June 1st - 11th
Following on from time in Italy, I took a couple of days driving back round the Italian Lakes and over the Passo dello Stelvio. The scenery was stunning but the roads are not great (certainly at the Lakes there’s just too many other cars in the way!). It got so late and I was going round hairpin after hairpin above Bormio that I simply pulled over in a layby at about 2300m ASL and got some kip.
The following morning, I was off down the other side through Santa Maria and on to the Austrian village of Prutz for breakfast.
I knew this area
reasonably well so cruised around Landeck, Otz, and Haiming looking for other
paddling buddies. The river levels were
all high and it wasn’t really a time to do things solo. The Otz itself was really full and flowing
fast, it was the usual slate grey colour of Austrian flood water - a little
disappointing as I am always keen to do the Otz for old time's sake (I first
paddled here around 1980).
I based myself at
the campsite on the riverbank opposite Prutz, so the Inn flowed past my tent
all night with a fair noise. Luckily 3
Brit paddlers also turned up and we did the introductions (in the Austrian
rain). Great to have Cam, Suzy and Klim
as minders on the river.
Wandering about Prutz, I even found a distillery (but it wasn't a single malt !)
Tosens-Prutz is a
reasonable section of the Inn to start with, so that was the first 9 kms of
grade 4 to do (Sunday 4th June by this stage). Monday saw us get up to St Anton em Arlberg
to do the grade 3+ Rosanna, and then get stuck in to one of the best rivers in
the region, “the Sanna”. We had been
informed of the recent re-engineering of the Sanna below Pians so were
circumspect and looked at a few things on the shuttle. As it turned out there were some features
that were washed out by the high water levels and it became a great blast down
a large roller-coaster. Grade 4+ I guess
with exploding haystack waves, some holes and some wicked eddyline curlers from
the new groins. We repeated the Sanna
run a couple of days later and it was a little lower volume – the lines were a
little easier to see and the fun vs fright factor was more positively
balanced. I don’t recall having such fun
on the Sanna in all my previous trips to Austria. However the levels did restrict my ability to take photos on the way down!
Thunderstorms
became a feature of each late afternoon so the Inn river level was certainly
staying up. The Otz wasn’t going to play
ball so we set off on the Landeck Gorge section of the Inn from that little
stoneworks at Nesselgarten. The get-on
here is basically jumping into a river doing 20mph I guess, no timid starts
this time. The run is pretty straight forward
although very fast, very bouncy, and did cause us to eyeball one short section
before just blowing straight through. By
the time we floated under the glass-sided tourist bridge in Landeck town we
were all grinning from ear-to-ear.
And that was the
paddling done…. I went photo-hunting the
following morning back at the confluence of the Rosanna /Trisanna and then
simply pointed the car north and uphill over the Fernpass.
The drive back had better weather on the
autobahn so good time was made to Belgium for the night, to Oxenholme Station
Inn for a pint, and to sunny Royal Deeside once more.
All-in-all; paddled in 4 countries, 9 different rivers,
and 20 river sections.
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