Heather and I were looking for a mellow desert escape and the Mojave’s Spooky Canyon came to mind. It is one of the few true slot canyons in the Mojave, with sections requiring headlamps even at midday. As an added bonus the whole area is quite scenic as the “Grand Canyon of the Mojave”, one of the few places where the Mojave River regularly flows above ground. It had been a good long time since I had been there and I thought it could be fun to explore more thoroughly and photograph. Also the slightly atypical landownership meant it was one of the few scenic places in the Mojave where drones were allowed. I found an account that indicated the neighboring canyon to the east was also a worthwhile slot and got excited about potentially being the first to do a loop by going up Spooky and coming down “Not Spooky”. I also realized that we could probably improve on access and avoid potentially deep Mojave River crossings by approaching from Corn Springs to the east rather than from Afton Canyon from the west.
We managed to rally for an early start and made good time out the highways. We found the roads to be increasingly maze-like the further in we went, with the pre-planned route not always the most obvious on the ground. The canyon walls began to gradually close in and we had some nice views of the intricate badland walls. We crossed the wash several times and battled some deep rutted sand but overall had no issues making it to our railroad siding destination.
We first did a short hike to check out a small arch hidden against the wall of the wash and a very short slot ending at a dryfall plunge chamber. We drove a couple hundred feet further and grabbed our bags for our Spooky loop.
We crossed under the railroad tracks and within minutes the conglomerate cliffs closed into a slot. We steeply ascended the sinuous slot, clambering over a few boulders and bedrock sections. The slot was at least 100ft deep with golden light at the top filtering into darkness below. Before long we needed headlamps and had four roped upclimbs to contend with. The conglomerate is quite young and unconsolidated such that despite best efforts critical hand and footholds give way if you are not careful. All the ropes were old and variable but generally anchored to my satisfaction. The last rope was a steeper and taller two-stage climb probably totaling about 35ft. For this we put Heather in a harness and she had a first go at using ascenders, which worked well.
Once up we had a few more turns before the canyon spit us out into the colorful metamorphic rocks above. I found a loose gully that provided a shortcut in crossing over to the neighboring “Not Spooky”. This canyon had a steep downclimb near the top and one additional one further down that I provided a meat anchor for Heather to rappel. A couple nice hallways followed with at least one notable chock stone overhead. The narrows were shorter and not nearly as dark in this canyon and soon we entered a corridor of breakdown to clamber over and around and then reached the railroad tracks at the mouth to close the loop.
We found ourselves completely boxed in with about 20 4WDs and off-road vehicles surrounding our car with twice as many people loitering around. The first appearance was aggressive in how they chose to surround our car but we found them very friendly and it clearly wasn’t deliberate.
We still had plenty of day left and so decided to drive a little further up the Mojave’s canyon to just before the first major stream crossing. We noticed a road leading up to a dramatic dryfall amphitheater and so drove all the way up inside it for a neat view. I also sent the drone around for a long loop past some of the badland cliffs and up to an interesting cliff-hugging mine with ruins of an old tramway system. After that we called it good, navigating the maze slightly better and not too much traffic back to Riverside. Spooky Canyon was maybe even a bit better than I remembered it. I thought it was well worth the visit and made for a nice day out.
The Zambezi River near Victoria Falls is one of the world's great whitewater river trips with a unique combination of terrifying class IV-V+ whitewater, incredible scenery, African megafauna, beautiful camps, and comfortable temperatures, not to mention arguably one of the most justified natural wonders of the world. Victoria Falls, aka Mosi-Oa-Tunya ("the smoke that thunders") is truly staggering as a 1.7 km wide and 108 m tall drop that can have typical annual high flows over 100,000 cfs. Every year thousands of experienced kayakers and raft-guided tourists descend the 25 km section downstream of the falls as an intense day trip. Much fewer continue on to raft the full 135 km length of the Batoka Gorge due to the considerable logistics involved. Keith and my friend Rocky's SierraRios guiding company was planning to offer several 11 day/220 km length trips from August to December. Rocky was billing these as "last descents" since the jointly Zambia-Zimbabwe approved Batoka Gorge Dam threatened to flood most of the gorge up to just below Victoria Falls potentially as soon as 2025. The threat of seeing it before it was gone was too great and Keith, Tim, and I banded together to join the December trip we could make fit into our schedules (unfortunately one Rocky was not on). This second to last trip of the season would come right on the cusp of the rainy season as the river rose. The planned itinerary would include 3 days above the falls where the river lazily anastomoses through national park lands providing our best chance to see wildlife (hippopotami and crocodiles being the greatest hazards), a transition day to get around Victoria Falls, and then a further 7 days through the whitewater and basalt of Batoka Gorge. Rocky did little to discourage me from taking my packraft and so it was not until much later that I checked online kayak videos and realized just how big the rapids were!
I prepared with a careful packing list, updating immunizations, and securing anti-malarial medication. When the day came Keith and I ventured to LAX and met Tim. Right off the bat we were thrown for a loop with Kenya Airways canceling our London to Nairobi flight and booking us on a different one leaving London three days later!!! Long travel adventure short we were able to resolve this in London with a longer same day layover and routing through Cape Town instead, which meant we did not miss out on the start of our trip. Upon arrival in Zambia we found everybody to be friendly. It was warm! Our taxi dropped us off at Tabonina Bis, our quiet hotel our group booked out, to find gear already largely organized and everyone getting to know each other over camp chairs and beer. We met Pedro our fearless lead guide from Peru, and several of the local guides. We walked to a group dinner at a nearby restaurant/nightclub; food came slow and I was more than ready to turn in by the time dinner finally ended. That somehow all the travel worked out seemed somewhat miraculous; I had anxious excitement for the trip to come.
