Hidden Gem

Mr Biggin gave Rich Waterworth and myself a call last wednesday, trying to rally a small crew who were game for the painful hike in and paddle out of the River Kinglass. Dave had been working so hard in the office to get ahead of schedule, which allowed him two and a half minutes to check the weather reports which were looking good for a friday night hike in and saturday morning dawn patrol.

Due to the Kinglass being west of Bridge of Orchy, flowing into Loch Etive, we dropped a car at the head of the Loch with dry clothes for the following day. Just before setting out on the hike, Dave brought out a bag and confessed to having bought five subways, apparently you can tell a lot about someone from the food they pack… whilst Dave had bought out the Fort Bill subway, Rich now had shares in the Balloch Co-Op and I was seriously lacking man points with a Warburtons seeded batch loaf full of jam and humous (not combined!). 

Rich in a midgie swarm… The map had a building marked about seven and a half km’s up the track which we hoped would be a bothy. On arrival this turned out to be an old cattle shed. It did the job though with a three foot by six foot patch which was dry-ish. The only problem was the midgies in the morning. 

  

Dave on the final three km push to the river. He pushed through, despite all the blisters on his fingers from the non ergonomic keyboard at work.

Although it had rained hard in the early hours of morning, it didn’t seem to be enough and we realized on reaching the river that it wasn’t anywhere near optimum level. Despite that, the first rapid (above) got our hopes up that we weren’t going to have to bump and scrape.

Dave cruising in above the twenty foot ledge. Numerous streams and burns joined the river, picking up the flow but unfortunately not enough for what could be a nice twenty footer in higher levels.

   

After a fairly good continuous section we came to the first decent horizon line formed by two slabs. The first was good fun with no real hazards.

Rich in the middle of the second slab. The ledge has a fairly considerable hole at the bottom but the slide that leads in gives plenty of speed to clear it. At this level we just had to make sure we missed the rocky outcrop which backed up the hole but otherwise great fun!

Getting boosted off the ledge. After this the river leveled off quite a bit, but still had some nice ledges and rapids which we all said we’d love to see in really high levels. 

The last two km’s of the river is just a simple grade two paddle to Loch Etive. We timed it to make sure the tide was going with us for the final straight up the loch. If you are going to do this run, make sure to double check the tides as it wouldn’t be that fun if you got it wrong.

 

All in all a fun mission. Dave did eat all of his subways, despite Rich’s best efforts.

Catch you on the water

Ed