Up at the crack of dawn (behave) and over to Marks for 7.30am. We look at Rainchasers and the rain radar shows rain all over Wales. Over to Dobbies for a bit of breakie and we are off to the Nantygwyryd a mountain stream running off the Snowdon range into the lake above PYB.
We sorted the boats out in the most severe weather you can imagine. Horizontal rain, gale force winds and Mark in shorts! We all piled back into the car to sort out the shuttle. It would have been character building to leave Chucky out there looking after the boats but I decided not to at the last second. We arrived back at the get in downwind of another group. Bits of their kit were flying at us like a scene from Twister. Mark carried it back to them but they said it wasn’t theirs! How bazzare! Thanks for the throwline and single pogey! Despite the river being really close to the road it still felt like a grade 5 walk in due to the conditions.
The river was well up with rocks covered and no sign of the grassy islands I had seen in video footage. Eddys were few and far between and very tight. It was really fast and exciting with drop after drop. The fastest km Ive ever paddled. Chucky makes an eddy on the left and myself and mark on the right. A good job really because the grade 5/6 gorge was within 20m or so. The portage is easy river right but not river left and therefore I had to give Chucky Nelson Mandela type hand signals telling him to turn around, climb a fence, walk up the hill, jump a stream, come back down the hill, come back to me. The river eased off until the final hit before the PYB lake. A guy in a landrover watched us from the bridge, drove round to the lake, wound his window down and gave us a round of applause. Pure magic. Made me feel all gooey inside!
Fantastic experience.
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