Day two in the bag! A great day, on a section of river that I've often had trouble with in the past. Greg's knees eased up for the Saddles portage and we managed to run some of it, we snuck the Washing Machine section on river left - I'm still a bit scarred from a previous BIG swim there, and the water level was pretty high once we reached the confluence of the Umgeni. Broke another paddle here - this time me!
The Numeni portage up was hot and steep as ever up, and running down the steep decline blew Greg's knees once more. But once back on the river we had an adrenaline rush of note, shot the Big Three - Gumtree, Thombo and Hippo only swimming in the pool at the bottom of Hippo. I have never taken such good lines in the section between Numeni and the dam before, and we were very quickly at the dam. A quick stop with Reg 'Super Second' Makepeace and my beautiful wife at the headwaters of the dam, and we were onto the hour long grind into the NE wind over Inanda. But with thoughts of cold Hansa in mind we blew through it and finished in a time of 5h18.
Only Day Three left, shorter at 36 km and some fun rapids. Sad it's nearly over - oh well Non-stop to look forward to in 3 weeks time!
No comments:
Post a Comment