A report by Caspar van Kalmthout http://www.riverproof.nl/
The Dutch national NOS news made the story; Images of flooded rivers, filled basements and drowning streets showing the heavy rainfall in the South of France. Uhm… Let’s see. There must be any positive consequences for a kayaker! A phone call soon confirmed it and a little later we were on the way with a team of 5 (Raoul Collenteur, Tim Uneken, Emiel Beukenkamp, Haico van der Meijden and Casper van Kalmthout) to run some of the beauties of the Cevennes area in France.
The Cevennes is rarely visited by kayakers. It’s a little part of the great Central Massive region that is famous for its high and dry highlands. It offers home to the rivers Tarn, Tarnon, Jonte, Dourbie and more, but the only floatable objects that normally enter these waters are fat lazy tourists in open canoes enjoying the sun during summer times… hundreds of them! But what many people don’t know is that these rivers share some pretty interesting upper sections that occur to be runnable a few times a year after heavy rainfall.
Driving into this area we were welcomed by a leading sun shining over the beautiful autumn coloured mountains covered in morning clouds. One thing was clear, the rain is gone and made place for some more attractive weather to go kayaking.
The area seemed pretty deserted in autumn and the few local inhabitants in the small village all show a lot of interest to our goal of travels to their homes.At arrival in Pont-de-Mont-Verde we noticed that the water wasn’t gone yet, actually it would probably take a couple of days before the classic sections were friendly enough to descent. Luckily none of us struggled against getting some warm up time in our dusty big ass creek boats again.
A first day on the lower Tarn felt like a great warm up. More opinions described this river as sometimes a Belgium Ardennes style followed up by a little Californian dreaming with noises that this river couldn’t be over flooded, the more water the better! The Tarnon on the next day was a little bit of an anti-climax. Although the valley was super pretty the river had a pretty boring character and every little rock that tried to hit you offline highered the angry factor with 10%. Only one rapid was worth it and I managed to screw up the entrance to run it all backwards!
So the next day we felt warmed up and we could finally start the classic run on the Haut Tarn. With a 2.5 m on the gage there was enough liquid for this baby. Unfortunately there was a little too much for the crux rapids ‘Goueffre the Meulle’ and ‘La Trompette’, but as the experienced under us said the rest only got better!
Big granite rocked boulder gardens with many optional lines down a beautiful canyon confirmed this classic to be one of the best runs France has to offer.This section put a great smile on our faces and even though the original plan was to leave we all pretty soon decided to extend this trip a little longer. The news that the upper section of the Dourbie was running too sounded as music to our ears and the next day we left early to the next valley for our final ride.
The Dourbie is known to be one of the hardest sections of France. It’s steep and gnarly at the time and clean and challenging in between! While it can not beat the Haut Tarn in its character, it is a one-2-run for sure that really forces you to stay focussed.
After all this trip got us stoked! We did the 1100 kilometre drive back with a big smile on our face. I’ll be watching the news for the next flood that comes down in Central Massive, because there is still a lot to discover!
