"Poorly Planned... Badly Executed"

Saturday, 25 August 2007

Back To Voss

Paddling on the lower Myrdalselvi (Photo Mefford Williams)

So there hasn’t been much action on the blog posting front but that doesn’t mean that we haven’t been on the rivers… it just means that I have been too lazy to talk about it. That and it has either been just Eden and me so no photo taking or we have been paddling with the locals and trying to keep up (again no photos).

Warming up with a nice Norwegian ski jump! Amos going for maximum distance (Photo Mefford Williams)

Anyhow to bring ya ol back up to speed, we are back in Voss again with both favourable river levels and favourable weather (the later is not to be expected in Voss). Mikey and Allan have been looking after us with plenty of “go there… paddle this” advice which led us to the Raundalselvi and Myrkdalselvi for some of the best kayaking we have done so far in Norway.

Hanging out in an eddy (Photo Mefford Williams)

If you remember we have already paddled an open section of the Raundalselvi with plenty of water but the rest of the river is quite tight yet still has a big volume feel with 40 something cumecs. Lots of holes, lots of must runs, and a questionable lack of scouting mainly because you can’t. We were thankful to have Allan show us down the lower Raundalselvi but we did manage to workout the train station section all by our lonesome.

Mefford running the second slide in karma cow falls

Method and Amos put in an appearance after we had been here for a few days so we showed them what we had found starting with the train station section which leads into the rafting section which has contains timber hole. Of course because they hadn’t paddled it yet we didn’t let them look at it. Instead we gave them concise instructions “Start on the right and hold on!” Their facial expressions at the bottom were priceless.

Looking back up at karma cow falls... don't you hate when the camera angle makes the drop look small. (Photo Mefford Williams)

On to the lower Myrkdalselvi which has many big slides/waterfalls and lots of holes to keep the eyes nice and wide. The main rapid is karma cow falls which is three biggish slides stacked on top of each other with some juicy holes at the bottom of each. Legend has it that on the first trip down the river a cow, spooked by the people scouting the rapid, fell in and washed over all three drops. Apparently the cow swam to the side at the bottom, shook itself off and carried on its merry way… leaving behind it the rapids name. The run ends with a seven meter vertical slide which appears to land on rock and is pretty intimidating. We all walked but we were back there a few days ago with Mikey and Allan and they called us pussies so we had to run it…I don’t think that we had a choice.

There is no doubt, it's a cool run. Amos enjoying the scenery as well as the white water (Photo Mefford Williams)

In other news some old friends from uni, Gabriella and Karolina, have just done a tour of Norway and were kind enough to include us in their flying visit. More good times, just like those good old uni days.

Later folks