Norway 2015 - Day 12
Meeting up with Harry, Reiner and Lorenze in the morning we quickly hit the road to head up the Sjoa for the class IV canyon above town. Our plan for the day was to run this through the Play Run (which includes the short Bridge to Bridge section as well). Taking out at Paul's where we would then head down to scout the Åmot canyon to see if in fact it was too high.
After driving to put-in, we waited for roughly 1 hour while they ran shuttle. A group of Brits were there and we talked to them about their trip. This was their last day and they shared the details of their great trip. After a while Reiner and Daniel returned and we pushed off.
We knew the crux of the run was a rapid called "The Guts" which had some big holes to avoid. Heading downriver we were greeted with really fun class III and occasional IV, all big water. After we entered a noticibly tighter canyon I hoped out for a few pics, and as it turned out this was the first of three moves of "The Guts." The first set was mellow, down the middle, the second set was far left or far right. The third was right of center moving left. It was certainly bigger than the rest of the run, and the meat was also portagable if so inclined. Downstream things mellowed and we exploited numerous fun play waves and downriver waves to throw our playboats off of to mixed results. All too soon, we were at the bridge marking the end of this section.
We had 351.8m on the Sjoa gauge, I thought this was a great flow. Big for sure, but great for this canyon. To save the suspense, after scouting the Åmot canyon the group decided not to run it. Some other groups did at that flow, but certainly more did not.
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This run is impossible to give a rapid by rapid description after one run. Here are a few things:
Mi 0.85:
- Bigger One (IV). Shortly below put-in is a rapid that will start the adrenaline pumping. Lots of lines to chose from, there was a hole in the middle near the bottom that we all avoid to one side or the other.
Some really fun boogie in here
- Hard Right Turn (IV-). There are two hair point turns to the right in this section, I remember the second one as being harder to stay off of the left wall. This also marks when you are coming up on Guts. It is the next rapid after the river bends back to the left.
- The Gut (IV+). This is the big one on this river. It is kinda 3 different rapids if you break it apart like we did. The first part was a wave train that we went down the right of center. The second part we ran down either the far right or far left... the left was significantly easier since we were eddied on the left and the consequence of failing to work far enough right was a huge hole. So most of us went left. The third part was best run down a tongue between holes right of center moving back to the left. From there it was read and run.
It mellows out but stays fun to the take-out
Take-out: Head north on E6 out of Otta. Follow this for about 37 km to the down of Dombås. In Dombås get onto E136 via the roundabout in the middle of the town. 2km later there is a bridge over the Jori. The dirt road that leads to the gauge and the access is just before the bridge, on river left.
Put-in: Continue on E136 for 10.7 km. I don't know the name of the road to take, but it is a sharp right. As I recal we then quickly turned left and crossed some train tracks before coming to a toll. We then continued to climb heading back down towards the way we came from. At the summit (4km) we turned right to drop down the back side, staying left at the fork that came early on. After 2.2 km we got to the bridge over the river. This is put-in
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