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→Season 2023/24
Day 6: We managed to come down from the plateau without problems. Trail was easy to follow. The rain made progress slow as we treaded carefully, but the white granite was rougher and had more traction than expected. Overall we did not encounter any super ‘dangerous when wet’ areas along the entire trail, except the two steep traverses mentioned above.
We put-in near -47.27440, -73.17022 and paddled Lago Colonia with good backwind. Towards the end, the wind became very strong and large waves made the landing at the water-out spot quite tricky due to the large boulders in the entire shoreline. We timed our jumps out of the packraft so proceed with caution. After we packed the boat we portered the first rapid and rivered-in Rio Colonia after it. We lined the boat through the second rapid, as deflating/inflating our large two-seater is time consuming. Lining the boat down the rapid worked well and we only carried it the last 10 meters around the last drop where lining was not an option. We got back into the boat, set across to the other side and lined it another 50m as the rapid continues around the corner. After that it was free for all! No more portering, but the river remains challenging, there is a 4th small rapid which we ran and haystacks (probably due to days of rain), that require constant focus. At one point the haystacks were at least 1.5m tall. It was a fun ride, but could have gone wrong easily. Assess the situation and keep your eyes peeled the entire first 5km of Rio Colonia. Frequent ground contact.
After that it’s a fast ride down to the river-out where we reached around 6pm. During the last day we were in touch through inreach messaging with GPT Packrafter Jordan. He was so kind to arrange a pick-up for us from the river-out spot, as it was supposed to rain the entire next day and trying to hitchhike out would have been very unpleasant in the cold rain. Thank you so much again Jordan!
