I was pretty excited to see the Enguri river on the drive across Georgia. I had heard it would be a big project and was keen to see it for myself.
It became clear very quickly that it would be beyond us on this trip at this time of year, and a little disappointed we drove up the Nenskra valley, a tributary of the mighty Enguri.
This turned out to be a great find. I made an incredibly poor job of reading the four lines of notes I had for this river and jumped on telling Matt it would be easy class IV. Turned out to be a bit harder, and when it became very hard class V+ & VI after the road bridge, we opted to get out before we got walled in! The river was great with a bigger volume feel to it, and at the saw mill most of the village turned out to watch us run the series of good rapids there.

We carried on up the Enguri realising what a big project it is, and turned off towards Mestia. Another tributary here was interesting as it entered bedrock gorges every few kms. However, all the gorges that we scouted and tried to paddle were blocked by fallen trees making them impassable. This ultimately led to a very sketchy 40m climb out, followed by boat hauling and belaying Matt up!
We did manage to do a section of the Enguri that was manageable in gradient and volume and was most enjoyable, with a brilliant boulderly gorge early on.
The scenery in the region was amazing and Mestia has lots of super old (10th Century) defence towers that stood out at the feet of the 4000m + peaks that rose around us.

The next river I had in mind was the Tskenistskali, but this was really as a filler in-between larger drainages, as we were hoping to find some quality white water and praying for no trees in the river. We came over the mountain pass into the valley, so when the river looked deep enough to paddle we jumped on. It was all straight forward continuous rapids with a few harder sections every so often. We paddled late into the evening and watched the sunset behind the huge mountains. It was on this section that we saw the only completely flat pool on any river in Georgia, we sat and enjoyed it for a few minutes!

Looking for a complete descent, we started where we had finished the day before and continued down. We had stayed overnight further down river so had a chance to road scout it on the drive up. I made some mental notes as to start of the walled in gorges, super stoked to be heading towards them. We jumped on and the pace of the river increased quickly, straight into IV+ & V rapids, lots of boulders, holes, boofs and nailed lines saw us make good progress. The river was so continuous it was really mentally challenging, just when you wanted a break, it wouldn’t let you stop. It was also difficult to scout, and because of the amount of wood we found in some rapids we made an effort to check everything before we ran blind corners. Despite some great boat scouting I had to get out often.
There were some classic moves, big volume and uncharted territory. After 7 hours in the non stop fun gorge, I was exhausted. We carried on, paddling some big volume class III as the sun set again behind the huge mountains, until there was no more light. This would ultimately be the highlight of the trip.

The next river on the list was the Rioni, which we knew we were going to paddle with the rafters and join their party. We had hoped to paddle the upper sections before the rafting started, however overnight a huge storm came in, creating a landslide, destroying an important bridge and ultimately turning the river a deep shade of black. We decided to give the upper a miss and document the raft trip well. The clients looked after us, fed us, made us drink a lot of vodka, and in return we supplied video and photos from 2 days of rafting. The paddle was easy enough to be a great chill out paddle after the gnarl on the Tskenistskali and a great way to end our paddling in Georgia.

We had a few more cultural adventures seeing caves, tombs, sulphur baths, pubs, music and eagles. All of which was really interesting and the reason I wanted to come to Georgia. It has more to offer than just the kayaking, it has a rich history and stunning landscape which makes it well worth the journey.

I would like to thank the continuing support of Pyranha, Streamlyte, Embers Merino Wool & Smiths Optics.