French Alps
Club whitewater trip in 2024
The Paddlers. Left to right: Mike Mulqueen, Frances Mulqueen, Mary McElhinney, Ken Keogh, Des McCafferty, Phil Ryan, Ian Berry, Gerrie Landers, Moira Lawlor, Billy Cantillon, Therese Gaffney, Eilis O’Dea, and our leader, Bart Konijenenberg. Not in picture: our other leader, Rob.
Shannon Paddlers club trip to French Alps in 2024
Trip account written by Mary and Des
On 8th June 2024, twelve senior (ie mature) Irish kayakers flew 2000 km to the south of France to paddle whitewater. They were not Olympic hopefuls travelling to acclimatise in preparation for slalom heats. They were your fellow paddlers from the banks of the Shannon.
Preparations began months in advance. Packing was challenging. Drysuits or wetsuits? How many layers? Thermals or T shirts? Some very large suitcases were checked in at Shannon, along with a few other outsized items.
We were met at Marseille airport by Bart, our guide for the week. Introduced to us by Brid on the club’s first trip to France in 2019, he also led the first whitewater trip in 2022. So he knows it’s not a college group he’s dealing with….
Rental car collected and luggage loaded, we drove north into the night and reached our campsite with time for a quick nightcap before bed. Like many French campsites “Les Iscles” is located in a spacious rural setting, in this case on the banks of the river Durance in the Départment des Hautes Alpes.
Morning found us climbing the bank behind our cabins to check out the river. It was very impressive, full and fast. Thus began a week of planning challenges for Bart and his assistant Rob. His priority was, of course, safety, followed by plenty of experience and enjoyment on the water. He delivered in full, going the extra mile every day to ensure we had a packed schedule [see below]. A bonus of travelling to various get-on locations was the opportunity to enjoy the spectacular beauty of this area of France.
Bart is a great guide, familiar with every bend in the river. He has no need of Google maps; he knows every backroad and track over a vast area. He is at one with his boat, a pleasure to watch as he demonstrates graceful strokes and manoeuvres. They look effortless, until you try them yourself…. Bart thinks on the spot, adapts plans without any [obvious] stress and works hard to deliver a great experience. And, most impressively, he can run up a steep, gravelly hill with a kayak on his shoulder.
Our training as Shannon Paddlers has steeped us in the practice of working as a group, watching out for and encouraging each other, both on and off the water. This fed into a great sense of camaraderie throughout the week.
Many thanks to Mike who covered hundreds of kilometres in the rental car, following the van up windy mountain roads and ferrying people to do their supermarket shopping. He was a very patient designated driver on the odd evening when others consumed a beer. Or two.
The group owes a huge debt of gratitude to Moira who organised the trip from start to finish. She handled enquiries, needs and requests as she communicated between Bart and the group. That she did it all with great positivity and a sense of humour contributed hugely to the success of the trip. Many thanks Moira.
Schedule and Activities
Sunday 9th June
Morning: Choosing and fitting out our kayaks, and getting our gear. All boats and equipment were supplied by Bart, with the exception of Eilis’s Exo, and some assorted paddles and helmets, which came all the way from Shannon!
Bart informed us that, due to dangerously high water levels on the upper Durance, we would need to change our plans for the week. There would still be plenty of challenging water-based activity, but on different stretches of water from originally planned.
Afternoon: Skills practice on the lake at the campsite.
In preparation for what was to come on the rivers, the focus was on being able to change direction quickly (!), and break out sharply, using combinations of strokes, including forward and reverse sweeps (opposite sides) followed by a bow draw segueing into a forward stroke – a manoeuvre that was introduced to us as the ‘reverse Australian’.
Monday 10th June
Whitewater rafting on the Durance.
This is the section of the Durance that we would have been kayaking but for the high water. Given the conditions, inflatable rafts were the safer (but still very exciting!) option. We had two rafts, the smaller one (6 person) steered by Bart, the larger (8 person) by Rob, with assistance from Ian. The rafting gave the Shannon Dragons in the group a chance to strut their stuff….interestingly, they all stuck together in the larger raft!
Morning session (the warm-up): from just below the slalom course at L’Argentiere-la-Bessée to the campsite at Eygliers (13km). Before setting off, we spent some time watching an assessment that was underway on the slalom course. Given the volume and speed of the water, the skills exhibited were very impressive.
