Tasholo

The Tasholo

Another run with almost no beta. What we were told was there is a 50 footer in there, and a rapid that killed someone, and a 90 footer at the take out that some one ran accidentally, have fun.
Writting this a while later i really wonder why we went in. O yea it's mexico and it's rad and it coudn't be any worse then our first big banana epic.

So we head in and it is low flow, lots of bouncing off of rocks, but there is a hand full of good moves here and there and all of us have the 50 footer in the back of our heads. So we pressed on bounced off of more rock, i got pinned and we all just got beat up, definitely low water. All of us commented on the low water and how full on the run would be with just a little more. We bounced into another rapid and "wow that is a horizon line." We took some time getting people out on the ultra sketchy scouting rock
.
The team, on the sketchy rock. If you look close you can see everyone's boats piled up on the small beach in the top right corner simply get out of your boat and swim up to a sketchy ledge 5 feet before the 50 footer, it goes better then it sounds.

Lance looked down at me in the pool
"well it looks good just ride off the curler."

I responded "what about safty?"
"I'll jump, if you get hurt"
So i paddled back up the eddy and fired off a 50 footer totally blind, what a rush.

Me, Chris Baer droping the 50 footer blind,
remember you can only run somthing blind once.


Lance Reif dialing his line.


Davis Grove pluged it deep, imploded and broke his paddle, but managed to get to the eddy in his boat. Laughing the hole time.


Lance making Horhays rapid (the one with the fatality) look pretty darn good. What you cant see is that under Davis in the back ground, all the water goes under the wall again.


The last good rapid, and John McConville boofin it big.

After the last good drop it goes back into some boulder gardens. Be supper heads up the 90 footer is down there, and it would be very easy to run it unintetionally. It also doesn't look that good, all the water in the landing zione is swirlling clockwise and there is no airiation on the right side of the falls, and that is exactlty where you would land, OUCH.
The hike out is a bitch super steep and the bar at the top is usually closed.

Well that is it for mexico i hope you had fun because i know i did. Stay heads up for the next installment, the Grand Canyon, it will be a bit as we will be down there for a month.

Tomato Gorge

Tomato Gorge, after looking at tomato one,

and knowing that more then 50 % of the kayakers had landed on there heads, and looking at tomato two

that has had very few successful descents, and has a 150 repel in. We simply decided to repel off of a hole bunch of throw bags hooked together into the gouge below.
The repel hand over hand climb adventure and lowering the boats in took about an hour. Then we paddled into the landing pool of tomato two, "damn i'm glad i didn't run that it looks horrible from here."

So off into the canyon we went John got out and scouted the first major drop. "Well it goes.... it just has a lot of stuff going on on both sides, just go down the toung."
We where all pretty fired up at the bottom and it was really fun to watch everyones eyes get huge right as the crested the lip.
There was a hand full of other fun drops and then we came to this, "just fire off the gorrila pad" It was great, a slow role in to a great launch flake.

Jake boofin it.



John even attempted a freeweel off of it.

Next up was a 15 footer with a big hole at the bottom, I got surfed.

Lance getting far left avoiding the hole

Another goofy drop, you couldn't see the landing on almost every drop, when in doubt power threw

Chris Baer looking for the last stroke

A hand full of other little drops and the river mellows out again. This section is supper fun and the Quality of the drops were fantastic just remember one rule when coming to Mexico you can never ave enough paddles ( John broke 3) , and bring a climbing rope.

p.s. If you look at google earth there is yet another gorge below this it has been labeled with the turm unrunable. I will be back and I will spend some time looking at the next gorge.

Return to the Big Banana

So after a couple days of rest we returned for Davis's birthday on the Big Banana section of the Alsaseca. We got a five hour head start from our previous attempt, and it all went reasonably well.
We arrived at the 120 footer in only an hour and a half and got a great view of it.

a little shout out photo for Kenny Kiley making the wonderful Blunt Family Paddles

even got to shot some pictures of some of the smaller fun rapids, this was a great triple drop rapid with a interesting first move

Chris Baer trying to keep his nose up in a goofy little ledge


John McConville getting the big boof on the 20 footer
Davis Grove and Lance Reif weren't so lucky and both blew skirts in the stompy hole at the bottom

The next drop that we quickly referred to as the slot drop. This looked absolutely horrible from the top but "it teranys out well"

Chris clearing his paddle, Davis Grove broke his paddle here on the first attempt.

We even had time to sit arround the 40 footer for an hour discusing it's runability

Jake plugin the 40 footer and making it look so good that John McConville also fired it up.

A different angel from Meat Locker "boof into the seam and disappear"

Chris Baer about to dissapear



I'm also going to throw in a couple shoots from the road side section, it is good just not epic. We did get the tour by Adriene so the directions we got where "interesting"

Chris Baer resurfacing after the crack drop, Adriene's directions where "well most people don't run this but just fallow me"

The always classic S turn

Chris Baer zig zaging his way threw. Lance even got to see the hole rapid upside down his first run, only cost him a paddle and a little pride.

Well that was a quick post, on the road heading towards the Grand Canyon.