Day 1: Sleep was a bit of a personal struggle adjusting to the new time zones and temperatures, but we all assembled for breakfast and loaded our gear on an enormous flatbed truck and piled into a raised open-air safari-style transport for our ride to the put-in. We were told it would be a 2.5 hour drive, which seemed inconceivable since the put-in was only 30 miles away, but sure enough stopping to fill the tank, 24 miles on paved roads, a bush bathroom stop, and a slow 6 mile crawl along an overgrown and rutted road did manage to add up to 2.5 hours. Avoiding incoming trees branches turned into a somewhat high risk sport for the last few miles. We drove through the sparse village of Mulemi, one of the few views into the daily life of locals we saw, and were generally greeted with a mixture of friendliness and curiosity. Eventually we reached the river's edge. We ate lunch, the flatbed arrived, and we got to rigging the five rafts which took close to 2 hours. Some curious kids watched. A couple guys grabbed their hand-carved dugout canoe to paddle across the small channel to an island; between the two of them they had only a dinner plate to use as a paddle, which left an impression on me. Because of the hippo and croc hazard on the upper river everyone was confined to rafts for this portion of the trip above the falls.
We floated a short distance out the 100ft-wide side channel to join the vast 1500ft-wide mighty Zambezi. Huge river! It was a weird first for me to be on such a big and warm river where we were strictly forbidden to go in, let along dangle a foot off the side of the raft, for fear of crocodiles and hippos. Naturalist guide Dominique and armed game guide Chris were on constant alert and had an impeccable ability to spot the low rock-like profile of a hippo snout and ears from over a mile away. The river here was largely of a slow-moving anastomosing style with frequent islands and only occasional steeper riffles over exposed bedrock platforms. Every time a hippo or group of hippos was spotted we would take the widest possible berth around them, sometimes rowing aggressively when they started beelining for us. We probably did twice the river miles just dodging hippos like an angry minefield. Several of the guides would slap the raft tubes with their sandals to create loud gunshot-like noises that carried particularly well through the water, announcing our presence to the hippos. A total of 32 hippos were spotted. We only rowed for a couple hours (12 km) this first day before pulling into a very nice sandy beach camp on river left. We did the standard river runner thing with offloading way too much gear and setting up a comfortable camp. It was still hot and I was probably sleep deprived and dehydrated, still adjusting to life on the Zambezi. Not being able to swim in the river, Russell had the creative solution of setting up an inflatable kiddie pool inside a raft. General campfire discussion in the evening revealed that I was not the only one intimidated by the whitewater below the falls. Heading to bed I saw occasional fireflies and enjoyed the chorus of frogs, crickets, and birds.
Day 2: Thankfully I slept well. We had a slow morning out of camp. The weather on the horizon threatened rain with thunder and lightning but none materialized overhead. The style of the river continued much the same as the previous day but we saw an abundance of wildlife through the course of the day including 145 hippos, 4 elephants, and 5 crocs. We had lunch on a very idyllic island beneath the canopy of some particularly large trees. Because we generally needed our rafts to be close together to communicate and maneuver around hippos, it We pulled into camp fairly early in the day, another short day on the water but still managing about 23 km. Our camp was the pleasantly grassy Toka Leya picnic spot on the edge of Mosi-oa Tunya National Park. It was a busy place with well over 20 vervet monkeys attracted to our colorful gear, looking for their strategic openings to steal things. They were bold, dropping straight into our kitchen area, jumping across our rafts and even climbing all over tents. I became less amused when Tim had one pee through the netting of his tent and so I rushed to put my rainfly on (it rained in the middle of the night so this proved doubly wise). A few hippos noisily bellowed across the river and occasionally worked their way along our shore allowing for closer looks. A few groups of African tourists came by, many from drier portions of Zambia so the Zambezi River was a major attraction. We also were highly amusing to them with several of our group of dirtbags being asked to take photos with and some of them jumping on our rafts for staged photos. It was kind of a refreshing "tourists be tourists" moment, universal to tourists from all places. Excitingly this camp had a spot where the river shallowly ponded into a bedrock depression, which allowed bathing without fear of crocodiles. The hot middle of the day led into a very pleasant evening and thankfully the monkeys moved on at night.
"Hippos on the right!"
Day 3: Overnight rain apparently had much of our group scrambling to put their rainflies on in the early hours but I slept very soundly. It was a particularly cool and pleasant morning, and leisurely as we would be met at the camp for a game drive through the national park at 9am. Two safari-style trucks showed up with guides and off we went on the roads around the park. I chose the Landrover that had a little higher seat in the back but as this was the second vehicle, it turned out that we saw a little fewer animals than the first one. On a 15 km loop through the savannah and open forest we saw impalas, zebras, water buffalo, baboons, springbok, giraffes, meerkats, and warthogs. The park had two groups of five white rhinos that are guarded 24/7. At one point we parked and were led a short distance to see five rhinos lounging around. Their eyesight is poor and they seem to be considerable less agitatable than hippos so we were able to get within about 10 m of them. Such weird wrinkly creatures. These couple hours would be the only real safari tour I would go on during this busy trip; more would have been nice but I was thankful for the animals I did get to see.
