Norway Part 2 - High Water Voss
Now with Nat in tow and having spent the night camped next to the lake just outside Voss in the truckers stop, we cracked on with boating. We headed straight to the Brandset, a river we had heard goes when everything else was high. We were relieved to find locals on the run whom verified that it was a good level. We blasted down the run fairly quickly with minimal rapids being run upside down (a couple for Nat at the end, mainly due to a bad description by me...). This river is the definitive slide river, from the start it crashes downhill and rarely stops to the end, all with beautiful turquoise water. Just don't run it on your head! We tried to get to the Jordal in the afternoon, but in a scary scenario my car failed to get up the hill and ground into the floor, so we had to turn around.
The next day we headed West to the Eksingdal Valley, here we paddled the Lake to Lake slides and had our first bit of carnage. The slides consist of a first, fairly bumpy slide into a pool, followed by a second higher volume curler into slide into 5m drop into Lake. Nat and I ran the first drop and then Sam and Nat ran the second, happily landing in the Lake. When it was my turn to go, I punched the curler a bit hard and pitoned a rock under the surface causing my boat to crumple and a last minute hand roll on the lip of the fall, before landing on my face in the Lake and then thinking I had imploded, panicking and swimming in the flat water... We then had lunch and preceded with a lengthy boat fixing session in the sun. We also inspected the 25m fall downstream but weren't sure of the water level, so ran away scared and looked at Double Drop, which was on the lower side.
We awoke the next day to rain and storms and went to Statoil to meet Frenchman Antoine who we had met the day before. He showed us a river called the Tverrelvi or Steinelvi, a lesser known creek run near the Teigdal that needs a lot of water. Despite a nasty road and lots of gates, the run was fun, with some cool rapids and a fair amount of water. In the afternoon we went back up to the Teigdal to look at Double Drop which was now in and after some lengthy inspection with Antoine (who had broken his ribs and arm on it the year before) I decided to give it a go. Thankfully my line was okay and I only got minor whiplash due to 45ing the second drop... But was somewhat relieved to be alive.
With even more rain overnight and the lake level rising to nearly flooding our tents, we had a bit of a relaxed cafe morning and then went and paddled the Upper Stranda (we later realised we got on the wrong bit), which was really cruisy, high volume with lots of waves. It was cold though so we decided not to boat anymore and went back to the Cafe.
The next day we joined ex-Dartmoor, turned local paddler Nick whom showed us around several runs in the area, with a couple of morning runs of the Hommedal in the sunshine, a little, low volume creek with a cool gorge reminiscent of Wales; and an afternoon blast down the Lower Stranda (the right bit) and a high water Raundal Playrun (it was around 130 cumecs, so not really a playrun). Definitely don't want to miss the portages! He topped off the day by letting us use his shower and cooking us dinner, we were very thankful and really enjoyed the day!
With everything dropping fairly quickly now the rain had stopped, we headed back to the Brandset for a last run before it dropped off completely. It was a fair amount lower than last time but still an alright level, I wasn't really feeling the river this day for unknown reasons but the others enjoyed it (Nat inspected things this time...). In the afternoon we acquired a 19 year old German called Kristoff who had come out to Norway with his Dad and his kayak with the aim of paddling rivers but had not done a great deal of paddling before. Sam and I took him down the Upper Myrkdal which was fairly high and he scared the crap out of us by eddying out in strange places. Nonetheless no-one got hurt and it was a cool river. The next day we did similar and paddled the Lower Stranda at a slightly lower level than before and then another run on the Upper Myrk.
For our last day we joined up with the English Megatrain, Nick, Lee, Rory, Tom and ourselves and headed down a high Raundal Rafting Section. On the first rapid Nat got caught by a violent eddy and couldn't get out, so ended up swimming, but luckily Tom and his big guns were there to escort her to the side while Sam and I rescued her boat. We then preceded quickly down to Timber Hole which looked manky so we portaged and then carnage struck again with Lee taking a beating and swimming in the bottom of Church Drop. Nonetheless the run was blasted out fairly quickly and in the afternoon we made our way to Sogndal.
A massive thanks to Nick for showing us the runs, the dinner and the shower!