When we left Northampton very early on Friday morning we never knew what was ahead of us. After an uneventful journey we arrived at a very wet Upper Dart, we inspected the level (Low-Medium) and moved to the get in. This is where we meet up with the rest of the group (Me (Chris Chapman), Paul, Jack, Ben, Richard, Kevin, 2 paddlers Ben knew and 2 that Richard knew (Dan and Jules)).
Once kitted up we move to the river, at this point we realised the river had risen quite a bit (Medium-High). We started down the river, which was already big and this was the so called warm-up section. As the river narrowed around an island the group moved down the river in a chain, this part of the river was high and the trees were in the river. Half the group meet at the bottom of this rapid in one of the very few eddies. When they found out that one of Ben’s mates had got stuck under one of the trees, he finally released himself and swam. The boat came past us and we tried to chase it but the river was too fast and we were getting stuck in stoppers. After about 100m we decided that we should leave it. At this point Ben’s mates decided that they should both walkout as the river was now really starting to get harder.
The rest of us moved on down the river, until we came to the start of the “Mad Mile”. By now the river was huge and was continues grade 4+. Jules and Kevin decided to walk around the next bit. Ben, Richard, Dan, Paul, Jack and I continued around down the river heading towards a section of rapids called “Bedrock”. We came around the corner and saw a huge stopper that decided it liked me. My Rocker decided at this point that it was a playboat and started cartwheeling in the hole. After a few seconds the boat settled and Richard shot past me smacking his elbow on my boat. I decide that I was not coming out of this hole in my boat. I rolled over and released my spraydeck, keeping hold of my paddle. I rolled back up in the hole and waited for my boat to fill up, sink and catch the undertow. Once I was clear of the hole I got out of my boat and swam to a group of trees by the bank. With some help from Richard I got out of the river with all my kit. We took this moment to scout the next section. We picked our lines and moved on down to a rapid called Euthanasia (4+/5). We got out above Euthanasia to scout it and decided on the line, which involved starting on the right and moving very quickly across to the left just after a tree to avoid a rather interesting bit that we did not fancy going down. Once on the left you had to start moving back to the right to avoid a double decker bus sized hole.
We waited for a few minutes for the others that had walked around the top section. Dan decided he was not going to run this section and went to find the others. We carried on waiting but after a few more minutes the rest of us decided to run Euthanasia. We ran it with no problems and meet in the eddy by the large stopper. We continued down the river making our way thought continuous stoppers and waves. Ben managed to breakout after Pandora’s Box whilst Paul, Richard and I continued down. I managed to find a breakout in a bunch of trees and Paul tried to follow, but managed to get pinned on a tree: he got himself off the tree but could not get into the eddy. Paul had to hang onto the tree about 10 feet from the side of the river, but he managed to drop his paddles. Richard and I got out of our boats and mounted a rescue which evolved me swimming on the end of a line, grabbing the end of Paul’s boat and swinging me and Paul into the bank.
After the rescue we stood on the bank preparing a set of split paddles for Paul when Jack who had gone back up to find the others came flying past with Jules swimming behind him. By this point Ben had already tried to rescue him with a throwline, but Jules had been pulled under and got tangled up in the line so Ben had to release it. We got back into our boat and made our way down the river after Jules and Jack. After a few hundred meters we heard Ben shout and we managed to breakout. Paul, Richard and I walked back up the river a bit to find the others. We finally found Ben and Jack on a large island that was now underwater due to the high water levels in amongst the trees and rocks. Ben then pointed out Jules clinging onto a tree with Ben’s throwline around his leg about 20 feet from bank near the main flow. Jules by this point was very tired after swimming about a mile. We mounted another rescue, which involved Jack swimming on the end of a line (held by Ben) to Jules and then swinging Jules and then Jack back to me. At this point we were still about 15 feet from the bank, as we had to swim and walk to get to our rescue position. After about 1 1/2 hours we all finally got back to the bank, but by this time it was dark and took the decision to walk out.
We started to walk out, but could not see much through the trees and decided that we would have to walk up out of the valley. After starting this with our boats we decided to put the boats down, tie them up and continued without them. After about an hour we found a muddy track and followed it back towards the car park when we saw a set of headlights coming towards us. As it got close to us it stopped and a fireman said “we are looking for you”. After sorting out who we were and putting Jules in the back of the truck we continued down the track to the car park where we were surprised by the amount of rescues services we had looking for us. We had 2 fire engines, 2 off road fire trucks, 4 police cars, an ambulance and we later found out that there was also a helicopter from Scotland coming to look for us. And the final piece was Jules got interviewed for local TV. We got changed and headed to the pub for stories, food and beer.
The next day we had to walk back in to the Upper Dart to retrieve our boats so Paul, Ben, Jack, Richard and I started the mile walk. This was a lot easier than last night, as we could see the path (Parts of it would have been underwater even if we could have followed it). The water had dropped about 4 feet overnight and you could see clearly where the water had been.
On the way back in we found Jules' paddle by a tree, not too far from our boats. Once we had collected the boats we proceeded to get on and finish the paddle we started the day before. During the paddle we all decided that we would go and do the Upper again and then continue down the Loop section. The upper the day before had taken us over 6 hours from put-in to being found, this time it took us less than a hour.
Over the next few days we managed to recover all the kit we had lost on the Friday including Jules' boat, which was found by a sea kayaker 20+ miles down the river. Paul’s paddle was found on the Loop and so was Ben’s throwline. The only things we lost were a pin kit and throwline that was in Jules' boat.
It was a great weekend of paddling, rescuing, paddling…..etc
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