My trip log - Day 4
We put on below the Middle Alceseca, which the group made a first descent earlier in the trip, before we arrived. We put in downstream of a 25-30 foot bridge, which EJ found to be a more exciting entrance into the river than walking the boat down to river level. EJ seal launched with style - perfectly executed. We continued downstream for about 1 mile. Ben gave the team the sign to eddy out. We noticed the walls canyon up and the river disappear below a double drop rapid with a pretty strong hydraulic at the top. A scouting mission was the next move, because according to the map, this was the steepest and most canyoned section of the river. We noticed that after the double drop rapid, it gorged up pretty high and then disappeared downstream. We ran into a local banana grower and he told us that right as the creek disappeared there was a huge waterfall and that he could take us there. So, we took all of our gear off since we were told that it was an hour hike there and another hour back. In the meantime, the banana grower gave us some bananas to recharge our energy level. He proceeded to tell us that his organic bananas took 3 months to mature, whereas the bananas we buy in the market are enhanced with hormones that allow them to mature in 3 days! Let me tell you, they were the best bananas I’ve ever had.
We hiked, and hiked and hiked and finally reached the waterfall. We approximated it at the time to be about 90-100 feet tall. After looking at the falls for what seemed like hours, we decided to hike back up to the gear. Once we got back, Ben, Rafa and EJ decided upon running the gorge and taking out right before the waterfall. This would entail ascending 60 feet up to a bridge after their short 1/4 mile gorge run. They got their gear on and the rest of us got in our positions for safety and photography. After waiting for quite a while, Eric Seymour came walking back our way and told us that the three decided the gorge was way too knarly at the flow that day, they chose to not run it. So, we had a full day of scouting, measuring the length of river to be about 2 km that we hit in a 10 hour period of time . . . That’s what it’s all about!
~Heather~