10/23 - Flatwater Canyon, Cotahuasi River, Second Known Decent

The Flatwater Canyon of the Cotahuasi River gets its name from the first decent, done by Gian Marco and 4 paddlers in 2003. They asked around to all of the local people in the Cotahuasi Canyon if there was whitewater deep in that part of the canyon. The walls are too steep to see down into the canyon, but the farmers and fisherman assured them that it was all flat. They found a sketchy mule trail into the canyon and 5 Class V rapids later, decided it should be named 'Flatwater Canyon'.

The trek began with the hike in. We had left our boats with the burros who were bringing them in that morning to the put in at Belinga. We decided that if we started hiking early, we could meet the burros with out kayaks about halfway, at the put in for the flatwater canyon. The only problem was that Todd wanted to come, and hadn´t paddled with us the day before, so the group carried his kayak aprox 7km to the put in. Our directions to the putin from Gian Marco were 'go up and then down and then up and past the green field and you will see a small trail. Follow the trail and you will need ropes. Ask the burro drivers...' When we got to where we thought the putin might be, we stopped and waited for the burros. We asked some locals we saw on the trail if they had seen burros with kayaks, and got mixed responses from '10 mintues back' to, 'they aren´t coming'. Spanish in the countryside is very difficult because most of the locals speak Quechua as a first, and spanish as a second language. Our boats showed less than 20 minutes later. This was good because we were in the middle of the desert with mid day sun and not nearly enough water or shade!


The hike to the putin may have been the most dangerous part of the Flatwater Canyon. Between the 500-1000 vertical foot drop very rapidly, and the gale force winds trying to pluck us off the hill with our kayaks, it was very scary. Our burro guide led us down the 'easy to find path' which was in the opposite direction than we would have guessed. We were waiting for the burrow driver to turn left toward the small pueblo, but he kept heading straigt towards the vertical cliff. Don´t try this one without a knowledgeable guide for the trail. The burros headed for the cliff:



Once we reached the river, we all breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that all that stood between us and our camp was 7km of mostly continuous Class IV-V whitewater that none of us knew. It was nice to get the kayak off the shoulder and into the water, as usual.

The river started up slow, but within a km or so, it was full on. The first big rapid was a steep boulder garden, ending with a great drop into a tight slot. Once we got through this one, we could all tell that it was going to be an epic run.

The miles down below held numerous big boulder jumbles, but all runable whitewater. The magnitude of these rapids was huge (notice Todd for perspective in photo below, the little yellow spec up high in the rapid)


About halfway down the run we got to a rapid that looked like a killer, but on closer inspection went well. All the water went over a ledge into a huge boulder. Andy probed it and the rest went as well. The entrance was tricky with some sieved out lines, but sliding over the ledge into the boulder was unreal. The entrance:

The rock slide move:

The actual canyon in this section was beautiful. It had steep walls and lots of interesting geology.


The whole run took our team less than 2.5 hours. We spent about two hours running the first half, while it mellowed out a bit for the second half and we just bombed down it. We took out at our camp at Belinga, happy to know we were only the second group ever to venture into that part of the Cotahuasi Canyon. This part of expedition kayaking is really exciting to me: going into places where we are some of the first or few people who have ever passed that way. In Flatwater Canyon, we were persons 5-10 to pass through. Buen hazo!

At camp that night, we prepared Opal Cactus for dinner which turned out to be a bit hard on everyone´s stomaches. The camp was across from the town of Belinga, in a greener section of the desert canyon. Truley beautiful: