And the lord said... let there be hucking!

Hola amigos! Well, its been an eventful couple of days since we last posted. We hit up the Rio Palguin and the Rio Fuy, which are both crystal clear agua waterfall runs. Coming from the chunky angry whiteawater of Montana it is truly amazing how clean all of these runs are.

No wood, no big f-you rocks in the middle of drops... just beautiful whitewater EVERYWHERE!


New Years eve saw the descent of some truly stout whitewater as Ian and Jared fired up Gerd´s drop. A very large 60 footer with a class V lead in. Jared went first and ¨stuck¨the line as good as he could have. Ian on the other hand dropped into the fold of doom and disappeared inside the waterfall. All we could hear was the loud crack of his paddle smashing the side of the rock 30 feet down from the lip with another 30 feet to fall. With no visual on him everyone was quite scared for a few moments that seemed an internity. After that epic little huckfest we dropped the most beautiful 30 footer downstream. Unfortunatly we have no pictures accessible right now because Adam left Pat´s camera on... no battery... dammit.

After that most epic of days we partied the night away on New years. I personally ended up sleeping on styrofoam with Bradford´s paddling gear laying on me as my blanket (note to anyone who thinks Chile is tropical...its not, its cold) Today we struggled to wake up at the crack of noon. With a refreshing dip in the lake that just so happens to be out the front door of where we are staying we slowly mounted up our gear and headed to the Palguin to lap the upper section 3 times. Afterwards we checked out the middle Palguin´s gorgeous 70 footer. Looks good to go. Who knows if and when we´ll run it, but I sure hope we get the chance.

Hope all is well for you reading this in our new year of 2009! And remember... its not peer pressure, its just your turn.
Adios from Pucon
-Ben