Christmas Expedition 2007

Thursday 27th

Friday 28th

Saturday 29th

Thursday 27 December 2007 – River Glenelly, River Owenkillew and River Mourne (Fisheries)

Paddlers: - Adrian, Declan, Johnny, Rosie, Corin, Jake and I
Water level – Moderate flood

This was the first day to get out and burn up some Christmas turkey. Corin and Jake had just got new boats from Santa and were keen to find what they were like. We decided to try out the River Glenelly as there was a nice little flood and it wouldn’t be a scrape. This is a fairly short section of river that runs into the Owenkillew just above the gorge, which has some nice surf waves. Corin and Jake really excelled at the surfing. Corin had a permanent cheesy grin as he surfed relentlessly on every play wave. Adrian and Johnny made light work of the surf waves as well. I really couldn’t get my surfing act together at all – very rusty – or to put it another way – I couldn’t surf for s..t! We must have spent nearly two hours in the Glenelly. Rosie suffered a bit as a result of a poor roll as did Declan; to a lesser extent – the good news was that the swims were never very long and everyone was making progress. We then effortlessly ran the gorge. I was the only one who decided to make the little eddy on the right hand side beside the stopper, which at least meant that I could still get my line.

We then moved on to paddle the Fisheries, which was mostly washed out. We weaved our way down the river catching eddies and trying to surf some waves. Rosie had a swim that meant that most of the group continued down past the last play-hole section so I had this all to myself for a while. For the remainder of the paddle we surfed whatever play spots we could find as well as practiced stern squirts.

Overall this was a real fun day’s paddle or as you say in Irish “Tus Maith!” (a good start).

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Friday 27 December 2007 – Glenarm River

Paddlers: - Adrian, Gareth, Johnny, Brendy, Kevin and I

This was an early morning start with Adrian picking me up at 7.30am as we were going to the Glenarm River in East Antrim. This is a nice technical river with some interesting grade 3, 4 and 5 sections, which is described in the Irish White Water Guide Book as being, “tough paddling with a high thrill factor”. An interesting river can always be made more interesting by the people who paddle it. I remember thinking this when I saw Brendy and Kevin turn up for what I would modestly say would be the most difficult river that they had ever been on. I remembered Brendy’s paddling from Scotland and knew that Kevin had very little grade III experience let alone canoeing above grade III - anyway everyone else was well experienced and we had a number of throw ropes as well as a four piece spare paddle with us (oops! – I only put three pieces into the van!).

Johnny did his bit of hyping on the way up, telling us how many times he had paddled the river and noting that he had never seen so much flooding in the fields, burns and rivers as we neared the great Glenarm river. Fortunately no bog roll was required and the river was only about 4-6 inches higher than last year when we paddled it and not a few feet higher as initially imagined.

This paddle becomes very interesting within about twenty yards from the get-in, starting with a fairly nasty narrow 3-metre rock ledge drop that is about two strokes away from another 3-metre waterfall. Brendy and Kevin wisely portaged this. The only person who experienced any problem with these drops was my good self as my very loose spraydeck came off after the first drop allowing my boat to rapidly fill with water during the second drop. I bobbed about in a vertical bow stall position until I climbed out and emptied my boat. However I was able to make use of a piece of rag, which had been attached to a branch, to strap up 4 inches of the spraydeck elastic. I secured this further with some duct tape that made the spraydeck bomb proof for the rest of the paddle, which was definitely necessary.

I won’t be able to give a drop-by-drop account of the river, as I just can’t remember them. Adrian videoed most of the drops but disappointingly for him he was not in very many shots – the curse of being the cameraman! From my own perspective, I got all the lines that I chose but could have chosen better lines in some instances! There were some good crashes and burns, notably from Kevin, but some courtesy of Brendy, who had improved substantially from October’s Scottish paddle. Two waterfall sections were portaged by everyone. The first one was the 11 metre staggered fall which finished with a very nasty looking stopper and another medium sized fall which upon closer examination had a long narrow strong recirculating stopper that absorbed the full flow of the river before overflowing out the other end. The good news was that we did not have to do the mother of all carries to the van like last year as the get out was in Glenarm village at the sea. We were able to paddle past the magnificent fortress walls of Glenarm castle that go right down to the river’s edge and onward out to the start of the sea. We had spent an enjoyable gruelling 5 hours on the river; probably an extra 2 hours due to the additional rope work (sometimes set up above the drops as well as below them) and rescuing of paddlers and equipment.

This was a superb river that was worthy of the long drive. It catered equally in terms of enjoyment for those who were in creek boats, river running play boats and playboats. Although most of the drops were fairly technical in nature they were easy to inspect, set up safety or portage and were usually followed by relatively calm areas. There were however a few sections that had large fallen trees in the river; some spanning the whole river which would be extremely dangerous in a spate flood. In summary this was an enjoyable, tiring, technical river with some beautiful scenery that had a very Scottish paddling feel to it. I think that some paddlers slept well that night!

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Saturday 28 December – River Roogagh, West Fermanagh at Garrison; followed by the “Slab”, South Donegal

Paddlers: - Adrian, Gareth, Johnny, Denis, Ray, Edward and I

River Roogagh

This was a river that Adrian had hoped to do for years which was rumoured to be a pretty full on river – Grade 5d. It has rained all night and was still raining as we drove this long journey, wondering just how big and technical this river would be? We eventually managed to locate the put-in, which is approximately 3km from Garrison Village. We first paddled a burn and had to negotiate our way through a number of barbed wire fences that spanned across it before finally getting to the Roogah River, which was in flood but was by no means tanking. The general rule of thumb is to take the first two drops on the right and the rest on the left hand side. This advice was more or less correct with the first two being taken slightly right of centre. The drops were mostly straight forward with minimal rope work being required. The only drop of significance in my memory was the third drop, which was approximately 14 - 16 feet high. This had me cringing as I went over as it didn’t look as if it had the deepest of pools to land in. There were a few more nice waterfalls before finishing at Scott’s Falls at the edge of the village. Overall this was an enjoyable paddle but not the monster that we were anticipating; although there were some fallen trees in the river that could pose a real danger in a larger flood. The paddle was certainly made easier by the competency of the paddlers present which meant that there were no unnecessary swims and rescues and fortunately no necessary ones either. Hopefully when I get to see the movie clips I will have a better recollection and appreciation of this great river.

Source of the Upper Eaney (The Slab)

We decided that we would now try out the “Slab” which is a nice fast short rocky roller coaster paddle, containing grade III/IVd drops and slabs. The paddle will definitely put a scratch or two on the boat but it’s worth it if the water isn’t too low. The water level was fine although I would love to go down that river in a big flood! We had such an enjoyable first run that we had to do it again! Each blast down the river took between 12 – 15 minutes. This was a great fun paddle to finish our three-day Christmas expedition.

In final summary anyone who had the great fortune to have paddled all three days really couldn’t have asked for more. We were lucky that there had been so much rain; which meant that we had a great choice of available rivers and a guarantee that our long journeys would be rewarded with a decent paddle. The rivers gave us the opportunity to have fun, play hard and paddle hard – it certainly wetted the appetite for MORE! Many thanks to all who turned up and helped make this a great Christmas expedition and a special thanks to Adrian for transport.

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