Tag Archives: rafting

Hi folks!

Another day – another spot of rafting in Altai!…

After a thrilling day of whitewater rapids on the Chuya, we were back on the Katun river. By this point we’d already done the Cheeks, the Akkem Rush, and the Chuya’s Turbine and Horizon rapids. Next up – yet more exciting aquatic adventures: great! But, alas, the sky began to cloud over with nasty gray gloom: not great at all…

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Another day, another spot of Altai whitewater rafting – but not on the captivating Katun!…

No, this year we took a detour – yes, as the title indicates, for a stretch of rad-rapids down the Chuya river.

After the Akkem Rush and the following relaxing day, we took a break from the Katun. Why? But of course – for the rapids! For there are some good ones on the lower reaches of the Chuya – like the “Turbine” and the “Horizon”. Check these beauts out: the Turbine ->

And the Horizon ->

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As I already mentioned, after conquering the wildest ride the Katun has to offer – the Akkem Rush (or “the Pipe”) – we stopped at Argut Camp, aka the Rafters’ Museum, at the junction between the (turquoise) Katun and the (milky) Argut:

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We finally made it to the main water “attraction” of the Katun: the Akkem Rush, aka the Akkem Breakthrough, aka the Pipe. Long ago, the Katun carved out a gorge about 12 kilometers long right here, squeezing the river down to just 30 meters wide. The result: all that water rushes forward with tremendous force…

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After shooting through the Katun’s Cheeks, we had another two weeks (!) of assorted rafting ahead – “assorted” as in: some lazy stretches, some bursts of action, and the occasional bout of nerve-wracking whitewater rapidding. But the five days after the Cheeks were all one thing: lazy. We even call this stretch the “lazy Katun“. Around 200 kilometers of gentle current, ripples and pools, and only a handful of small rapids. All in all – smooth sailing: the perfect setting for quiet reflection and meditation. Andf if the weather’s nice the mind totally resets.

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And here we are again – back in the Altai Mountains for our second day of rafting down the Katun.

While the first day was pretty calm (therefore an excellent warm-up day for the rafting-newbies among us), on this day we hit the Katun’s first real rapids. They’re called Shyokki – the “Cheeks” because… apparently the “river is squeezed here by sheer cliffs”. I never fully understood that, but whatever; the main thing – they’re rapids (several of them), and look good ) ->

These are still the very upper reaches of the Katun, but the river’s already quite fast-flowing (and still milky) ->

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So, why the Katun? Why do I raft down it so often?…

Well, it’s simply the most interesting river you can raft down as a non-professional – as long as you’re guided by experienced pros (and ours weren’t just pros – they were Russian rafting champions: how about that?!). But, what do I mean by “interesting”?…

First, the sheer force of the water here is unusual, the rapids and riffles are fantastic, and the flow-waves you encounter here sometimes reach what seemed to us like 2–3 meters high!

Second, the river is relatively safe. There are no whirlpools where you can get spun around forever and all the rapids are passable. There aren’t any dangerous rocks you could get pinned against forever, and no other surprises either. Well, unless you’re in the very upper reaches, where you might end up under a tree hanging over the water; and one of the lower rapids in high water becomes a pretty scary – and dangerous – obstacle. But we’ll get to that…

Third, it’s one of the longest rivers there is for truly active whitewater rafting: from the upper reaches of the Katun all the way down to its lowest rapids you can paddle unhindered (without having to portage around dams or weirs) for more than 500 kilometers. Five hundred-plus kilometers of fast-flowing water – woah! And the total drop in elevation is over a kilometer. Oh my gradient!

So, for me, the Katun is the most… luxurious river I’ve ever rafted. Some real experts even told us that the best rivers for commercial rafting are the Katun, the Zambezi (I can confirm that: it looked real fierce from above), the Colorado, and Chile’s BioBio.

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First, the bad news: Altai-2020 is over!

Now for the good news: There’s a Very Big Altai Video in the pipeline! And it promises to be full of super-duper material, and also to be professionally produced and edited. In a word or four – it’s gonna be awesome!

In the meantime, today in this post – a few photographic ‘greatest hits’ my fellow expeditioners have sent me for your viewing pleasure: for those who’ve not been to Altai – as enticers, teasers, to get yourselves there; and for those who’ve been – as nostalgizers. Because – remember – it’s good to have been somewhere and enjoyed it, but better to have been somewhere and enjoyed it and then… to revisit it through photos as it might make you realize you should go back again :0)!

Pheeeew. What a trip! Simply remarkably marvelously fantastic. I think a wait of three or four years, and we’ll be heading back – if the magical Altai energy doesn’t pull us back before ). Perhaps we’ll do the trekking part a bit differently, but as for the Katun bit: that can stay exactly the same!

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Here we are with another installment from our expedition across Altai’s… extraordinary countryside. Wait! Extraordinary – that’s accurate, but… it’s a bit banal, no? Thing is, in describing Altai’s natural beauty, I seem to be forever repeating the handful of adjectives I normally use! So, before I started this post, I thought I’d find at least one new epithet (not the disparaging kind) that describes accurately (maybe I’ll try add one more new one with each post?) the Altai Mountains. So I did. And I came up with… anomalous! Well, why not? The effect of Altai’s mountainous scenery has had a deeply anomalous effect on me – more so than any other mountainous-volcanic place in the world. And then there’s the fact that the mountains and rivers are anomalous; there’s also the anomalous natural energy here that permeates everything – the air, the water, the mountains, your soul (!) – unlike anywhere else on the planet! But I digress. Meanwhile on the River Katun…

Where we were along the Katun on this day, more than 60 smaller rivers and streams – tributaries – had flown into it. As a result – it had become powerful, wide, and high:

A quick look at the map tells me that here the width of the Katun is 150 meters. While in 20+km all that water will be forced to squeeze through a narrow rocky canyon of a width of just 30 meters. So it doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that the rapids in that canyon are going to be pretty darn fast and anomalous! And those same rapids have an anomalously unique name too: Teldekpen!

Here they come! ->

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After our night on the beach, we woke to yet another gloriously warm and sunny day – hooray! If only the river were a bit warmer too; it felt like it was around 10-12 degrees centigrade, no more. Quick dips were doable but it was a bit too cold for swimming.

We had an interesting day ahead of us. Just to the left of that mountain down there the Kadrin Rapids begin, which was to be our first bit of action of the day…

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