Fluid Kayaks Team

If you're willing to look it's amazing what you can find.

Nepal has been a premier white water destination for years and years - ever since Mike Jones and his motley crew hit up the Dudh Kosi in 1976 it has been firmly on the map.

For me, heading out there without too much information on the place except well known stories and reading the odd article in magazines, I assumed all the exploring had been done years ago - everything had been found - and there was nothing new to be run.

And yet as it was to turn out, a week before I was to fly home I found myself dropping into Turn-back canyon on the Upper Seti. A one-day mission a few hours out of Pokhara, and dare I say a new 'classic' section of whitewater.

So wait. There's a back story to this. You might remember my first post from Nepal. Anton and I paddling in the dark, a gnarly 40 footer etc etc. Well that's where this started. Ever since that day (my second in Nepal) we knew we had to return - it was the money - as they say in the movies. It was the big one - the gnarly, the new the fresh the 'is this really in Nepal', the bollocks!!

It took us nearly two months before we returned. It was the end of November and we'd just got back from the Upper Bhote Kosi mission, we'd spent 15hours in a traffic jam en-route to Pokhara and we were exhausted. We had only two days to play with before we had to head to the Freestyle Competition being organised by Peakuk on the Trisuli River. Our plan was to bring tents and explore even higher up the river - but our fatigue soon persuaded us to have a rest day before a one day mission to run what we knew was there. Turn-back canyon. Here's how it went down.

After a 5:30am wake up call we took a taxi up to Tatopani and then hiked for an hour and a half until we were about a kilometer above the canyon. Above, Will gets into the right state of mind for the mission ahead. With only the two of us we knew it was not going to be easy, but we were confident and strong after a week spent on the Bhote Kosi.

We went in with all our cameras and with a lot of rope - kindly lent to us by Charley from the Ganesh kayak shop in Pokhara.

With only two of us we weren't about to take any unnecessary risks. Will abseiled into the cave behind drop number one to check it all out. It looked good to go, but from here there was almost no way to get out. Once you ran this you were committed.

Will climbing back out of the cave. It took us a couple of hours to check everything out, make plan A, B and C, and to set up the cameras. We decided Anton should go first as Will was more confident on the abseil and rope work should anything go wrong.

Anton fired up the first drop while Will looked on. Everything went sweet... and then it was time to wait.

...Wait while Anton scouted downstream. If it was a no-go then we were going to have to get Anton back up the cliff and out the canyon. Not an easy proposition!!

This was what I wanted to see! Anton jumping and screaming at the sight of another clean drop!! All we had to do now was zipline all our ropes and cameras across the gorge and then it was my turn to fire it up!

And it was sweet!! After this one there was a little eddy to catch before busting hard left to avoid a massively undercut little drop. And then it was time for the next big one.

We'd been going for a while by now, so we had a munch on some trail-mix whilst we discussed camera angles how we'd run the next one.

Will has another abseil off the side of the cliff to check out the cave, but on this one it was sweet - the drop was super clean. Although there was still no way you could portage and you definitely didn't want to swim as there weren't really any options for safety.

Anton was the first one down again - this time because I wanted to get a shot of him whilst hanging off the side of the cliff on abseil. The photo above is the result!

After climbing up and packing my boat up with my camera and rope it was my chance to run it. This drop had a nice roll in feel - It was a dead straight run in with a few nice small holes which helped check your speed on the approach.

After that there were 2 smaller drops and then a fun continuous section. Right at the end of the gorge there was an un-runable drop. It was such a shame as the run in was nice with a pretty technical but do-able first tier pushing straight into a one-meter wide slot with a huge hydraulic at the bottom.

And that's what we thought of that!

After that we were pretty much out. We had a few more kilometers of rapids to get back to Tatopani, where we would get picked up by our driver, which although one rapid is a portage were all fairly mellow in comparison to the rest of the day.

We reached the take out at 5pm, exhausted but at the same time elated. This descent made my trip to Nepal all worth while and me and Anton really think it's a classic run! Nothing like this has been paddled in the country before and it was awesome to know we were the first ones in.

Since that first descent we told everyone about it and there's been a few more descents. A french group went in a few days later and had a bit of an epic - one of their group popping his deck and breaking his paddle on the second big one - a pretty gnarly swim was had I believe! And Anton has been back in - just after I left the country with a solid international team of our buddies we hooked up with at the Peakuk festival on the Trisuli. The drops have been named 'In, Twist, Out, Scream and Shout'.

I'll maybe post once more from Nepal with news on the Himalayan River Festival and some of my favorite photos./ Thanks again to Anton Immler for the use of his Photos.

Happy Paddling.

Will.