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Caithness Kayak Club |
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River : Upper / Lower Dunbeath,
Caithness.
Paddlers : Colin Matheson,
Gavin Sutherland and Anthony Cundall.
I walked the Upper Dunbeath
following 24 hours of heavy rain the day before we paddled it and it was
absolutely awesome. [ 8 on the gauge which is located 100m above the
harbour on river right, on the downstream side of the foot bridge
support]. The river - all 4 miles of it from the put in to the harbour -
was big volume continuous gd 3/4, it reminded me of the River Onde in
the French Alps at high level....... However when we ran it the next
day the level had dropped by about 3 foot to 1 on the gauge .........
Turns out this is about as low as it can be paddled now, at this level
it is mostly gd 2 with a couple of rocky rapids at gd 2+ / 3, but is,
however, very continuous.....!! The river has changed dramatically
following the floods in October 2006 - in one location the river has
actually completely changed direction and now runs about 50m away from
the previous location, the old route has been almost completely filled
up with boulders .....!! One of the old suspension bridges has also been
washed away !!
Access to the upper section of
the river is via a graded track which goes from Houstry up past the
White Wall Cemetery. The gate to the upper part of the track is locked
........ I believe this is a first kayak descent of the upper section
from the Cemetery down to Prisoners Leap ? If anybody has paddled it
before please let me know ! [col1nmatheson@yahoo.co.uk]
We got on the river above the
gd 2/3 ledge a few hundred meters upstream of the Cemetery. There are a
number of man made concrete weirs immediately downstream, the first
is a 6 foot vertical beast and is located below a small "fishing
platform". This has a massive tow back on it at higher levels but looks
like it could be run hard left. I would definitely NOT recommend running
the weir anywhere else at anything above 1 on the gauge. We paddled it
in the middle as the level was low but I got backlooped, rolled and
immediately got violently back looped again, the second time hitting the
back of my neck / head hard off of a boulder at the bottom of the weir
...... Hmm.....
The river then flows over
another 5 foot rock ledge [we took it through the guts in the middle]
before settling down to some very nice gd 2/2+/3 continuous bouldery rapids
through several impressive gorges and open sections for approximately 4
miles. We inspected a gd 3 ledge rapid about 3 miles into the trip, the
line down was left of center and was very messy as it was partially
blocked with boulders washed into the drop during the floods last year,
apart from that we eddy hopped everything else.
Can’t wait to get back on the
upper section in spate as it looked awesome !!
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| White water paddling can be a hazardous activity, the author takes no responsibility for the information contained in this article. As always, scout a river yourself before running it and decide whether the risks are acceptable. | |||||