Trucks, tanks and kayaking
The Four Borders Expedition 07 Siberia and Mongolia

Majoy Cascade
Bummer! Shrinkavision strikes again. But once you’re in, there is no escape from the Majoy cascade - double bummer! Sitting in an eddy above any difficult rapid is always a nervous experience, but after watching three of your friends casually getting tossed about (upright and upside-down) like decapitated heads at a chicken factory above what can most simply be described as ‘300m of mess’, it’s worse. Ooooh yes, much worse! Triple bummer! Dave Burne is a little concerned!

It’s six months since the selection event; six months of emails, letters, phone calls; six months of begging and pleading; but most of all, six months of anticipation and excitement for this day – the first river of the British Universities Kayaking Expedition 2007, the warm-up river of the Four Borders Expedition. And right now, in this eddy… I just want to be home with a cup of cocoa and my feet up in front of the TV! Six months of intense planning and we chose this as a warm up! A large volume Grade 5 inescapable gorge?

With Igor’s words still ringing in my head, (and no other option) I left the makeshift comfort of the eddy. Here goes…

Light was dimming at the end of the day but after negotiating rapids such as ‘The Touchy Person’ and ‘The Kiddie’, with one swim, one dented boat and one lost pair of blades we rounded the corner and there was the truck. The beastly ex-military vehicle was waiting for us. A huge surge of relief and satisfaction rushed through my veins. Forget that cup of cocoa. This is where I wanted to be! The ‘Touchy Person’ had broken us into Siberian water!

The difference between paddling a small British ditch and a large Siberian gorge is fairly major, so getting into difficulties had to be expected. Hence we were prepared when Sean had a sketchy moment at the bottom of one of the main, named rapids and swam. With the 'Touchy Person' behind him, we managed to pull him off before he entered 'The Kiddy' - a huge river wide hole.

In retrospect paddling a big volume river was a good method of getting everyone comfortable on big volume water. There was much more of it to come. But in the meantime…

Mongolia
The Mongolian leg was always going to be a huge risk for the expedition. Despite extensive research we had found no information on any rivers in the country and no promising leads. This really was exploratory boating – a big gamble.

From what we could find out pre-expedition there was a ‘rainy’ season, which lasted… ooooo a good two weeks. And to add to that, this season usually showed up anytime between mid-July and late August!

Mongolia is basically a desert… and we were going kayaking there… awesome… “Who’s idea was this again?”

Tom Hunter, Khovd River, Mongolia. Photo: Paul Sherman

Things didn’t start well. The border crossing was… interesting shall we say. Our truck was forbidden from going across the 30km of aptly named ‘no man’s land’ between the Russian and Mongolian border points, and our translator had to leave. Things weren’t looking good. After being stuck at the border point for a day it was decided that the best thing we could do would be to get up early and hitch across to Mongolia, with all our kit, and our boats. With the use of the international language of sign, and a few hundred Tengals we were across. Eight boats on six roof rackless vehicles, with fraying rope and even string to hold things down. But it was never going to be that smooth!

I was the last member to leave Russia and was relieved to see the gang waiting for on the other side of the fence in Mongolia, but my relief was short lived. As soon as the gate opened the wheels started to screech. Suddenly we lurched forward, swerving to narrowly miss a border official, and then another, on the thin dust road. We were away. Stopping for no one and nothing. But what was going on? Why was my passport still with the border guard? 200m (and rapidly counting) away from our truck? Was I being kidnapped? Why hadn’t I taken more notice of Indiana Jones’s ‘jumping from a moving vehicle’ technique?

We chose our target river and the next day we we’re away, hopes high that there would be a nice bedrock creek or two flowing into a couple of huge lakes. Our translator Sarol did not seem too optimistic after speaking to some local villagers. “The river is too shallow, there is not enough water, and it needs to rain” Sarol said. Undeterred, we felt after the drive the least we could do would be to check it out ourselves. After a long hike up the river, it was obvious that, although there was some water, the valley was too wide for anything of great interest.

And that is basically the story of the majority of Mongolia! With the exception of a spectacular and cultural two-day Grade 3 trip, for the next two weeks, our optimistic search in the Mongolian Altai was dealt regular blows, “No water here”; “No rain since last wet season”; “Too dry”… we had come in the middle of the country’s worst drought in 20 years. A drought, in a desert… not the best combination for a kayaker!

But then came an inspiration. A tip off from Chris, our man in the know, suggested that we ditch the detailed smaller scaled maps and go back to the drawing board. A mere three-day drive east across remote desert and we would come to a range of mountains which had “the potential to possibly have some glacier fed rivers”. We were sold… we were desperate! This was our one last attempt to find a river we could paddle.

The gamble button was pressed… and the gamble button delivered!

Now all we had to look forward to is getting back into Russia!

Sean Zeihm-Stephen, Dave Burne, Kohroo, Mongolia. Photo: Paul Sherman

Karagem/Argot
Our driver, Tank, really is a machine. Throughout the night, while we all slept (or at least tried to) in the back of his truck, he was driving us up over the 3,000m rocky Karagem pass. Two bottles of vodka (straight, naturally) later, and with dawn breaking, he pulled up at the get-on – a small rocky tributary to the Karagem River. We decided to split into two groups of four and set off…

Unfortunately, there was a ‘minor’ communication hiccup. One group took the high road on a path up and around the tree infested ditch, the other took the low and battled through the strainers. A day and a half later with only vague theories as to where the respective groups were, we were eventually reconciled. The relief had to wait for later though.

