any steeper, we would have had to scout ev- erything in this first section. A couple miles downstream the water be- gan to calm as the canyon walls grew tight- er. For the rest of the day we eddy-hopped our way down playful class IV, leapfrogging one another so that everyone could get a chance to lead through the boulder maze, and hooting and hollering if anyone chose a less than graceful line. “Check out the wild patterns in these boulders,” Simon managed to yell at me over the river’s roar. A yearly monsoon carves and polishes the canyon’s boulders into colorful sculptures— paddling through these rock gardens is a highlight of the Thule. As the warm afternoon light lit up the Golden Canyon in all its glory, we pulled over and made camp among ancient pon- derosa pines. Astounded by the scenery and awestruck by the river, we concluded by a crackling fire that the Thule had some of the best whitewater we’d ever paddled.
n
ing back. As the veteran of the river, I orga- nized a lot of the logistics, but once there I wasn’t much of a guide. The sheer quantity of whitewater was too much to remember and we treated this as our first time down the river. The fourth day brought us to the Awal-
T
gurta Gorge, the hardest part of the river by far. Already in the entrance rapids, we were surprised by how pushy the water had be- come. The river had grown markedly in vol- ume. Knowing that two miles of dangerous class V+ lay downstream we evaluated our options. “I’m out,” I said. In 2008, my friend Danny had a terrible swim out of a sticky hole right above some horrible sieves. He had to swim back into the hole time and again to avoid getting flushed downstream and into the sieves till the team could get a rope to him. The memory was still vivid.
his was my second trip on the Thule; after a run in 2008 I dreamt of com-
The Tibrikot Monastery rises from the hills above the Thule, an auspicious site to start our descent.
44 | RAPID
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