had nailed it, remembered the bottom rock that had caught Andy out….. where is it?….  There it is, stop staring at it… steer, steer….. THUMP

Next time I will have it.

the ‘Valley run’ as it is known, is 42km + change long, and what is cool about it is that once in the valley there is no points of access for 30km along it, so it is pretty committing.  I think that is half the appeal, the only way to get into it is by paddling, and if something goes wrong it is a long nasty walk through bush out.  The sun was beginning to burn off the fog now – still wasn’t that warm though, if we stopped the shivers came back pretty quick but it was nice to have the sun on you.

A lovely day out, hopefully manage to do another valley run before the water disappears for the summer. Both Andy and I got pretty beaten up while swimming down the river bouncing off rocks after we had been tipped in at numerous rapids along the way.  Good bruising and good memories.