The last beams of light in the lush lower section of the Thule.
Simon and Steve joined me in climbing to the terrace and portaging the gnarliest section. Ric and Brian felt the fire and paddled in. We were relieved to see the duo safely finish the canyon several hours
later. They’d chosen to portage much of the section too, reporting that it would have been more runnable with lower levels. The Awalgurta Gorge is for those feeding a class V+ addiction, but it’s easily portaged in a couple of hours on a river left trail.
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tributaries joining, the Thule becomes big water. We were ready. After several days of continuous boating we felt strong, further aided by the lighter boats as the trip neared its end. Just before lunch we came upon a horizon line big enough that it was at the edge of what we could safely read and run. Brian saw a line center right, boofing a ledge over a giant hole. Ric and I followed him while Simon and Steve eddied out on river left to have a better look. At the bottom, Ric and I were high fiving each other when we heard fran- tic whistle blasting. “GO! GO! GO! GO!” Brian yelled. We rushed to shore and ran upstream as fast as our legs and lungs allowed us. My mind was
racing.Are my friends okay? What happened? What can we do? Simon, still in his boat, was getting sucked under a huge boulder.
W
The eddy he had caught was a deadly siphon. Simon had pulled into the eddy, looking towards the middle of the river to scout the rapid. When he noticed the pull on his boat it was already too late—he was getting pulled under the boulders. In the last moment he managed to turn his boat around so he went bow first into the trap. Going in back- wards would have likely been the end. As he was getting sucked into the siphon, easily big enough to swallow him and his boat, he jammed his arm in a crack in a last effort to keep himself from disappearing into the void. This stabilized him long enough for Steve to grab him
46 | RAPID
aking at dawn the next morning, we cooked breakfast and packed up camp with unusual efficiency. With ever more
Fueling up with mountain-fresh samosas.
and buy time for the rest of us to figure out the safest way to get him back to shore. Himalayan rivers pose a higher than normal risk for this kind of ac- cident. Shaped by the huge monsoon floods and the soft rock of the mountain range, the riverbeds are often comprised of massive boul- ders that seem delicately stacked on top of each other, especially where the river gets steeper. During paddling season when the water is much lower, the water flows through the boulder maze, rather than over it, creating many siphons—it’s the reason class IV in Nepal is so excel- lent, but the class V is unusually dangerous. We always try and learn from such events, but what was there to take
from this one? “I’m not gonna stop catching eddies,” Simon remarked somberly as we drifted along. He had made this move to be cautious and have a closer look at the rapid, but it had proven a near-deadly trap and a scary reminder that paddling, especially on expeditions, is a team sport. Simon was determined to get back in his boat as quickly as possible.
Less than an hour after the incident, we were traveling downstream. After another 25 miles of playful big water, class III+ and IV, we fin- ished the Thule’s whitewater just as the sun set over the forest of Ne- pal’s foothills—we had paddled from the high and arid Himalaya right down into the jungle. Sixty miles of flatwater and mellow whitewater took us toward the
road bridge that would mark the end of our trip. After uncountable hours of slogging along, Steve asked, “Where in God’s name is the take-out?”h
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