Day One
It has been my goal to bring Nate to the Alseseca ever since the "Hotel Charley" Alseseca mission
last November with Ben Stookesberry, Jesse Coombs and some of the Jackson Kayak team members.
So, here we are. Our journey starts now . . .
With any expedition, first descent or not, logistics can always be challenging in an unknown country. So, with the help of Rafa Ortiz, his dad and the infamous Israel, Nate and I were well on our way to run sections of the Alseseca.
On Thanksgiving evening, we arrived in Mexico City with Jackson Team Member, Rafa Ortiz, awaiting our arrival.
After a good nights sleep, we awoke early the next day and headed for the second descent of the Rio Valle de Bravo. The river levels had
dropped significantly since Rafa and the Young Guns crew ran it a couple weeks prior for the first D, but we
decided to gear up and paddle down the drops anyhow. This was a very short stretch of river with a few good
rapids and a few "unrunnable" drops.
The last drop in the upper stretch of the Rio Bravo is an unrunnable,
super manky drop with tons of sieves and strainers - probably one of the mankiest rapids I have ever seen.
It was easy to spot the "manky" rapid as we were heading down stream, as it was a huge horizon line after a super fun looking drop. This fun looking
drop consisted of a chunky slide into a boof on the right. There were certain, obvious pin spots in this drop, as were in a lot
of the drops at this water flow. However, it seemed easy enough to avoid the ovious pin in the "boof" part of the last drop.
Rafa went first, styling the drop. Ikrt fired it up second, almost tipping in the first drop, and ended up missing the boof, but coming out fine.
Nate fired it up third, and as always styled his boof line. I was the last to go, styled the first drop, but ended
up with my bow left going center right over the 'boof' drop instead of way right. I ended up missing
the "pin" spot we scouted prior, but found another. My bow wedged between two rocks at the base of the
waterfall. I immediatly felt the water from the waterfall pounding down on my back as I sat there in a
vertical pin underneath the falls. As soon as I realized my situation, I pulled my skirt. It took a while before me, my boat and
my paddle to come out from behind the falls. I ended up standing behind the falls, waiting for a rope to be
thrown to me. After being roped out, I saw my boat float over the next horizon line - the unrunnable rapid -
and getting lodged in a strainer - we spent the next three hours z-dragging my boat out.
3-hours later, we finally got the boat free. We were all expecting the Rocker to be in pretty rough shape, as it had a lot of water pressure on it for three hours. A dent on the side of the Rocker popped out within minutes. Thanks to the super cross-link plastic in the Jackson Rocker, I have a boat to paddle for the next 10 days.
We arrived at Rafa's house at about 9:00 p.m. Everyone was super exhausted from scouting, paddling and z-dragging a boat. So, we decided to get a good nights sleep, wake up at 5:00 a.m. and head to the "Big Banana Falls" section of the Alseseca. Day Two coming soon!
~Heather~