Georgian white water is like the Alps in Western Europe but bigger! Matt Bostock & I flew out of London keen to explore this mountainous region that has seen very little kayaking action.

Having pieced together some last minute information on some of the rivers, our first aim was the Tergi river that flows out of and then north back into Russia. We stopped along the way for a couple of low, easy warm up rivers. The grade of these rivers, 4 sections of the Aragvis, was never more than class III but the continuous nature of these were unreal. There was certainly no stopping, which got me stoked for the hard grades.

The old road to the Russian boarder and the start of the Tergi was blocked by a landslide (alarm bells for the river?) and the truck with our kit went over a pretty long mountain pass.
Matt & I decided to walk up the last section and scout the Truso Gorge. After a friendly chat with the border guards we paddled through and entered the gorge. This first section was one of three harder section with a tricky flare into a boof avoiding metal, a fold and a wall of rock. The gorge was great with some really nice moves.

We carried on down into a head wind of mostly class II until after the Sioni gorge, where we entered sheer rock sides – very uncharacteristic of the river. The notes on this mentioned a waterfall but we paddled in and realised our mistake with no way of scouting, safety or portage. Blind leading the blind turned out to be OK, but was a gentle reminder to both of us to be a bit more careful in the future. We got out before the Dariali Gorge. This section of white water is unbelievable and still unrun. A winter mission with lower levels maybe required. We were extremely pleased with the 35km we had done and went in search of a beer.

Our next idea was to travel up to Shatili, my hunch was that it would be too low but decided it was worth the trip to see the 10th Century fortress at the world heritage site. What happened is a long story but involves gate crashing a big family dinner, being forced to drink beakers of vodka and sleeping on a roof! I did some boating up there, mainly park ‘n’ huck on sections that took my fancy. It was good fun, abseiling in, good camera angles, waterfalls general fun.

We then headed to the capital (Tbilisi) and began our journey east to the bigger projects.