Easter in the Pyrenees

Alex having fun on the Rio Ara!

The team headed out to the Pyrenees over Easter with the rest of Imperial College Club for some pre-expedition paddling/training/fun! While most of Europe was experiencing drought conditions, we were lucky enough to find water in two of the valleys on the Spanish side - the Rio Noguera Palleresa and the Rio Ara. After catching the ferry from Dover we had a long over night drive across France, finally stopping in the town of Foix on the French side of the Pyrenees. We paddled a leisurely couple of hours in the sun on the slalom course on the river Ariege before hitting the road again, reaching Sort in the early hours of the morning.

Read and run boys - upper Noguera Palleresa

We found some great paddling on the Noguera Palleresa and paddled three different sections of the river. The upper section above the dam, being our favourite, we paddled twice! The upper section was 10km or so of great continous read and run grade 4 with a couple of harder rapids thrown into the mix. Below the dam we paddled 35km of grade 3-4 over two days, with a spectacular gorge to finish off the river. The slalom course in Sort proved to be a good play spot!

Good luck to yer family boys!

This was one of the last river trips for the Jackson Rocker before it's savage end - Adam paddling

Uh Oh..

Tom on some big water below the dam on the Noguera Palleresa!

The second half of the trip we based ourselves in the beautiful Ara valley, camping in the town of Torla. We paddled two different sections of the Rio Ara - the upper and middle. The middle was about 8 km of read and run grade 4.

Rio Ara

Tom exiting an exciting gorge on the Noguera Palleresa

Derf on the Noguera Palleresa

Alex doing some hucking

Tim enjoying the sun, but not the sunburn! River Ariege

Deep gorges in the Pyrenees - a precursor to the Cotahuasi?

Expedition First Aid Course

As part of our generous support from the Imperial College Expedition Board five members of the Paddle Peru team completed an expedition first aid course this weekend. Although we hopefully won’t have to make use of the skills that we learned, the remote nature of the Peruvian rivers mean they may prove invaluable.

Adam, Alex, Alby, Derf and Tom arrived in various states of wakefulness on Saturday morning and were plunged straight into an exercise designed to test how much of the outdoor first aid course we could remember (not a lot in my case). Revision time over we set about learning some more complex techniques including use of resuscitation masks, defibrillators and oxygen.  After a beautifully sunny lunch the information continued to come thick and fast, with an overview of the various illnesses we may be vulnerable to on the trip and the drugs that would be most useful to us. Saturday culminated in learning more advanced techniques to control bleeding, with some team members enjoying finding each others femoral pressure point a little too much...

On the Sunday we learned a number of the more practical first aid skills. After a quick lesson each of us was presented with a horribly injured patient (a chicken leg) and a suturing kit. With varying degrees of success we then stitched up its terrible wound. With this casualty dealt with we then encountered a whole bag of oranges in need of life saving injections. Luckily these were successfully administered, and we even managed to avoid sticking needles into ourselves. 

Our final challenge was to combine all that we had learned on the last two first aid courses into a single scenario. In groups of three we had to effectively manage an incident, triage patients and administer appropriate care. This provided a real insight into the challenges of dealing with a major incident and an opportunity to prove to ourselves how much we had learned.

We would like to thank Stuart Marshall and Dr Simon Green from Marlin Training (www.marlintraining.co.uk) for providing us with excellent tuition and the Imperial College Expedition Board for funding this invaluable course.