Back at camp we loaded up and pushed off around 1pm, almost immediately seeing a group of [goofy-eared] water buck. We saw some more crocodiles and even some monitor lizards hanging out along the water's edge. As we approached Victoria Falls now there were considerably more signs of civilization including fancy houses and vacation rentals. In this section there is considerably more motorboat traffic and relatedly the hippos are way more aggressive here. We had to have a motorboat escort to get between us and the hippos to discourage their interest in us. We had a brief stop at the Waterfront Lodge where most of our party made a quick stop for a gin & tonic before we carried on. Our hippo count for the day was 78, bringing our trip total to this point up to 255! We pulled into an overgrown island which served as our least desirable camp of the whole trip, having gone 10 km. We literally had to carve our kitchen, campfire circle, and tent sites out of the jungle and relatedly had more spikey foot piercing plants, ants, and mosquitoes than other camps. As the day crept towards its end we could tell it was going to be a particular good sunset and so many of us piled into a raft and ferried around the corner to some mid-river rocks where we could catch a better view. It was a stunningly beautiful sunset and seemed stereotypically African somehow; epically vast and orange with long clouds. The oranges gave way to delicate pinks and blues; some sort of water plant had wonderful purple iris-like flower that perfectly complemented the reflections on the water. This sunset was an easy standout of the trip so far. Back at camp we ate a very late dinner as guide Henry put in hours of work cooking up a total of eight traditional Zambian dishes. I ate most including a few of the caterpillars. The dishes were tastes of sour vegetables and heavy spices that my palette was not accustomed to. I struggled to eat most of them but really appreciated the effort. Another nice social campfire and then a good night's sleep.
Day 4: Despite evening clouds there was no rain overnight. We packed up and rowed for only 1 km to our river left takeout at Dry Manzi, 1.5 km upstream of Victoria Falls; even at this distance we could see the horizonline and spray of the falls erupting into the air. Despite the limited time rowing, this was a monster day of logistics and effort! To get around the formidable Victoria Falls and continue our rafting journey below the falls we had to derig and move all of our gear on to flatbed trucks, pile into a transport truck for 2 km to the Zambia side national park, walk a sweaty 500m down to the river, reinflate and rig the boats, then get ourselves and all our boats to the Zimbabwe side to launch. There was low levels of chaos as the national park entrance where we divvied up gear and set up a launch table. It was a roaring hot day and aggressive vervet monkeys and baboons took turns trying to sneak food, steal gear, or pee on us. Equally aggressive were the street vendors looking to sell animal wood carvings or nyami nyami pendants (twisty snake symbol of the falls and river), but at least they didn't try to pee on us and were more or less friendly. After the meal we walked down the Boiling Pot Trail to the river, an aggressively steep but direct way to drop the full height of Victoria Falls. Fit and wire-y porters painstakingly carried all of our gear down and were an incredible sight. Like a superhuman trail of ants they seemed to carry more than their body weight down the uneven trail. Despite the loads they easily surpassed everyone else just walking down and I have never seen anyone carry two kayaks at a time, let alone down a slippery uneven path at a pace approaching a jog. Amazing humans. As we descended through the lush jungle I caught my first view of the bridge downstream, an impressive towering structure spanning two countries over 100 m into the air. The first sight of the river was even more awe-spiring. I arrived just in time to see some of the "daily run" kayakers rocket their way down Rapid #1 (The Boiling Pot), an impressive wave train that T-bones into a wall with a crazy spilt of the river into a massive eddy (the Boiling Pot where we would be rigging boats) and the river onward. As I pictured myself in my packraft in that rapid I could feel the butterflies building in my stomach. Staring at this rapid for hours while we rigged did little to increase my comfort with it; as I would very soon find out this rapid was small potatoes compared to what lurked downstream. We rigged for over 3 hours and it was chaos and exhaustion and the hardest we had to work on the trip. Gear came down to us from the porters in all the wrong order (one of our two raft pumps was one of the very last things to arrive) and it was a punishingly hot day, particularly without shade and nothing but black hot rocks. I continued to marvel at the loads the porters carried down, including a full expedition style cooler strapped to two oars carried by two porters like they returned from a hunt. There is no way the trip would work without them but we still had plenty to do. This time we rigged Rocky's AutoRights to the top of each raft, an inflatable roll cage of his design that helped "right" boats tipped in rapids and also doubled as a fun perch to hang out on top of. Finally in the mid-late afternoon we suitably rigged things to lug a raft up Rapid #1 so that we could paddle raft up to the base of the falls. My greatest annoyance of the whole trip, my packraft had not yet arrived and so I could not paddle it up to the base of the falls and have some of the others snap a few photos of me.
The Dry Manzi takeout with Victoria Falls horizonline beyond
Superhuman Boiling Pot Trail porter
We worked as a team to line the raft up the rapid as we worked our way over the uneven rocks. Once up Rapid #1 there was a handline bolted to the rocks that gave us just enough space above the rapid to all get in, paddle away from the water rolling towards the rapid, and paddle upstream across the long pool between vertical walls. The first view of the falls from below was simply breathtaking; down in the gorge felt a world away from the many tourists on the rim; we could not see them and so felt completely isolated. The full waterfall is over 1.6 km wide and drops over 100 m vertical. As we paddled upstream we approached the cliff of the falls; about a third of the length and perhaps a sixth of the flow entered from the right Zambian side, while two-thirds of the length and the bulk of the flow joins from the Zimbabwe side. These two rivers meet at a 180 degree angle, something I have never really seen. To get to the base of the falls proper we had to paddle across the full force of the flow and boils at the end of the so called Minus Rapids to gain a very meager eddy in which we could tie up our boat. This spot was so fucking cool, an absolutely epically awesome place. I could have spent a whole day here. Water all around moving with great force. Wind and thick mist driven by the plummeting falls. Very slippery rocks. We carefully climbed up the dramatic dike-like ridge in front of this portion of the falls and walked it out to its end. In the directions of the compass we had one of the more ribbonlike cascading sections of the entire falls immediately to the north, a thoroughly mist-shrouded gorge to the west, the two absolutely terrifying Minus #1 and Minus #2 rapids to the south, and the chaotic confluence of the waters to our east. I furiously snapped photos as the falls drenched us almost enough to bring on shivers. It was an unforgettable experience and a true highlight of the trip if not my life. The day was getting on so after a half hour we piled back in the raft and headed back down. We paddled through Rapid #1 (The Wall) which was all smiles, then made final preparations to hike back up the trail (sweaty!!!). We walked 300 m to the Zambia immigration, stamped out, walked 1.5km across the bridge through no man's land (hot and sweaty still), stamped into Zimbabwe, then hopped in a van for the short drive to the town of Victoria Falls. The view from the bridge was amazing- below we could see our boats, Rapid #1, and the confluence at the base of Victoria Falls. In addition to the wood carvings, the street hawkers here were pushing to sell us demonitised one-billion dollar Zimbabwe notes. Some could not resist the urge of being a billionaire and dropped plenty of US dollars; it kind of reminded me of novelty stamps. It felt like a gauntlet working our way past the vendors. Things were a bit disorganized at the N1 Hotel but eventually I got settled into my room, had a refreshing shower, dressed in clean and dry clothes, and then made the incredibly dumb decision of checking my work email, which included the results of the department vote on my tenure file (11 in favor, 5 opposed). For a department that loves to unanimously vote in favor of double or triple accelerations on advocated faculty, the message was quite clear and I had to wrestle with the weight of making serious life changes very soon. In a lot of ways this set up my view of the rest of the trip, trying to be in the moment and appreciate the trip, but also trying to look forward and ask myself what I really want out of the rest of my life. Crushed but wanting to be around my compatriots, I strolled across the street to the River Brewing Company for a group dinner. The ambiance of the outside patio dining was excellent and we all had a nice social dinner. The food was social media pretty but remarkably bland and took forever to arrive. Oh well. Between adjusting to the air conditioning (10%), the consuming thoughts of my work life (50%), and my anxious jitters over tomorrow's whitewater (40%?), I had an overall lousy night of sleep. It was a big, long, terrible and amazing day.
