Cambios

First and foremost; Read the wikis before oursfor important information on water levels, Especially especially Lauren, Sebastian & Daniel's (L&S) and also of course Jan's 2019 post, and also watch . Watch our and L&S's Facebook videosto judge water levels on rapid01 before deciding to enter rapid02.

Transport: Leaving Puerto Cisnes we came across three bus options. All of which you must get off at "Picaflor" / "Rio Picacho" and pay in full, even though you get off half way.

Option 02: A 7:00am bus to Puerto Aysen (10mil). On the door, it said Monday, Wednesday, Friday, but it went on Thursday too. Once again it needs to be booked in advance (though it was far from full), get a local to help call the driver for you. The bus goes door Door to door pick up( so it picked us up at 7:15). If you are wanting to go to Coyhaique, you can still take this bus and get off at the intersection of Puerto Aysen and hitch (43km) or there are buses hitch a bus that pass passes every ~30min. After finishing the section, we ended up switching to the bus from Puyuhuapi to Coyhaique at the regular washroom break most buses take in Villa Manihuales (-45.18196, -72.15524), which cost us additional 4 thousand per person.

Resupply in Villa Manihuales was better than expected and we surprisingly caught a bus going NOBO at ~10am. It was the same driver who drove us the day night before from Puerto Cisnes, probably because of that he charged us nothing. Once walking on the Picaflor road, we noticed the a family on the left side of "Camping Picaflor" (WP Settler 1.5) out and about so we decided to try our chances at asking them for a ride to the river. We had a short weather window for this trip so we wanted to cut all the corners we could. Carmen, the mother of the house, was incredibly humble and got her son to drive us to the end of the road free of charge, "a gift" she said. We still gave him 20mil for his time and the gas and car teardown, but the gesture was still incredible. Option 04 is a forrest forest road and we were driven to -44.97101, -72.28987. Around -44.97251, -72.27754, there is another settler family that charges for access to Puente Piedra, supposedly a beautiful place, but we did not go there, so we did not pay. There was a couple of tourist cars – so you have a small chance to get a hitch there.

We then officially started paddling around 3pm (long lunch). The first 5km were very shallow and it stayed shallow until the confluence with the much stronger Rio Picacho (definitely not for packrafting - class V?). Personally I did not find this river fun at this time of year after at least a week of little rain. Tomáš suffered less but in general agrees. Of course, the weather was grey, which didn't help, but it It felt like we were "tip-toeing" along the river. There was a lot of wood (a larger version of 17P) and a lot of walking due to shallows. Most of the time our options consisted of riding along the logs or taking the shallows, it was a slow go. Between the evening paddle and the next morning's paddle it took us roughly 8hrs. There were a couple of rapids that Tomáš ran and I walked (-44.96612, -72.36515 is a rock garden, -44.96616, -72.37042 or 21.9 a rapid with an unpleasant log, both probably class II). We slept in a grassy mosquito haven here; -44.93850, -72.45275. There were a good amount of side streams for drinking along the river.

After the confluence of the other Rio Picacho flowing from Lago Presidente Roosvelte, the going was easier, but still not that fast. We hit headwinds early. They got stronger as we were reaching Lago Copa 01 and then of course Lago Copa 01 was very much a head wind. We found shelter in the right hand bays on the first half but then the second half was just a straight push. Sadly no views due to clouds. The remoteness was somewhat disturbed by a helicopter that ran back and forth from Puerto Cisnes to somewhere behind us more than once an hour for two days. We portaged Rapid 01 (class III? - rock garden) on the left along the rocks. We spent quite some time there judging the water level in comparison to L&S's Facebook videos. We already knew we had low water, but it was still interesting to judge the change - about 0,5m less then them. Mikhail and Masha had again almost 0.5 less than us. Tomáš managed to "walk the dog" (aka walking along the side with the boat floating in the water on a leashand locking carabineer) but it was a little dicey.

Lago Copa 02 started off with a very strong head but it was short lived. Judging by our low water levels, we went into the gorge towards Rapid 02. As noted before, don't attempt this if you have much higher water levels than L&S on the first rapid, though . Tomáš thinks it is very unlikely you would not be able to walk on the right even then, but better safe than sorry. We then portaged the boat on the right hand side of the rapid, left would have worked too (and probably easier). For this one we had to take our backpacks off and carry the boat over the rocks, no walking the dog. The rapid had a scary huge rock in the middle - looked class IV?

Lago Copa 03 was a tiny paddle and we headed to the known 100m portage route. There were no clues to the start of the old trail here anymore, you have to check the GPS. We expected the trail to be in better shape, but it did not seem feasible to carry the boat through it without deflating, so Tomáš cleared the trail to make it boat friendly (minus the sharp bamboo spires). In the end Tomáš peeked around the rock corner at the end of the portage route to take , along a look at rocky corner ledge, to scout Rapid 03. Rapid 03 is also in a gorge and therefore impossible to scout from upstream, as it is a 40cm drop. At this water level, it could be escaped. He decided it looked runnable and went back to paddle down it while I stayed on the nice slabby beach. It is II or II+. Approach from right, but enter paddling diagonally to the left. Unless you are quite experienced, Tomáš would only recommend running it after scoutingfrom the other side.

It was approximately 5pm when we left Rapid03 and judging by the terrain and Facebook photos, it looked like the beginning of the last portage (Jan&Crew's route) looked awful for camping, but we went anyway. Tomáš was eager to get a head start on the machete work. Due to lower water levels the start of this trail was not obvious. There is still a rope hanging down (you will only see it when you are right there, we initially missed it, GPS very helpful), but it is a bit of a climb to get up. The beginning of the trail was still in good shape. Luckily there is a good waterless and mosquitoless camp spot ~100m from the start (-44.85348, -72.65333). Tomáš continued to chop away into the evening, but there were sections in pretty bad shape so he only advanced ~50m. The second day was spent mainly on the trail. It was mostly visible still where to go, but anywhere with bamboo along the sides got closed in. Every so often we could still see the "fragile" tape around the trees (2019 crew?). We only had one machete, which Tomáš adores much more than I, so he cut while I moved the dead wood and did some route finding. The route became very obvious somewhere before the OSM pond (not seen from trail). Now it should be mostly obvious and easy to walk (for at least this year and maybe next year), but everybody following us needs to factor in a few hours with a machete to keep it that way. Altogether we spent ~7 machete hours, though one or two would have been enough, if we were optimizing for fast passage, there were only two places where a tree fell and it was impenetrable. On the beach tof Lago Escondido, there is a streamfor drinking. We started paddling at 3pm, facing some headwind and waves. We crossed the lake in 135 minutes or so. Rapid 67.9 was easy, keep left. It took us about two hours to go down the river. It was around high tide. It was very hard to tell if there was a current against us or for us. Wind died down mostly by then. Given our speed, there probably was some slight current for us in the end. High tide allowed us to take a shortcut through channel here: -44.74472, -72.70352. Boat started leaking along the seam for the last hour or so but we made it Puerto Cisnes before dark.