I arrived back to the Futaleufú on a warm spring day in early December. Hours of plane travel had finally resulted in the dusty dirt road which, snakes with the Futaleufú River Valley - a place where rugged mountains rise up to meet glaciers sparkling against a clear blue sky.
The turquoise river gives contrast to a vibrantly green forest and I couldn't have been happier about a camp full of friends waiting with warm smiles and cold beers. The river level was perfect and another season at BioBio was about to commence!
This season was special, Benny Marr and I would lead a paddling retreat before diving into an unknown adventure, much deeper in Patagonia.
True in the way that some of the best adventures are ones which haven't been planned, Swiss whitewater phantom - Sven Lämmler, just so happened to be passing through the Futaleufú on his way South. The journey would be the continuation of his months long, multiple continent mission to paddle every river possible without missing a single day.
Our invitation was accepted, and on "semi-perfect" Swiss time, we loaded up the rental car and pointed it South.
.....was our first destination, the Rio Baker. The Baker is a Patagonian river as infamous as the Futaleufú but, only gets a few visits a year with people paddling it’s three main canyons below the confluence of the Rio Neff.
About four times the size of the Futaleufú it’s character shows in its surging, exploding, whitewater pressed between vertical canyon walls.
It was time to embrace the only reasonable emotions to be feeling at the time:
fear and excitement.
Dropping into the Baker is like dropping into an ocean held on an angle. Four dimensional crashing whitewater makes the rapids a constant variable, the only technique being to fight boils at the entrance to line up, drop in, and then begin reacting as quickly and precisely as possible. Sven Lammler had been to the river two times and many laps before and was the perfect leader to follow down the river.
We substituted a short conversation and a couple of napkin drawings for a proper scout of the rapids and put in on the river in Puerto Bertran on a crystal clear blue lake which gives way to the Rio Baker.
About 10km downstream a silty Rio Neff confluences with the a vibrantly blue Rio Baker at Salto Neff, the first big drop of the Baker. The contrasting colors of water creating as stunning scene at the entrance of the first canyon. Rapids one through three are the crux of the run and come in quick succession. Massive whitewater breaks across lines which thread between holes, seems, and violent eddies.
The first canyon eventually gives way to the second, the boiling Caynon which is moving flat water pressed between the Caynon making impressive whirlpool features and amazing current convergences.
The third Caynon has some of the best whitewater of the river.
Being with two of whitewater’s greatest athletes has two very distinct sides. One side is that the companionship and team work on the river is second to none. The other being I was almost always up to my eyeballs with intense whitewater and non-stop pace to paddle as much of it as humanly possibly. The race was on. We would be going round for round with the 50 kilometer section like a broken record until our Swiss leader decided it was time to venture further into the South of Patagonia.
We lapped the Baker again for Christmas and again the day after for Boxing Day. Sven then decided it was time to check another Patagonian classic off the list. The Rio Bravo. Coming in a future......
KAVU EXPOSURE :)
Tyler Bradt
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