Ok, well today was one of those days where best-laid plans go to pot…discussions at Friday night’s pool session suggested that there’d be a good gorup of folk out today…but no, three called off as I was driving to the meeting point and another one failed to show up! So, myself and Tim D were left to tackle the Middle Findhorn on our own…

River Grade: 3+
My Boat: WaveSport Diesel 75
Group Size: 2

Braving the wind and snow, we headed for Ardclach. It was clear from looking at the river as we drove down the hairpins that the levels were really high; what’s normally a scrapy put-in was washed out with one or two stoppers present just up stream!

After doing the shuttles, and eventually managing to zip-up my dry suit, we headed-off down the river. The first little section, rather than containing little drops and small waves, was fast-moving with pushy uneven wave trains, pour-overs and stoppers. Given the speed of the water, it didn’t take long to shoot down, however, and soon we came to our first hazard…

We’d been told by some folk in the club that there were a few trees stuck in the Findhorn (due to a couple of weeks of heavy snow which snapped them in two); the first one we came across covered about 2/3 or the river. It was hanging somewhere around shoulder height and was positioned right above a nasty looking hole. Not too much bother so long as you got your line right, but I wouldn’t fancy getting it wrong…ouch, gulp, glug, smack…

A few wee waves and holes later, we arrived at Logie Bridge. House Rock lay just beyond and was a complete pour-over; I’ve never seen it like that before! Ran it without any incidents and headed on down to the play hole just below. This was completely washed out, but a bigger hole had formed just to river-left. Had a quick play and then onwards…

The next rapid of note was Elephant Rock. This was all-but a pour-over and the two small stoppers below was huge. Both were river-wide and the lower of the two had awesome play potential…we stooped for a while, then headed on…

The river was fast, so the normally flat sections wizzed by and it wasn’t long until we reached Dragon’s Tooth and the start of the gorge section. As we approached, we could see water half-covering the gravel bank (which normaly resides about 1m above water level), so turning the corner and seeing water covering the whole gorge floor wasn’t all that surprising.

Today, you could run Dragon’s Tooth pretty much any way you liked; the central rocks being feet under water. I decided to take river-right and Tim decided to go river-left…mine looked quite a clean run, apart from the unseen stoper which I just managed to sneak through. I didn’t see how Tim got on, but as I looked round to see him break-out in the same eddy, he was drenched…but in his defence, I think it was a face full of water rather than a roll!

Another couple of waves and a modicum of surfing and we reached Carnage Corner…wow! The normally two-stage falls were washed out and replaced with two massive stoppers (the bottom one also have a secondary stopper folding-in from river-right). As ever, river-left was the best way to run the rapid and for once you didn’t have to worry about avoiding rocks!

The journey down was quick and we broke out into the not-as-big-as-usual eddy below Carnage on river-left. We only hung around for a few mins, though, to allow Tim to attempt a wee surf in the bottow hole…not much joy though as it was just too powerful to get into from the side…

So, that was it…a fairly quick run down the Middle, but great to experience it in high water…and once the snow had stopped, a nice day it was too!