10/22 - Middle Cotahuasi, to Puente Sipia

This mission started out interesting, as things always seem to with the illustriuos Gian Marco Valentino (cusipata.com). We dropped off the crew for the hike into Belinga, the town where we begin the Cotahuasi River Canyon. The hike is 15km into the Canyon, passing by Sipia Falls, a 4-tier, 450 foot cascade in the middle of the canyon. The scene at the putin was crazy with kayaks, gear, burros, and people everywhere.

Andy, Baker, Gian Marco and I decided to head upstream of the town of Sipia to run a short section before our hike into the putin at Belinga. About halfway back out, Gian Marco realizes that he has forgotten all of his gear, so he hops out of the coaster to run back to Sipia to grab his gear that is being taken by burro to Belinga. He managed to catch the buros, get his stuff, and run back to where we were putting in, about halfway between the town of Cotahuasi and Sipia.

From the putin down there were some mellow warmup rapids and busy Class IIIish stuff. When a bridge came into sight overhead, the action really picked up. The rapid after the bridge is a wide sweeping right bend with clean lines to the left. Some big hydraulics through here, and then a big, horizon lined boulder field. We stopped to scout this rapid (left), and it proved to be one of the best in the run:

The line was somewhere down through the middle with a few big moves above the crux. The key move is the left slot on the side of the large boulder down in middle of the rapid. All of the water crashed into this one, and it has a gnarly looking sieved out line on the right. Stay left here.

After this long boulder garden comes the finale, the cascade that is visible from the Bridge at Sipia. The bouldery whitewater maze has a clean line down the middle between the huge boulders, and then two sweet boofs down at the bottom. As we ran down this rapid, a heard of llamas were being forced across the brige over our heads. A true Peru momment.

After we took out at the Sipia Bridge to begin our hike into the Canyon de Cotahuasi, we met up with Lady, the girl who was in charge of our buros down to her town of Belinga. Beautiful canyon scenery and cactus' for the next 15km!

Sipia Falls, not runable...