A french lesson in river karma

After Italy we headed back to one of my favourite places, Briancon in the French Alps. You could spend a whole summer in Briancon as there is so much climbing, kayaking, and cycling, so with only a week to explore the area, it was hard to know what to choose. As fate would have it, I was also destined to learn a not so nice lesson about river karma.

With Adrian from Britain coming over to climb, and Sonja coming here for the long weekend it was real party. During the days the boys headed rock climbing we did some girlie boating. Then in the evening, we all joined up round the camp fire and tried to get to grips with the French language, smelly cheese.

I’d paddled once before in the area but this time it was just Sonja and me and that made it pretty exciting. The first day we warmed up with the Guisane and then headed to the Claree tibrt. Suddenly I began to understand the French paddler mindset a little more clearly as I slalomed unstoppably between the trees hanging over the water. At each bend there seemed little to do but to cross your fingers and hope that round the next corner the river would have a navigable path somewhere.

The next day we headed for Le Guil, one of my favourite rivers. I really love this river because there is so much varied paddling and also because of the castle on the hill above the put in. There’s also the excitement of jumping into a class IV gorge so narrow you can’t turn around, and I love that too.

After the gorge there’s only a few minutes relaxation before heading into another gorge where you can only see one rapid ahead and you know there’s some dodgy stuff coming up. Since we didn’t know the river very well it was pretty scarey stuff but we were coping pretty well with it all. Well that was until we came to the final rapid and were caught up by a team of local paddlers. At the point, ironically enough I must have let my guard down and felt a little safer. I missed my boof, landed straight in the hole and tried to roll several times before deciding it might be better to swim.

Now I don’t swim much, and I had never taken a swim on hard water, so when the hole started playing with me I got a surprise and I got really scared. It was several recirculations and a couple of throws later that I finally managed to grab the rope and drag myself out of the river, and once again get a good gasp of air. After getting my breath back I tried out my pathetic French to thank my lovely rescuers.

After that ordeal I decided to call it a day and try the French sport of Via Ferrata instead. But the next day we were back on the river, to finish off the lower section. Near the end of the run we came across several scared paddlers in the river and on the banks. I don’t know when they had first swum, but by the time we reached them only one of them was still in their boat. It felt like river karma had brought us there, and now it was time I repaid my debt. So we helped them to rescue their boats and made sure they all got back to the road safely. So it seems it wasn’t just me who the Le Guil river gods had decided to play with that weekend!