Mekong River Visit

After the 14 days on the great bend we planed to drive over a 14,000 foot pass into the Mekong river valley. Half way there and not even to the base of the pass we were caught up in a snow storm in the mountain city of Shangur la. This was a fairly big so there was a hotel and place to eat. The weather was very snowy and around 25 degrees, not the warm climate I hope for when travling. Once the sun hit the pass it cleared our path and we took our sweet time driving over the Chinese tundra.

We have a bus and a huge "Dong Fang" truck carrying everything of ours around. It gets a little hecktic and stinky in there, group moral usally melts after about an hour of riding. Anyway we pulled into Dequin the biggest town in the area and had the normal 10 dishes of food before heading to bed.

While we were in Dequin it pretty much snowed everyday, due to the 10,000 foot elevation. A great motivator to go kayaking in the coldest water on earth. We did the 5th decent of the Lower Moon gorge, which was all class III+ with one monster class V that looked OK but kind of chunky. We also hit the upper Moon gorge which was possibly a first decent, no one really knows and it's pretty out there. The upper section had a total of 10 rapids, one we ran was a fun V'er with a pretty stout move involved. The sixth was a massive hole punch with a pourover backing it up, we opted to skip down the side on that one.

on a sad note. During a savage game of hide and go seek tag down town Dequin a close friend and student of wcka shatered his arm. His name is Davis Gove, he did this by attempting a daring jump from roof to roof. He broke through the landing side and fell 12 feet to his crunching fate. He flew home and got a ton of surgery done, a few different plates and many screws. All of our good thoughts are with you bro. Heal up for west coast.

After the two day completing the Moon gorge we put our kayaks away and stomped a 23 mile total hike to a classic Tibetin village high in the mountains. I can't say I was excited at the time to walk that kind of distance but it turned out alright, if walking lost in the dark on the side of a 200 foot cliff is alright to you? That escupade took us back to Dequin and marked the start of the 3 day drive to the Salween river drainage. Pictures coming soon of Mekong and Salween update.

Later E.G.