DESCENTS
RIVER DRAS, INDIA-PAKISTAN BORDER, JULY 2019
Ladakh is already known as a haven for kayakers. It offers world-renowned classic runs as well as a thriving rafting industry on the Zanskar and Indus rivers. Nevertheless, even in this whitewater paradise, some rivers stand out. One of the very last entries in the 2014 Ladakh guidebook (collated by Darren Clarkson-King and Tsering Chotak) is for the Dras, described as 80 km of world-class, roadside whitewater. At first glance, this sounds like an instant classic. Yet since the first descent by Peter Knowles' team in 1985, it has seldom been attempted. The hitch, it turns out, is the river’s location. Situated almost directly on the (at times) volatile border between India and Pakistan, the military presence in the region is high and hardly welcoming to those wishing to explore. Permits to run the river are rarely issued, and unsanctioned runs are inadvisable at best. However, in July 2019, in a season of almost-unprecedented high levels, an opportunity to run the Dras arose for the first time in many years. Right from the offset, this descent was special. The team, consisting of Max Topp-Mugglestone, Tsering Chotak, and Michael Kandel, elected to put on below a monster of a rapid with an unrunnable set of stacked pour overs and ledges. From this point on, the Dras provided relentless, technical whitewater with rapid-fire boofs, moves spanning the entire river, and strikingly few eddies. Apart from that one ugly rapid at the start, the Dras, even at these high flows, never exceeded class IV+. Equally, though, it never really abated, making it one of those few rivers that hits that sweet spot of being technical, continuous, and fun, but never too scary. The Dras is a true treasure of Himalayan whitewater. Unfortunately, the story of the Dras does not end there. Rising tensions between India and Pakistan have now led to renewed military crackdowns in the area. So, if this wasn’t the first descent, it may well be a last descent for the foreseeable future.
2019 CHELAN GORGE RELEASE, WA, USA, SEPTEMBER 2019
The Chelan River, at just 4.1 miles long, is one shortest rivers in the northwest. It emerges from and .