Bridge view of our boats, Rapid #1, and Vic Falls
Day 5: Another big day and the start of the formidable Batoka Gorge below Mosi-Oa-Tunya. The hotel breakfast was painfully slow, a trend that expanded to every meal I ate out in Africa. Eventually we took the taxi down the bumpy dirt road to the Zimbabwe-side porter trail down to the river. This cliff-hugging trail went straight down to the river in the most efficient way possible, including bolted stairs that were almost steep enough to be considered ladders. Due to the strange logistics we rigged the previous day on the Zambia side but had to get the rafts to the Zimbabwe side to start our trip. At lower flows this sounded like a manageable task but at our currently rising flows at the start of the rainy season it was a challenging task to break through the hard Boiling Pot eddy and ferry enough to cross Rapid #1 to the downriver current. Our rowers struggled greatly and were clearly exhausted with each failed attempt. A couple rowers had clean runs. Another successful attempt required two people rowing to create enough power to oppose the force of the water. The remaining rafts struggled and got mangled in the hydraulics at the bottom of the rapid, using the AutoRights to rollcage their way through. It took the better part of 2 hours to get all the rafts across so we could resume our onward journey. It was a fairly intimidating thing to see these experienced rafters struggle as I inflated my comparatively petite packraft. I doubt I am the first person to packraft portions of the Zambezi River but every guide and kayaker said I was the first they had seen.
Rapid #2 (Between Two Worlds) started right away but was more like a riffle at this flow to help ease me in. Rapid #3 (Giant Left Pile) had some big waves that gave me that Grand Canyon rush as I fought wave by wave, somehow making it out the bottom upright. Rapids #4 & 5 were a step up in difficulty and I was asked to strap my boat and be a raft passenger with Conrad. In hindsight I probably would have tried to run #4 (Morning Glory) and might have had a chance of success if I hit it just right. Oh well it was plenty fun on the front of a raft; Conrad styled it but managed to break an oar that caught weirdly on the AutoRight mid-rapid. We scouted Rapid #5 (Stairway to Heaven) which I was quite happy to not run! This has a famous boof rock on the right with a whole lot of chaos below and an enormous hydraulic on the left called the Catcher's Mitt; our raft line was right between the two. Just as Conrad and I lined up to drop into #5 there was an enormous clap of thunder and very strong rain started, adding to the drama. We pulled out to the shore after #5, strapped the rafts together and threw a camp tarp over the AutoRights so we could hovel underneath for a lunch. The rain actually chilled me to cold temperatures and I had an instant feeling of overwhelming thinking it could maybe rain like this for the next 8 days and how epic and miserable that could be. By the end of lunch the rain had eased thankfully and I jumped back into my packraft. I ran Rapid #6 (Devil's Toilet Bowl) cleanly until the end when the last wave suctioned me into a flip; the aggressive end-of-rapid boils pulled me underwater twice which was not comfortable. This would be one of my two flips on the trip. I rode Rapid #7 (Gulliver's Travels) and Rapid #8 (Midnight Diner), which were both excellent. Conrad was the only one that went for the big and bold left line in #8, which was one of my very favorite runs of the trip and almost certainly some of the biggest whitewater I have ever stared down the throat of.
We stopped for a long scout at Rapid #9 (Commercial Suicide), which was no joke! I opted to walk this rapid, not even being a raft passenger (though Conrad ended up with the cleanest line by far). There was a lot of carnage! We had one oarsmen Bob get ejected in the first hole and I helplessly watched them have to swim the entire rapid; this was terrifying to watch as they narrowly missed rocks and disappeared for seconds at a time but somehow they made it out the bottom OK. Jason's raft ended up too close to shore and slammed hard into a rock at full speed ripping one of their 4 main tubes completely flat. Russell's boat performed a full inversion in the first hole with the raft remaining flipped for the full length of the rapid; thankfully he managed to stay inside the boat on the inverted AutoRights. We had one more rapid to go before limping into camp for the day. I got back in my Alpacka to run Rapid #10 (Gnashing Jaws of Death), which was a great rowdy wave train, and then we drifted into Camp Songwe on river left. What a solid few hours of whitewater! This was a pretty neat multi-level camp where we set up our kitchen and camp on bedrock platforms near the river, and clambered up to a higher level where there were patches of sand and neat areas of pools ponded in high flow hollows like tidepools. Shortly after we arrived some porters appeared from some hidden cliff trail, setting up camps for two groups of kayakers splitting the "day run" in two, the only time we would share a camp like this. The basalt here had some really neat amygdules (geodes) with sprays of zeolite minerals and sizable calcite and quartz crystals that were fun to run around looking for. I ended up hiking around the entirety of the main pond looking at the rocks and taking pictures. We had a particularly nice campfire and it was great to change into dry clothes. I found a neat little frog that was happy for me to take its photo; my headlight attracted bugs which it was happy to eat. We ran 10 km of the river this day. It was an epic, amazing, and truly amazing day. As the day's excitement began to fade and the fire staring began, the tinges of sad emotions began to creep back in. Lightning built on the horizon. As I settled into my tent for the night, the rain began and continued through much of the night.