We finally deduced that we must be ahead of the others, so found a camping ground up on a small cliff and waited… and waited… and waited… and – then we heard it! Sharp blasts from a whistle in the distance. The boat we hung from the cliff as a marker had done its job marvellously.

But what was this? Only three people appeared around the corner… something was definitely wrong!

Three people, four boats. Action stations! We ran down from the cliff and grabbed the nearest throw lines we could. But it was too late as they had already passed us. Trying to keep up we ran along the rocky bank, buzzing with adrenaline. After a few sketchy moments, and one throw bag down, the dented boat was recovered, and everyone on the bank. Everyone except Lowri.

It turned out that after inspecting a nasty rapid 3km upstream Lowri had slipped and dropped the boat. In a steep sided canyon with steep skree sides, she was in for an interesting walk. It was only a couple of hours before dark, and knowing she had no food, shelter or warm clothing, we had to move fast… never before have whistles been so essential.

Only now could the relief set in. For the first time since Tank and Igor dropped us off, all eight of us were together again, listening to Lowri's wide-eyed account of her epic traverse along the top of the skree sloped gorge. From this point it would have taken over a week to walk out over the mountains.

The boat chase had been made more challenging not only due to the sparse number of eddies on the river, but also because the river was, it turned out, pretty high. Another two days of pushy Grade 4 with the odd strainer to avoid, and with regular rendezvous points we reached the confluence of the river Argot. If one was to describe the Karagem as a large volume river “a bit on the high side”, the Argot could then only be described as a huge brown torrent. What’s more, after the 25km of ‘flat water’ down from the confluence we knew the Argot gorged up… big style! It was the calm before the storm.

The intimidating pushy rapids were long with some being several kilometres in length. The waves were huge and there were enormous holes to navigate between. As the rainy days went on the river got even bigger as it flowed through some beautiful gorges, into boxed canyons and must-run rapids. When the Argot finally flowed into the Katun, it was time to relax and reflect on the epic run that we had just had; with many highs and lows, all on an immensely intimidating, challenging, wilderness multi-day river trip. The hardest boating most of us had ever done.

Sean Zeihm-Stephen (top) and Graham Milton Kukure walk out. Photo: Paul Sherman

Chulyshman
The drive to the get on may have been far less remote and difficult to that of the Karagem/Argut run, but some things were strikingly similar. For a start, we were driving in the dead of night. This is a bonus as it prevents the engine from overheating as much. However, when things go wrong, (take having your truck fall through a bridge for example…) it does make things much trickier.

So the Chulyshman – what a river! For anyone paddling in the Altai this is a must! There's no chance of a warm up though! You’re straight into the one of the major rapids – Devil’s Bridge. A must make boof into a boiling retentive pool where live bait is only possible if you have um… lots of courage!

After ‘Rosie’s House’ (a 5m waterfall) came the rapid where the most interesting lines were taken.

I myself was unsure of running the rapid from the start, so decided to use Ben, Graham and Sean as probes. Three different lines were taken, three different mistakes were made. I had all the information I needed – now all I had to do was select the best combination of lines. Learning from other people’s mistakes is definitely the way forward!

After only one night we had completed the section. The next morning, Patrick and Sherman (having recovered from some dodgy sishlick) joined us for a two-day stunning continuous Grade 4 paddle until we reached the truck, where Tank and Igor were waiting with beer, vodka, and BBQ.

Bashkaus
This river has been described in many ways. Three of my favourites being “One of the most difficult and committing gorges on the former USSR”, “Like Siberia's anus. When it rains, the sphincter is unhappy and closes up, and the backlog goes all the way to the neck”, “Tomorrow we paddle the Bashkaus, if it rains, we risk our lives.” Basically, this river was a serious undertaking. The first people to raft this river noted 127 obstacles before they even reached the first major rapid - the Key. But the thing we were most worried about were not the rapids, it was the rain. Our Russian friends had soberingly made what turned out to be a fatal error in getting on the river during a rainstorm only the week before. Fortunately for us there was clear blue sky all around. We could only hope it would stay that way. With all the hype about this immense spectacular gorge it was an intimidating few days. However we had been blessed with fine weather and low water levels. ‘The Family’, the ‘Meatgrinder’ and the ‘Stubborn’ were all successfully navigated. Before we knew it, we had reached the lake, caused by a huge landslide, which marked the end of the difficult section. A sigh of relief was breathed, we were out of the gorge, but this was still not the time to relax. There was one last major obstacle to overcome. The ‘Landslide Rapid’. There were two options:

Take on the long scree slope portage, or

Test your mettle.

Every other group who had previously paddled this river had opted for the former, with the exception of two Bublicks (a crazy Russian raft). Would we break the mould? The conditions were perfect. We had no other information about how successful the previous rafters were. There were no previous kayakers to question… After an hour of inspecting, a rescue helicopter flew overhead, reminding Graham and myself that this river has taken more than just a couple of casualties in its time, and we weren’t ready to be at risk of being the next… just yet. Though a seed has definitely been planted.

The three to five day gorge had been navigated in just the two. That night as we huddled under the wooden road bridge waiting for the trucks arrival the next day, a deafening roar of thunder cracked directly overhead. The heavens opened and we were engulfed in a most immense thunderstorm. We had got out just in time!

With Sean and Sherman both graduating and back off to their jobs, it was decided since we had a few weeks to spare, Kazakhstan was the place to go. We'll save that story for another time though…

So that was the FBE 07!
But to leave you I will use an immortal quote from Igor ‘the Bod’ which I believe sums up the trip perfectly: “Zis, is 98% medical Ethanol. But do not worry! When react wiz air, is only 97%…SALABIZIMA!” l
Dave Burne