good Guil
As May turned into June, the combination of a large snow pack and heavy Spring rains, gave us extremely high water levels, so much so the local government office, took the unprecedented step and closed all the rivers in Haute-Alpes Department. With the recently huge river levels in the French Alps, the dynamic nature of these alpine runs, means changes, a lot of changes to these boulder garden rapids.
The G17K crew have been on a small holiday for a few weeks, and we were all in the French Alps for early June. Paul Robertson from Palm HQ, came over to the Alps for the UK StudentBoaterX, and we managed to steel him away for some fun on the Guil. I had been on the Guil after the river re-opened a few days before, and enjoyed the fuller volume of the run. Normally by early June, the Middle Guil is a low volume rock dodge, where the better sport is in the Guardian Angle Gorge. This year proved different, with 60 cumecs or so, cleaning up this alpine sprint style run, with the an occasional larger pushy rapid, still great lines.
Here is a collection of images from our little day outing on the Middle Guil.
Paul on Trois Chutes, Guil
Dave on the new and improved staircase
Paul on the staircase
Dave on the exit of the Tunnel rapid
High water fun, Paul rock spinin’ one of the cleaner rocks
A drier mountain distraction for Dave Carroll and Matt Tidy
Alas, all good things must end, and with that Paul headed with Dave for Dagger Europe 2009 product photoshots, Matt headed to Telemark in Norway for a weeks guiding with G17 and myself, a week in the northern Sun with the dear lady wife.
