Our thanks to our trip leads at Two Blade Adventures.
Republic of Georgia 2017 Day 10:
Waking up in the morning we quickly saw that the water had come up, and was now too high to do the Upper section. So our plan was changed to just have a mellow and short day, kayaking the lower class III section of river only. This run would have been a great run for a playboat at our high flow with numerous nice features. For us in our creekboats, it offered plenty of fun ferries and moves to make to spice it up a little, though only one rapid was harder than class III. The scenery on the run was very nice, though not rugged canyon like many of the other rivers we ran. Instead it was lush forest that could have been in Ecuador or North Carolina.
The run went quick and all too soon we found ourselves at take-out. And then the trip got a curve ball, as Egor got out of his boat his back began to sieze, a shitty experience that I am all too familiar with. We got him some meds and he laid down in a large amount of pain. We spent 3 hours hoping it would subside, which it never did. With high flows up North, we knew that the hard part of our trip was behind, so he and Alona decided that he would stay behind while we went on without him. Apparently, a day later he was able to get a friend to pick him up and take him home, but was still in large amounts of pain, so a doctor friend of his did an MRI and found just as we though, muscle spasm. After a few more days of rest, he joined us for the final day of driving to Tbilisi.
For us though, we left the Khobis and headed North into the Greater Caucus mountains and got our first views of the tallest mountains in Europe. That's right, the tallest aren't in the Alps, it isn't Mont Blanc… it is Mount Elbrus in the Caucus Mountains. As we drove, I couldn't stop taking pictures of all the wonderful scenes we passed. Finally, after about 5 hours we arrived in the town of Mestia, deep in the mountains. We got a wonderful dinner, and then set up camp along the Mulkhura with wonderful mountain scenery surrounding us.
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Mi 0.0:
- Boogie (III). This run is full of fairly non-descript class III boogie. I don't really see a way to do a rapid by rapid other than the big one.
- Big One (IV). This rapid is easily scoutable form the road on the way up. There is a small creek crossing on the road where this rapid is. The line was down the far left the hole way. Some beefy holes are in the middle. The line is s-turny against the wall with some seams that could easily flip you. It is fairly straight forward though!
Split (III-). Not far downstream the river hits a midstream rock, creating a big pillow. We went to the right of it. It looked more intimidating from above than it was.
Boogie (II to III-). I remember it getting easier from here on out. Though there are some beautiful caves as you head downriver!
Put-in / Take-out: Use the GPS coordinates in the map and a mapping program on your phone. The street names will not be legible anyways…
Put-in: 8.5 km upstream from Mulkhuri there was a bee farm on the right. We put-in there.
Take-out: In the town of Mulkhura, there is the bridge over the river on the main road.
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