Afternoon session (the ‘classic’ section): from the campsite to Parc d’Entraigues, Embrun (19 km). This stretch included the section just below the confluence with the Rabioux – the famous Rabioux wave (or hole) – where 5 foot waves were hitting the rafts from both sides simultaneously. There was a fair bit of being thrown around inside the raft, but thankfully no one was ejected into the water!
Tuesday 11th June
Kayaking the lower Durance.
After crossing the Lac de Serre-Poncon and stopping briefly to view the impressive stone and earth ‘barrage’ (dam) that created it, we got on at the Pont de Rochebrune and kayaked downstream to Tallard (14 km). The dam tames the river, but even so there was plenty of whitewater action on this stretch, and it was a good introduction to Alpine river running for those of us who hadn’t done it before. To add to the fun, we finished by running the slalom course at Tallard, which was a great chance to really sharpen boat control skills.
Wednesday 12th June
Morning: After driving up the valley of La Biaisse river to the end of the road, we hiked to the Alpine village of Dormillouse (altitude 1,727 metres) located in the Parc National des Écrins. Because of its extreme isolation, Dormillouse was a refuge from persecution for the Vaudois religious sect in the Middle Ages. There is still no road access to the village. It was great to have this opportunity to get into the mountains on a really beautiful day, and the scenery was stunning, especially the numerous cascades and waterfalls being fed from the snowfields.
Afternoon: Rolling session on the lake at the campsite. Bart put us all through our paces and had useful tips to improve our rolls. He was intrigued by some aspects of our technique!
Thursday 13th June
Morning: We moved 180 km south to base ourselves in the mountain village of La Baume, near Castellane in the Départment des Alpes de Haute Provence. This gave us access to a stretch of the upper Verdon river between Thorame-Haute and St. André les Alpes. The Verdon is a tributary of the Durance.
Afternoon: Plan A had been to run the slalom course in Castellane, but, when we got there we discovered that, contrary to local information received the night before, and in contrast to what was happening elsewhere, the water level here was too low! Bart’s Plan B, which he devised on the spot, took us upstream to kayak the upper Verdon from Viaduc de Moriez (Font Gaillarde) to Allons – 6 km. It was a more than satisfactory alternative and the rocks substituted very well for slalom gates!
Friday 14th June
Full day: paddling the upper Verdon from just south of Thorame-Haute to Allons – 9 km. This trip overlapped with what we paddled on Thursday, and was probably the most challenging and technically-demanding stretch of water. It was a fitting culmination to six straight days of paddling, and the apres-kayak drinks en plein air in the town square of the beautiful Saint-André-les Alpes were well-earned.
Saturday 15th June
Return to Marseilles with stops at the Saturday market in Castellane, and at the spectacular Gorges du Verdon, the deepest and longest gorge in Europe. Some paddlers were overheard already making plans to return and kayak the gorge next year….Europe’s answer to the Grand Canyon.
At the Barrage du Lac-de-Serre-Poncon on our way to the lower Durance
Map showing stretches of rivers kayaked or rafted
Observations:
The stretches of both the Durance and the Verdon that we kayaked were relatively shallow for the most part, but fast flowing and with a lot of rocks – many sections similar to Castleconnell’s S-bend but much longer. So strong was the flow that it was possible in places to hear the rumble of rocks being moved along the riverbed by the current.
Another feature of the rivers is that there are relatively few pools, and eddies can be weak, with less defined eddy lines. Getting into an eddy was one challenge….staying in it was another, especially when we all needed to congregate to devise a plan for the next section. Because of the speed of flow, the depth, and the rocks, rolling can be difficult, and we were advised that T-rescues were not a practical option. So, capsizes usually meant swimming ….and swims tended to be long and bumpy! On the positive side, some of us had a great chance to practice our defensive swimming.
The water in the rivers is largely snow melt at this time of year, and snow was still visible on the north-facing slopes of the mountains. In places, especially the upper Durance, the rivers are deeply incised in well-wooded gorges. The views from the fast-flowing grey-green rivers up the gorges and into the snow-covered peaks beyond, all topped by clear blue skies, were breathtaking.
The weather was sunny and warm, with just a shower on the first morning. The water temperature, though considerably lower than the Shannon, was quite tolerable…though almost all had brought dry suits just in case.
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