kayakstan.net :: Day 26 - Song Kul
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With time running short, and still plenty to do, the team split into two for the remaining 5 days of the expedition, planning to meet up the day before we are due to leave in Biskek. Phil C, Wouter, Martyn and Graham headed north to paddle the Chu and the Chong-Kemin, and the rest of the team were to attempt a (we think) first descent of the Song-Kul.
The Song-Kul is fed from a large high-altitude lake, which is itself fed by over 18 springs. We were rather surprised therefore when we inspected the Song-kul's confluence with the Naryn, and found that the river was actually quite a low volume one, flowing at about 10 cumecs. Since the river flows through a deep gorge, and looked quite steep from the map, this was actually good news as it meant a descent would probably actually be viable...
We pushed up from downstream as far as we could go in the truck, and then further on foot once the truck got stuck in a ravine (!). The river at this lower end carved deep through a sandstone canyon, and it looked simply beautiful, although we came across a couple of gnarly looking probable portages.
Having seen as much as we could from the bottom, we camped the night, then the next morning drove all the way round to the top of the river as it flowed out from the lake. We'd eaten out in the town of Naryn the night before, and it really hadn't agreed with James too well, so for him this monster 7 hour drive along bumpy tracks was an unpleasant one. For the rest of us, it was gratifying as the views where spectacular and the road pushed down the river from the lake much further than we expected. We managed to camp right at the entrance to the main gorge, a perfect put-on for the next morning. Before bed we had a quick peek down the first km or so of the gorge, and it looked promising.
Rob and Phil exhibit textbook river crossing technique..
The next morning we sent the truck back round to the bottom (with poor James who was still feeling under the weather), and setoff down the river with childlike excitment. What would be in store? And more importantly, what would we call the rapids?
We paddled down to the start of the steeper section which we had reached on foot the day before, and started threading our way through tight bouldery easy grade 4. We soon hit our first portage - a boulder choke with a really sketchy line. It was to be the first of many.
We rounded the corner to enter deeper into 'shoulder canyon', and encountered another two portages straight away. The river here was flowing through and mainly under large boulders.. with no way through. Damnit.
From here the river settled into a much cleaner, but a bit disaapointingly technically easy paddle. The scenery made up for the lack of technical gnarl, as we wound our way through a deep but usually wide gorge - Phil had already mentioned that he expected a dinosaur to appear on the bank at any moment!
We were poddling along quite happily, just portaged round another boulder choke when we hit 'the Diggler'. This is an innocuous looking narrow crack in the rock - the dubious thing being that although the crack is about 1m wide, it has 30m high vertical walls, and twists and turns so that you can't inspect the whole length from the bank without some serious climbing. Our brains being larger than our balls, and mindful of all the driftwood we'd seen upstream, this was a portage for us. And a monster portage it proved. We must have covered only about 100m horizontal distance in an hour and half, but it was a steep up and over manoeuve...
Inspecting the Diggler
What goes up...
..must come back down!
Almost immediately after follows the 'mini-Diggler', a smaller version of its bigger brother. This thankfully is inspectable from above for its entire length, and was free from driftwood and nasty undercuts so on we pushed.
Our last obstacle before we the main gorge sides opened out around us allowing the truck to meet us again was 'fanny canyon' - a bizzarrely shaped 50m deep crack that contained no rapids whatsoever, but was still eerie enough to paddle through...
And so the descent ended. A total of 7 hours on the water had encompassed some technically easy but truly spectacular paddling, coupled with a rather epic portage route. Call me sadistic if you like, but I count that as a day well spent.