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Matt Wilson of the Telluride Kayak School and avid IR supporter sent in this great write-up of his recent trip to one of the last un-run major tributaries to the Amazon River.  Here is what Matt had to say about the trip:

Peru is hands down my favorite place to paddle on earth. Yeah it doesn’t have the classic slides and waterfalls like Chile or California but if you like huge canyons, incredible ruins and big adventures then Peru the place.

This would be my 3rd trip back back to Peru since 2003 when I met up with Damon Miller and Russell Kelly for the Cotahuasi and Abysmo section of the Apurimac. These rivers completely blew my mind since I had only done a few overnight trips up tp that point. Latter that year I met spent Christmas in Pucon at Kurt Casey’s house. I remember over hearing him talking to Daniel Delavergne  about this river in Peru he had to hike out of. So when the first VTH  was to be the Huallaga, I wasn’t surprised. The last major tributary of the Amazon that had not been done, what a worthy mission.

Every few years it seems I have to find some new paddling partners, has many of my friends have traded in their kayaks for drift boats. This spring I was lucky enough to meet the Klema brothers & Ben Luck in Durango. Their motivation for kayaking was refreshing and contagious, paddling Pandora’s or  Vallecito everyday throughout Apirl and May. During that time I convinced them to blow off school for  a “trip of a life time”.  When Ryan Casey from Idaho told me he was in I knew we had a legitimate team. Then out of no where Evan Ross from Salida decided to hang up his mountain bike and go run the Huallaga off the couch.

Matt Klema , Ben Luck & Ryan Casey

Holy kayak shenanigans. As we all know ,flying with kayaks  isn’t a exact science. Some folks go with Jedi mind trick  at the check-in counter “no that isn’t a kayak its a surfboard” ..”hmmm ok sir that will be $25″ . Tears also seem to work if there’s a girl on the team. We had no hot chicks so we went for the shipping by container method. A month a head of time we put our kayaks on a boat for Lima. This is a sure way to get  kayaks to your destination. Upon arrival,  be ready for bureaucratic hell. I spent three full days running around Lima like a chicken with it’s head cut off.  Lima’s got some really nice neighborhoods ,, like the barrio de Callao. This place smelled like death on a stick! All in all it took a week to get to the Put-in for the Huallaga and the boat shipment/importation costed us $500 each!! Ouch

Evan Ross happily reunited

Our goal was to get to the point where the Range Lifers hike out( the 2007 Vacation to Hell attempt) asap. Packed to the gills for 12 days, we were all mentally prepared for a jungle trek of epic proportions. If we did have to hike out of there,, it would be with our kayaks.   The first day of the Huallaga is sweet action. We decided not to take one photo or video clip of this since  it was fairly well documented in the 1st  VTH video. So we rallied hard that first day, making it past Kurt Casey’s hike out (1st attempt 1998) point at noon. The river just seemed to get better the further we went down. We finished our day 1 paddling a total of 30 k and dropping 500m. The weather on Day 2 was dreary and the rain started to set in right after we left camp. The rapids became steeper weaving through house-sized metamorphic boulders. At 9am day 2 we hit the Chalk Stone gorge where the The Range Lifers  hiked out.  After some discussion we decided to just give’er.. just kidding there was a plan.

Contemplating the rapid above Chalk Stone Gorge Photo: Evan Ross
Me running,, what is called these days,, Oh yeah .”.the brown”  Photo: Matthew Klema
Committed    Photo: Evan Ross

Ryan and I would just send in all the young bucks in first and they would tell us that it was good to go. Perfect!!!. From the Chalk Stone formation we ran 3 walled out lime stone gorges. Between the gorges were quality class IV-V rapids containing epic hero boofs and juicy slots. Within the gorges the whitewater was conveyor belt class II.  And then there were the waterfalls!! something straight out of the lord of the rings, huge cascades directly into the river.  After  the 2nd gorge we consulted our map and gsp, which showed our last cabrata to have three topo lines crossing the river. Portaging any of these gorges would be traumatizing if at all possible. So we found a crapy camp in the rocks before this last gorge. Day 3 started of with a bang, launching a kicker rapid into a boulder maze , down a hallway and under waterfall .  Soon after that We got to “ol three line gorge”.   We ventured in standard formation, youngest to oldest… and what did we find?….. More epic class 1 with cascades plummeting in from either side…YES!!. Damn,, the person who made this  map has some sick sense of humor.

Cooking Russian Style

After consulting the map and gps we confirmed we had made it out of the shit. On the 2nd half of the 3rd day, tributaries  added double of the orignal flow and we paddled  class IV-V  rapids for about 15k to our take out. Somewhere along  this section we ran into a bunch of dudes wearing hard hats and official looking uniforms,, not standard local attire. There was also some large scale machinery  and it looked like to they were taking rock samples. Latter we found out that there is going to be a dam built in the heart of the Great Bend of the Huallaga. It should be completed by 2013. here’s a link about this pinchi represa. All I can say is get down and see this canyon soon,, it is a gem.

More sweet action Photo:Evan Ross

In 2011 Telluride Kayak School will be offering guided kayak trips to Peru. The rivers slated for this trip include: Cotahuasi, Colca, Apurimac and the Paucartambo. Many thanks to Immersion Research for the Semi Dry Top, Splash Pants and the Lucky Charm skirt. It was the perfect jungle trekking ensemble.

Visit: www.kayaktelluride.com for more information about learning how to kayak in the Telluride area.