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→Season 2025/26
==Season 2025/26==
* <span style="background-color:aqua;">'''2025-12-23 to 2025-12-30 / 8 days / Packrafting / NOBO / RP / OP 04 / Daniel.s'''</span>
Just got back from eight more and less rainy days in Valle Picacho. The duration was planned and not forced by nature.
Day 1: took the 5:30 am bus (bookable on kupos.cl and in the terr austral office in Puerto cisnes, 7k cpl, book to maninguales ) to "cruze Picaflor" and hiked to the put in via option 04 (no one there for puente de piedra entrance, I just walked by). Rain and strong wind made a river journey seem unpleasant, so I camped near the put in.
Day 2: a lot of rain in the night made the river rise significantly, I guess 20-40cm more than usual. Therefore no ground contact, many obstacles in main current. The last rapid I portaged. Camped about 5 km before lake as rain was imminent and fished my Christmas dinner ; )
Day 3: a dry night, the river level dropped ~30cm at the marker i set. Went to the lake and made myself at home in the abandoned fishing lodge (Building Abandoned {29PN} [47.8+0.2/41]) and stayed there for three days.
Day 6: from day three it rained a lot and the lake level rose by approximately 75cm by day 5 and dropped back ~30cm but still way above "normal" according to the vegetation lines. I paddled lago copa 1 and portaged the first rapid (barely possible on the side of the rapid due to high water level). Crossing Lago copa 2 in strong headwind gave me time to think about the next rapid. I decided not to try my luck in the gorge and opted for some bushwhacking action because my reference points from two years ago were all under water . And some action it was. The 1km on the map ended up being only 1,5km in real hiking distance but it took me 4 hours to complete it. It took all I had, the toughest fight against bamboo and its brothers you can imagine. Machete is useless mostly. Luckily there's a nice wind sheltered campspot at the third portage S 44° 52.079', W 072° 39.729', which i already used two years ago with Lauren and Sebastian.
Day 7: it raind and it was very windy so I took the day off.
Day 8: paddled to the last hiking section. Getting out on land is a bit tricky if you're alone, but manageable. There's no more bushwhacking in this section. Thanks to the effort of the past two years (Jordan, L&S, N&T) the trail is clearly visible and pretty much obstacle free and I didn't have to check the GPS once. Also someone must have passed through a few days before me, there were very fresh machete hacks. I just had to do some window dressing and the whole thing took me only 50min. L. Escondido and the rivers to Puerto cisnes are easy, I chose to portage the rapid before joining rio cisnes.
==Season 2024/25==
* <span style="background-color:aqua;">'''2025-02-17 to 2025-02-19 / 3 days / Packrafting/ NOBO (flip-flop)/ RPN / Natalie & Tomás'''</span>
First and foremost; Read the wikis before ours for important information on water levels, especially Lauren, Sebastian & Daniel's (L&S) and of course Jan's 2019 post. Watch our and L&S's Facebook videos to 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.
Option 01: The daily 530am bus (10mil) to Coyhaique that Lauren & Sebastian mention. This bus needs to be booked in advance, the driver goes door to door supposedly. L&S say you can book via kupos.cl but perhaps you should ask a local for the WhatsApp number for the driver.
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. 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 hitch a bus that passes every ~30min.
Option 03: If you are coming straight from the ferry, you can take the ferry bus (10mil). See our report for 28P for details.
And finally there is always hitchhiking.
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 night before from Puerto Cisnes, probably because of that he charged us nothing. Once walking on the Picaflor road, we noticed a family on the left 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, but the gesture was still incredible. Option 04 is a 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.
The Route:
We started paddling around 3pm. 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. 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" (walking along the side with the boat floating in the water on a leash and 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. 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, along a 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 scouting from 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 (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. On the beach tof Lago Escondido, there is a stream for 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.
Facebook post comparing water levels to L&S and M&M here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/222224388283455/permalink/2003487063490503/
==Season 2023/24==
After rapid from river leaves 1st sleeve on left. It's low water and much stones, we didn't scout.
6. Rapid#6 Class IV.
Good lunch on river fusion. At 15pm we went back to Puerto Cisnes in rain.
Taken from: https://www.facebook.com/groups/222224388283455/permalink/1296725007500049/?app=fbl
(includes incredibly helpful pictures and videos for when the water level is low)