Rapid #4 Morning Glory
Rapid #5 Stairway to Heaven (and below)
Rapid #9 Commercial Suicide (and below)
Camp Songwe (and below)
Day 6: We had a slow morning in camp as everyone set to drying things from the heavy rain overnight. I started the day in Conrad's raft for Rapids #11-19, some of which I probably could have handled in my packraft. Rapid #11 (Overland Truck Eater), #12 (The Sisters), and #13 (Mother) appeared in short succession. One of the enormous waves in Mother flipped Darwin's raft jettisoning Julie, who I managed to grab and pull into the raft a second or two before she would have been smashed between the raft and a rock wall. Rapids #14 (Surprise), #15 (Washing Machine), #16 (Terminator), and #17 (Double Trouble) came and went without much fanfare. Rapid #18 (Oblivion) had two big waves that led into a monster third retentive wave. I packrafted the rest of the day from #19 (Fun Wave). At one quiet spot on the river I found a nice cliff jump I could not resist. Just past #20 (The Last Straw) we had a long lazy lunch with most of us napping in the shade near the helipad avoiding the heat of the day. This is the typical exit for most of the kayakers but the numbered rapids continued on to #25 as IIIs and the occasional IV. We arrived to a spacious beach camp on river left (Camp Mukuni) just as lightning and thunder bore down on us. About half of our group rushed to try to set up tents before the rain arrived, which proved foolish, catching most of them in a drenching downpour mid-construction. Eventually we all huddled together under the kitchen camp tarp for a solid half hour. Once the rain passed it proved to be a very pleasant afternoon. I found a nice camp spot at the top of the beach. I played polish horseshoes for the first time which was loads of fun. For entertainment we also had three local kids that had hike down from the village above the rim to practice their kayaking skills in the eddy; they were exceptionally good and aspiring to be kayak guides someday. I stayed up late by the fire in light rain, the heat of the fire more-or-less balancing out the light sprinkles of rain. It thunderously poured later in the night. Our tally for the day was 19 km.
Camp Mukuni thunderstorm (and below)
Day 7: In the morning I found time to walk around camp finding some neat agates and zeolites. Everybody has lots of things to try to dry before we pushed off. With an initially mild stretch of river I let first time river tripper Julie paddle my packraft until the first riffle and then I packrafted the rest of the day. We were out of the numbered rapids but still had plenty of named IIIs, IVs, Vs, and VIs to go. The rapids today were particularly boily, with Open Season then Closed Season as warm-ups. Of the four Narrows rapids the first one had some of the most extreme boils I had ever had to battle against in a packraft. The rapid was a fairly straightforward wave train but what followed was an unpredictable mess of swirls, edges, and suctions that almost managed to grab and flip me multiple times; nothing but sheer persistence and luck allowed me to escape upright. A class III+ rapid with Class V boils! Between Narrows 2 and 3 was another rapid called Let's Make A Deal for some reason. At one point there was an epic downpour on the horizon that literally looked like a waterfall pouring out of the sky; we all braced for it but thankfully it mostly missed us with light rain surrounded by thunder and lightning. I flipped on the very last suction-y wave in Narrows 3, annoying but an easy self-rescue. In this section we occasionally saw fisherman along the water and more commonly their impromptu thatched huts they'd stay at until they got enough fish to carry out to their village. We ate lunch on a beach with some really neat quartz, agate, and calcite geodes. Some shy and skeptical kids showed up and took considerable persuasion but eventually joined us for some food. I remember Chimamba being a particularly exciting rapid. I jumped in the raft for Upper Moemba (all kayakers portaged). We then worked as a team to line the rafts down the far left side of Lower Moemba, which was a non-trivial task that took us close to an hour, and gave us a taste of some of the more complex lining and portaging we would be doing the following day. The last rapid of the day (name unknown) was also exciting and boily in a packraft. Overall I was pretty pleased to spend so much time in the packraft this day and thought I did pretty well. We covered 20 km.
Around a hard right corner in a little bay that would become a high water channel in mere weeks was the most absolutely picturesque camp of the entire trip. The rapids upstream and around the corner caused the river to have a crazy weird tidal surge that would cycle about every 5 minutes; otherwise this bay was excellent for bathing. The camp was a two-tiered beach separated by a short cliff. I was one of the few that opted for the inconvenience of the upper camp for the penthouse view. Once setup I walked further up onto the rocks and flew my drone for a good long while, taking it upstream as far as Upper Moemba and downstream around the giant forested island opposite camp. Beautiful, beautiful spot. I hiked around some more including up into the jungle on the island opposite camp spotting several species of aloes, euphorbia, and snake plants. I don't remember what dinner was but I noted doing lots of dishes. I took a nice bath beneath stars and lightning and then spent a wonderful hour sitting on top of one of the raft's AutoRights with a few others, just watching lightning approach and then fade, lighting up the entire sky then returning to pin-prick stars. There was a cool breeze and perfect temperature, shooting stars and fireflies. It was time and place perfection. I went to bed late despite being warned that tomorrow would be a big day.
