22 October last year I managed to enjoy the Witte had a super level with Corné van Daalen. But because it was raining quite hard and with the level rising we didn’t really stop and film anything except for three rapids as we didn’t want to get too high a level as the river can rise fast, so we kept paddling to try stay ahead of it. But in the end we filmed the drop above the 30m slide, the slide itself, and Double Drop, where I experienced some luck…
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Every year I make a pilgrimage to the Dwars River. The bad tempered ugly duckling of the Western Cape of South Africa is very seldom paddled - probably because one drives right past the much better Witte River on the way there. With the Witte’s clean water and long, continuous rapids free of strainers it makes one wonder why anyone would go to the Dwars with its well known polluted water, ugly strainers, intimidating top section and water level depending, unpleasant hike out. On this particular day the Witte was too low, and Justin Abrams had flown down from Johannesburg for a few days so we had to go and paddle at least something.
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Right, so this is the first real article of the year, and naturally these are back logged from last years river missions, and whatever comes through in terms of new stuff in the surf. As I’m sitting down to write this I feel at a loss for words, which is not unusual, believe it or not. I’ll allow myself to delve a little into this.
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When you live in the Western Cape of South Africa, paddling options are a little limited. This is not to say that the paddling is bad, it certainly isn’t – but this sometimes makes one look to something, well, different. The Krom River is a very short river that flows into the Smalblaar, just upstream of the confluence of the Smalblaar and the Elandspad where it strangely becomes known as the Molenaars to most people, and maps. I heard about it from Johnny Heatlie so we just had to investigate it.
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On one of the trips to paddle the Witte River this year we were faced with solidly high levels and it was still raining. Not feeling particularly brave to tackle it on a high and still rising river, we decided to put in a few rapids after the final slide and run only the bottom section which has a lot of water, but much less gradient. Shortly after the put in, a significant tributary joins in from river right – the Klein Bobbejaansrivier. This is an Afrikaans name and directly translated in means Small Baboon River. It has a good ring to it don’t you think? This river has a fun waterfall just before it joins the Witte, and also a rapid shortly afterwards.
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Wednesday, 06 April 2011 13:11 | 
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