I’ve just come back from a short week in the French Alps and it was great!
Ginge, Ali and I set off late Sunday evening aiming for the 8pm ferry missing that by an hour and a half! We carried on through the night arriving at the start of the Upper Guisane about midday.
Two people very happy to be in the Alps
The section all the way down to the lower was fun and didn’t seem like the 17 km until I had to hitch hike back to the car!
The campsite at Argentiere was busy with boaters, from lots of different uni’s and was great to see so many familiar faces.
The next day the three of us paddled down the Durance Gorge, Braincon Gorge & the Fournel - a short cracking run over a number of stepped drops. All great fun, nothing serious, just great leisure boating! The campsite that evening was the scene of a large party with car stereos blown, dislocated shoulders and large rocks in Parker’s Burn!
Ali on that silly slide thing on the Durance Gorge
‘Bachlard’
After telling Ali to get drunk because we’d have an easier day, we decided to run the Middle Guil starting at triple step (We’d lied to Ali). With the water levels at 90 on the gauge it was going to be a pushy level. I braved triple step, with Ginge & a delicate Ali starting below finishing at the tunnel.
‘Triple Step’
The highlights of that section were Ali loosing his paddles after scratching his nose and Ginge getting smacked in the kidney by a flying Burn! We headed to the Biaisse to find a steep low volume run in the mountains, and then pizza from the van.
One Sleepy Ali
After a few beers inside us, Tom Laws and I decided it would be a good test of our manliness to paddle the Fournell in the dark (pitch black) and for the record it was neither big nor clever!
The extend of what Tom & I could see at 10pm on the Fournel
Thursday morning started the longer drive over to the Ubaye Valley to run the classic race course section, followed by the Bachlard. There was one last thing to do before the drive home on Friday and that was to get the all important video footage of Hammer Time on the Fournel.
Full 10 second clip to follow once I have some software for quicktime movie!
France is great, brie, boating and beer!
Rich