Upper Moemba (and below)
Lower Moemba
Moemba Alcove Camp
Day 8: We ended up having a dry night. Today would be spent mostly with portaging some of the biggest rapids on the whole river so I packed my boat away. It was a mild 2.5 km to the proposed Batoka Gorge Damsite where we would spend most of the day tackling the three pieces of the Class V+/VI Chibongo Falls. As we scouted we saw abundant evidence of the damsite including metal, concrete, and tailings. It was sobering to think that nearly all of the whitewater upstream of here to the base of Victoria Falls may someday soon disappear beneath still water for the sake of hydropower and progress. A guy showed up out of nowhere to resupply us with eggs and other perishable foods on schedule. Mistakes were made as we tried to work as a team lining down the rapids. We had a leading team and a catching team down the first drop. Stubborn rocks made it tricky getting the rafts over the second drop with guides needing to jump onto the rafts to push or pull them through. In my efforts to try to be helpful I ended up getting yelled at several times by an experienced US safety-trained river guide in our group for things I did not agree with and so did my best to avoid them while feeling sour and despondent. We then had to line the boats over 300m along the shore which took a lot of teamwork as well. We had lunch on the hot rocks and I napped a little before the third falls to line. This we cocked up impressively with Keith injuring his hand due to poor ropework setup, the raft surfing way out in the middle of the river where we could not pull it to shore and the loss of !three! throw ropes ripped out of our hands in the course of trying to pull the boat over. Eventually we got it over after what seemed like an hour of hard work, something none of us wanted to repeat. Boldly suggesting an alternative solution to this mess, Conrad offered to try to run a raft over the falls, which went way smoother. Cheers all around! Conrad and Pedro took turns running the remainder of the rafts, all with great success and cheers. We were all glad to have that out of the way. Right downriver was Son of Ghostrider which led directly into Ghostrider, arguably the biggest and longest regularly run rapid on the Zambezi. There were some excellent waves and I enjoyed my ride on Conrad's boat. One of the other rafts manage to get pushed hard to the left into a tight eddy and struggled for many minutes to finally break free. With less hesitation than at Chibongo Falls, the rafters decided to run Deep Throat saving lots of effort on trying to line through the mess. It was impressive to watch from the grandstand, particularly Bob's "no Fs to give" line right through the main holes that everyone else gingerly tried to avoid. Immediately downriver on the left was probably the biggest stable boil I have ever seen on the river- it was over 50 m across and I do not think I am exaggerating to say that it had over a meter of height from its center to edges. Next up was Esophagus and then a relaxing flatwater run down to our camp. We arrived to Camp Darwin on river right by 5pm having gone a particularly hard-won 11 km. It was another excellent night in camp with perfect temperatures and more star, meteor, satellite, lightning, and firefly gazing from atop the bobbing AutoRights.
Lower Chibongo Falls (and below)
Ghostrider
Deep Throat (and below)
Day 9: We had very light rain overnight. With little whitewater remaining, all but one of the AutoRights were deflated to reduce wind drag on the flatwater sections. We pushed off around 9am under puffy white clouds. It was mostly a flatwater day with a few notable rapids, most notably Asleep At The Wheel. We waved to some more fisherman and saw some more thatched huts. It took multiple people begging but we stopped at some interesting hot springs on river left requiring a warm hike over hot rocks. It was a sizable spring boiling hot that trickling gently into an enormous high flow pool currently separated from the river. I waded in briefly, curious to feel the temperature gradient away from the spring but too unsure what crocodiles thought to linger. We got to camp at the painfully early 11:30am (apparently the water quality decreases downstream so it was advantageous to stop earlier). Anyway this one was Camp Coconut on river left with 11 km for our day's total. It was a pleasantly enormous beach with some nice coconut palms at the back but the trick was trying to figure out a way to wait out the hours and hours of downtime in the blistering sun. Everyone else sat on the rafts and drank beer. I explored around camp for a while, flew my drone, and then I found one of the few places to string a hammock in deep shade and listened to music and napped. It was a great spot but even with music 2.5 hours was a long time to be alone with my thoughts. With dinner I helped supervise the cooking of a Dutch oven birthday cake for Pedro that I thought turned out pretty well. This camp did have lots of biting bugs attracted by light so I did not linger as long after dinner and turned in for an early hot and sticky night's sleep.
Hot springs
Camp Coconut
Day 10: It was a warm day from the moment the sun first hit our camp. We had a few more smaller rapids on this stretch of the river. I ended up rowing the cataraft about 50% of the time before lunch as Henri was feeling unwell. We past the Kalomo River confluence on river left where lots of muddy brown water entered, permanently shifting the color of the Zambezi instead of just responding to recent rains. We had a nice little thunderstorm to round out the morning and cool things down. Lunch was at some river right stream tumbling over bedrock- I was sufficiently motivated to dam up a pool a little deeper and lay in the cooler water. The call to rapidly pack up lunch was a particularly loud thundercrack. Once back on the water we were hit with an absolutely EPIC (yes EPIC!!!) thunderstorm. For about an hour we had some of the most intense rain I have experienced. Like a wall of water visibility dropped to a minimum and a headwind pounded us. Waves formed on the river and the raindrops hit with such force that half of the water seemed to be coming upward from the river. Thunder boomed and shook. Lightning cut through the sheets of rain for brief moments. The storm drenched everything and felt like a real man versus god ordeal. We were all smiles and elated screams and it was a clear highlight of the trip that none of us will soon forget. After this onslaught broke we rode out the dark edge of the storm for a while further with dramatic skies around. We pulled into Hippo Camp around 2:30pm having gone about 34 km. For the day I saw 7 crocodiles, 3 baboons, 2 vervet monkeys, and a rock rabbit. We did not see any hippos at camp but did see enormous hippo tracks plodding right through the middle of where we would set up our tents. I went for a short walk to visit a particularly imposing baobab tree close-up and then napped under the tarp, still getting more sun than I intended. We had a sunny and breezy afternoon with some more lightning on the horizon. In a lot of ways the storm earlier in the day felt like the grand finale of our time on the river.
