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Tsangpo Expedition Home
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Tsangpo Expedition
Liquid Thunder (cont.)
Scouting the Maelstrom

Dustin Knapp, Tsangpo River
Dustin Knapp shows off his best seal launch (Charlie Munsey)
THE FIRST RAPIDS were boulder gardens, with plenty of room to maneuver. Still, the hydraulics—deep troughs capable of trapping kayakers in their backwash—were immense. The river was not only powerful but cold, about 40 degrees. Despite full drysuits, helmet liners, and neoprene gloves, submersion in one of these holes would shock the exposed face, numb the head, and quickly sap the body of energy.

It was almost nightfall on day one when the paddlers came to the first serious drop, a broad left bend falling steeply through a series of big holes. The first three kayakers, Abbott, Ellard, and Willie Kern, charged the rapids and cleared a first set of hydraulics. Then Kern swept down. The chaotic current pushed him too far to the right and flipped him; he rolled up too late to avoid one of the massive holes. He disappeared. After what seemed like a dangerously long time, he burst out of the foam, shook his head clear, and then sprinted left and rode into green water. Dustin Knapp came around the corner and did the same thing—except when he dropped into the hole, the river shot him 40 feet to the right and ejected him upside down. He recovered quickly and joined Willie in the flatwater at the bottom.

The plan was to paddle 44 miles through the Upper Gorge to Clear Creek, a point beyond which the river squeezed between towering walls and poured over the two great cataracts, Rainbow and Hidden Falls. From Clear Creek, the whole expedition would climb almost 5,000 feet straight up to traverse Senchen La, a feat that had never been attempted in the dead of winter. Weather, snow conditions, and avalanche danger were all unknown. On the other side of Senchen La was the Lower Gorge, where the kayakers would scout and paddle as much of the massive flow as they could—about 20 miles if they were lucky.

That evening the paddlers and the support expedition camped at the bottom of a terraced pasture below a tiny hamlet called Tripe, about four miles from the put-in. The mood around the fire was quiet, reflective.

Steve Fisher, Scott Lindgren, Musi La
Steve Fisher and Scott Lindgren scout a monster rapid near Musi La (Charlie Munsey)
"I learned one lesson today," Knapp said, pulling his head through the latex neck gasket of his drysuit. "To scout for myself when I'm not sure."

Mike Abbott, the Kiwi, sipped tea, his hoop earring glinting in the firelight. "The first day was a bit intimidating," he said, "feeling the power of the river."

Lindgren, brooding on the first hit of the Tsangpo's muscle, said little. "I want everyone on edge," he told the kayakers. "One fuckup out here—one—and the whole thing's over."

While the paddlers had been taking the measure of their challenge, the ground crew—80 strong, including me—had spent the first day snaking along ancient game trails on the precipitous right bank of the river. The group was under the supervision of Himalayan outfitter and river guide David Allardice, a 44-year-old New Zealander based in Kathmandu. In addition to his own squad of five Nepalese climbing Sherpas, Allardice had recruited 68 Tibetan porters in Pe. Andrew Sheppard, a 29-year-old mountaineer and extreme skier from Banff, was in charge of technical climbing. Ken Storm Jr, 50, who had surveyed Hidden Falls in 1998, was the expedition's expert on the natural history and culture of the gorge. Idaho native Charlie Munsey, 34, was trekking on foot this time as the expedition's photographer. Dustin Lindgren, 27, Scott's younger brother, was along as a videographer. The support expedition was hauling 2,000 freeze-dried meals, 220 pounds of potatoes, and 60 pounds of chocolate and energy bars. They carried yak jerky, oranges, onions, medical gear, snowshoes, ice axes, rope, radios, satellite phones, a laptop computer loaded with precisely detailed satellite images of the river, and a generator and solar panel to power the phones.

The satellite maps had been a great boon. Back in Auburn, where Scott Lindgren lives and runs his film-production company out of a long, low, cream-colored bungalow, the kayakers had spent dozens of hours poring over every mile of river. Allan Ellard hunched his six-foot-two frame over a computer screen for days on end, piecing together images provided by Space Imaging of Thornton, Colorado, his blue eyes blurring and his blond dreadlocks hanging over his face. There were long sections of river that seemed "blown out" with rapids threshed completely white from bank to bank. Willie Kern had found black-and-white photographs of rapids taken by Kingdon Ward in 1924, and excitedly tried to correlate them with the satellite shots—a bizarre juxtaposition of technologies.

"You know you're screwed when you're scouting from space," Ellard had said. He was only half joking.


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