There are some pictures here
OK so it was a tough choice two weeks in the French alps with the club or go to Turkey with a bunch of complete strangers. OK so not really that tough as I’ve done France 6 times including last year. Before we committed ourselves to two weeks together we thought we’d better check out that we could all paddle as well as we claimed and that none of us hated each other on sight. So a weekend in Scotland was duly booked, made somewhat easier by the fact one of the guys lives in Glasgow. Surprisingly it can be done from Bristol we left around 4 on the Friday and got to Glasgow by midnight we then packed in the Orchy, Etive and Alt a chaorun on the Saturday and the North Esk on the Sunday and were home before midnight, a stonking weekend.
First meeting done all that was left was to book flights and sort out a shuttle from the nearest airport to Yusufili the most central place to base yourself. The journey to Turkey can be long and for us included an overnight in Istanbul airport. The best part however was watching the other passengers dive out of the way as the baggage handlers decided putting our boats on the tiny luggage carousel at Erzerum was a good idea.
We went on the 3 July and when we got there it was hot but at least the minibus Dave Manby had organized was there to collect us. It takes a couple of hours to get from the airport to the river and when we first saw it, it was big and intimidating. We decided a warm-up on a more familiar scale was in order so hopped on the middle Barhal (an easy IV that turns to III fast), this river would seem more at home in the French alps than in Turkey although even in France it’s never as hot as it is in Turkey. The best part was that the only place to stay in Yusufili is right on the banks so you can get out and have a beer immediately.
We then hit the main river the Çoruh. We did an easy stretch and the shuttle in the campsite owners unreliable van was almost as daunting. The highlight of this relatively easy stretch has to be stopping mid way down the river for Koftas and Chai (black tea, pretty much the only thing to drink for two weeks). Over the remainder of the trip we spent another 5 days on the Çoruh running it from UIspir around 90km above Yusufili to around 15 below, including one overnight trip. The river grows considerably in size during the 105km we spent on it, at the top it is not dissimilar in size to the Middle Guil although the rapids are less frequent and less challenging, the big advantage is it never really stops moving. By the bottom of the river and the Yusufili gorge the river is big volume and non-stop, the 9km below Yusufeli is one of the best 9km of river to be had anywhere not really hard (never above IV) but never really dull either. The final sting in the Çoruh’s tail is called “Lava East” or “House Rock” either way it’s an intimidating rapid, not that hard when we were there but when you look down at a hole from 100m and it looks big you can be sure that if you hit it it’s going to hurt. As it turns out even the small waves we planned to ride were big holes and the route down was narrower than it looked from above, still the Huck did its thing and got me through.
So what else was there to do out there ? We paddled the Tortum and the Oltu which are close by. The Tortum was a good grade IV run with one drop that looked like a V but was maybe only a IV+, the only guy to run it made it look easy. Mind you there was a second drop nobody ran as it lurked behind a house size boulder and the only credible inspection option was to run it. If considering the Tortum nearly all the hard stuff is away from the road so don’t judge it on what you can see. The Oltu joins the Tortum and the Çoruh and is more of a bath than a river, I’ve never felt river water anything like as warm and to make matters better when we got there it had water in it (a few days later and it was much lower) so the run was fun although cutting across the eddy fence between the Oltu and Çoruh was scary however hard you attempted a ferry glide you ended up heading downstream fast.
We also had an abortive trip to the Black sea which Dave Manby says “could be like a mini-Norway” and “Never seems to run out of water”. In our time there we found no water and nothing that looked even remotely like a rock-slide or waterfall. The only saving grace was that on the way there we paddled the Savsat which though not hard was in a beautiful setting and had a gorgeous grade IV rapid at the end, it also had two fantastic grade V+ mini-gorges that would have been on except for two unrunnable drops and a river wide stopper.
If you’re interested in Turkey give me a shout as I could go on about it for ages or see the article in Paddles magazine.
Richard Puttock