EPIC
Camp Hippo
Day 11: Everyone was motivated to get going early and we miraculously departed camp at 8:20am. The valley opened considerably, the river flattened, and we saw increasing signs of humans including villages, fields, cattle, and boats. At one point we saw a colony of about a hundred basketweaver bird nests dangling right over the river. Unfortunately it was a brutally hot day and crept on slowly. Near the end of our journey we stopped in briefly at a clubhouse bar, then the final kilometer or two to our takeout, the Sundowner Lodge, which we had to ourselves. Our river total for the day was 25 km. Before we got to the monumental task of derigging, cleaning, drying, and packing away all the boats and gear, we all went for a dip in their pool which was wonderfully refreshing and perfectly shaded. The trees had a near endless supply of ripe mangoes, including one that was probably the best I have ever had. The place was rustic but relaxed. I was sold on this spot! Once we had all recovered we set to work with derigging on their lawn overlooking the Zambezi and a group of noisy hippos. Once our task were down I flew the drone over to get close-ups on the hippos. We had showers and a prepared dinner at a table- what novelty. Unfortunately I got the bed without a mosquito net and struggled to sleep with the constant bites.
Sundowner Lodge
Day 12: We had a slow and relaxed breakfast at Sundowner and an impressively slow and bumpy bus ride (but in a comfortable AC bus). It took a solid 3.5 hours to drive 90 miles but the reward at the end was lunch at the Lookout Cafe, a blatantly touristy but very fancy open air restaurant perched on the edge of the cliff at the 180 degree bend between rapids 3 and 4 and with views of the bridge. To stick with tradition the showy veggie burger I ordered was remarkably bland but the smoothie was excellent. The ambiance is what sold me, particularly when a thunderous downpour swept in and gave the aluminum roof a struggle to hold back the rain. We stamped back through customs (in hindsight I wish I checked out the Zimbabwe side of the falls first) and made it back to Tabonina Bis to unpack and get back settled in to our rooms.
One of the more photoworthy experiences you can do at Victoria Falls is to visit the Devil's Pool, a particular natural infinity-style pool that allows you to peer right over the very edge of the falls in relative safety. This is a highly controlled tourist activity for safety and relatedly costs way more than it should. Sadia, who had been hanging out for over a week kayaking before the rest of us arrived, mentioned that she had a connection for the "afterhours" "private" tour for Devil's Pool that she and many of the other kayakers had taken, at an appropriate unsanctioned price. Basically locals who had grow up around the falls figured out the network of boat drivers, security guards to bribe, and paths to take to make it happen. It all sounded suitably sketchy and the price was fair so Conrad, Russell, and I arranged for some clean, wet black market tourism. The whole thing was quite an experience. A small sedan arrived to our hotel at 5pm and we all piled in, driving to a particular turn-out along the river where we met a "guide" and two other paying tourists. It was particularly funny the way they referred to it as a "private" tour, making every suggestion that this was a legal activity but we obviously all knew what the deal was. We quietly walked behind them on a narrow trail, stopping and going as they signaled with hand gestures. Then we waited. Then a boat arrived with the captain in a nice uniform from a prominent hotel (I wondered whether he worked there or just had the uniform). I was fascinated by the small village it took to smuggle a few tourists to a waterfall. Anyway we got in the low-walled boat and were told to lay completely flat on our backs on the floor as we boated across the open water- this activity they did not have a good explanation for that fit into their tour narrative. It wasn't very comfortable but again was more funny than anything. After 10 minutes we were told we could get up as we arrived at Livingstone Island in the middle of Victoria Falls. We walked the trails across the island and then had to cross a slippery forceful channel of the river with nothing but 30m and a strung rope between us and the edge of the world. The river was up considerably now that the wet season had returned and there was probably only another week where it would be safe to visit the Devil's Pool before it all stopped for the season. As it was it was plenty intimidating. One by one we jumped into the pool as prompted by the locals and posed on the very edge. They were eager to hold our legs and essentially dangle us over the falls for the best photo, which was putting a whole lot of trust into them! The rocks were slippery and there was just enough of a rock lip to hold you in place but it still felt plenty precarious. Smartly they warned us about small biting fish in the pool before we jumped in; had they not it might have caught one of us off-guard enough to do something stupid. It was an unforgettable experience and not over yet. Once we were done with the Devil's Pool we returned to the boat and were asked if we wanted to visit the Angel's Pool for a little more money (of course the idea here is that this was a tour within a tour so they would get all of the profit and not tell the main guy doing the arranging). There was a little enthusiasm but collectively we were happy with what we saw and said no thanks. The boat dropped us off on some slippery rocks nearby and we walked quite a ways across the slippery, slippery rocks, some of us managing better than others. The guides had their own agenda in mind and took us to the Angel's Pool area anyway and more or less coerced us to jump into the hanging pool that led to a slippery corner of the falls and then a small washing machine sized hanging pothole and the immediate edge of the falls. Arguably this pool looks more precarious and was trickier to climb down into but once in it felt very safe. This pool was near the tallest point of the falls and had a great view of the major confluence in the gorge below. We snapped photos but the light was rapidly fading and we still had to walk slippery rocks and channels the rest of the way across the river. Almost in the dark at this point, at the very end we crossed a 100m long weir that was less than a foot wide. Then we paid up our Angel's Pool tour fee and exited on the trails in the national park in complete darkness because of "hippos". The exit gate was conveniently slightly ajar for us and we walked out the park to the street where the sedan was waiting for us. They dropped us off at Golden Leaf, an Indian restaurant where we were going to meet the others for dinner. It was a weird and wonderful experience and the three of us were jazzed. I was solidly tired by the time another slow dinner ended and we made it back to Tabonina.
Day 13: This would be many of the group's last full day. Keith, Tim, and Sadia made arrangements to join some of the other kayakers for a day run of the river. I hitched a ride with their giant transport truck but was pretty sure I did not want to be the only packrafter on a time-pressed day trip with highly experienced kayakers so my plan was to solo paddle up to the base of the falls. I greatly wished I had someone else to go with but that I would regret not visiting the amazing base of the falls again. So I hiked down the Boiling Pot Trail and found the offshoot heading upstream to the bolted steps and guideline. Carefully I set my boat up and paddled away from the maw of Rapid #1 towards the long pool above. Turning the corner I could immediately see there was way more water coming over the falls compared to a week prior. The outwash of Minus #2 Rapid and the confluence with the Zambia side looked way messier this time and the eddies on the far side seemed even smaller. I studied the water for a good long time and tested the eddyline a couple times before deciding to commit to a crossing. The adrenaline and focus kicked in immediately as I struggled to balance traversing momentum and stability while the waters rapidly pushed me toward the chaos at the confluence. I made it most of the way across the flow but could see myself coming up unavoidably on the bizarre eddy fence between the two opposing waters. In one terrifying instant it hit me, I flipped, and my paddle was pulled away from me.
Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck. I immediately was hit with a completely helpless sense of isolation; I knew every precious second mattered now and there was no one that could get me out of this situation but myself. As the water spun me around, tried to tug me downward, I held on tight to my boat floating around in all of the swirling debris of sticks and plastic looking for my paddle, nowhere in sight. I treaded water looking for my paddle for what felt like a solid minute. Abruptly I was struck against my knee by an object and reached down to grab it, finding that it was my paddle (great luck but I was far from safe). I was still in a precarious place with unstable waters and the potential to drift into no return hydraulics, I cautiously timed climbing into my boat knowing that I could flip immediately again and be in as worse a place as before. I got in, got settled and made fast paddle strokes to gain a small cliff-lined eddy 8 ft across at the base of a falls. I was safe for the moment, time temporarily not so critical. I wished to be almost anywhere else, even just 100 m away on the downstream side of the rapid felt like a world away. I lost all interest in trying to get to the next eddy and spending time at the base of the falls and just wanted to get out. Taking photos and videos were nowhere in my mind. I worked to regain my breath and composure as thoughts circled and I still had to fight the strong downdraft of the falls trying to push me back into the main current. After several minutes I focused myself to cross, scared that I was equally likely to mess up again. I fought hard with every paddle to stroke to stay off the confluence hydraulics, passing the split in the current but still needing to fight to stay off the wall on the downstream side. I made it, just barely it seemed. I caught my breath and nodded a hello to the kayak fisherman on the rocks around the corner downstream like my life did not just flash before my eyes. I spent about an hour doing awkward self-timed photos using a mini tripod, paddling just barely into the Minus rapid flow. This was even more awkward as a jet boat appeared several times disrupting my shot. Thankfully a few of these many photos came out alright and seemed like as good and memorable a frontispiece photo as any. In hindsight I wish I tried to get out at the meager rock ledge with the kayak fisherman to climb up for one last view of the minus rapids but oh well. Happy to escape with my life. I gave myself quite a scare.
After a while I paddled back down, took out, dried and packed gear, then hiked back up the Boiling Pot Trail to check out all of the other waterfall view point trails. I walked to all of the Kinfe's Edge viewpoints and enjoyed them all, each a little different. Some sections had heavy spray which was pleasantly refreshing and I got good views of the Angel's Pool location from the previous night. It really is a remarkable waterfall like nothing else I have seen or could have conceived. After completing all those trails I walked the considerably less popular trail further west, no one on it but me and lazy baboons I had to carefully walk around. Almost to the end of the trail well by myself a "friendly" street peddler appeared out of nowhere, asking lots of questions and trying to warm me up to buy his carvings. I had no interest and he became increasingly aggressive, even following me lookout to lookout behind me. I was glad I had my paddle in hand. Eventually he disappeared as I approached the main gate. Feeling like I had enough solo adventures for the day, I took a taxi back to Tabonina Bis at 3:30p and relaxed until the others returned from their adventures. We had another very slow group dinner at Flavours. Some of the others went clubbing but I was much too tired.
Day 14: The very last day was mostly packing before heading to the airport. I did walk with Keith to check out the local market, which was neat to walk through. It was a cavernous maze of shop after shop selling nearly everything you could think of, but especially clothes, shoes, and fabric. We caught the very start of the World Cup final in the transit lounge before getting on the plane. It was a long return trip home but fortunately smoother than our outward journey. I was exhausted but thankfully escaped the travel without COVID.
It was a truly unforgettable trip and the mountains of photos, videos, and experiences are why it took me more than three months to organize it into a blog account, still only narrowing the photos down to a hundred. For a randomly assembled group we had a great team and everyone got along well, greatly enhancing the experience. It is certainly one of the most special and unique river trips I have done. I was happy with how I fared in a packraft with the formidable whitewater. In all I ran rapids 2, 3, 6, 10, and 19 onward other than what the kayakers portaged. In hindsight and good practice I probably would have run all but 5, 7, 9, and maybe 8 and 11. Numerous highlights include the base and precipice of the falls, the big rapids, the wildlife, the amazing beach camps, and the sublime evenings. It is tragic to think that most of what we saw is likely to get flooded by a hydroelectric dam. I am thankful I got to see it. Huge thanks are owed to Rocky, the guides, and all the participants in this memorable adventure.
