Pungwe Commercial Section

20 Mar 11 - High Level

I nervously asked Andy if we'd ever heard the roar of the Pungwe all the way from the start of the commercial walk-in.  Andy said "no", but I checked with Ken as well, hoping for a different answer, while knowing full well that few people are as familiar with this river as Andy.

Conversation was rather subdued during our thorough preparations, and I was strangely sad to say good-bye to Ken before setting off on the 1.2km trek to the river, on somewhat rubbery legs.  We took longer than usual to reach the river, in spite of the shortcut we took......

The river was certainly high, and brownish (possibly from the bracken/heath of Nyanga), but not quite as high as last March when Robin and I took it on.  At one of the later rapids I identified a point which indicated that the water was about half a meter lower than that trip.  There was plenty of evidence of recent floods about 4 meters higher than the present level!

Some of the early waves were washed out, so we were soon into the thick of it.  We scouted a few of the rapids, mainly due to the presence of trees, but none presented any problems, so we ran most of the usual lines.

The big rapid about halfway down was as impressive as ever, with the hole at the top looking very significant.  Andy ran it perfectly, while I managed to end up in the hole, which promptly tail-looped me.  I stayed inverted for a few seconds until I was sure I'd flushed out before running the main drop backwards, and then straight on into the "Blender", which is a large diagonal washing machine.

About 50 meters further on is a fairly gnarly rapid, where Dean McG apparently got pinned years ago.  The usual pinning rock was safe, but it had a nasty friend on the left, so we opted to keep right, which worked well.

The next rapid is usually a couple of holes on the left, followed by a drop into a pool, with the current in the pool pushing you into the wall on the left.  The holes above were super retentive, so we hung right and once again Andy made it look easy, while the fairly substantive hole at the bottom looped me (again).  I hung on to flush out and then made three attempts to roll against the wall, before finally setting up on the left to roll successfully.

We took a break so Andy could stock up on sugar and collect his customary white rocks (ballast for his PFD), before drifting into the next bumpy section.  A pair of trees looked to have formed a strainer, but it was a trick of the light and there was ample room between them.  We opted not to scout the slide, which had a very energetic wave at the bottom.

"Four-clowns Folly" was up next, and almost became "Five-clowns Folly" when a daydreaming Andy thought it was one drop further on.  It sure looked nasty at that level, except for a small tongue on the far right.  When I pointed this out to Andy he tossed a bit of driftwood in, which punched straight through on the right, after which he nonchalantly turned and asked if I was going to run it.  My reply was brief and emphatic.

I did put in on the back-end of the main washing machine to try and catch a very nice wave - sadly I missed it.  There were several waves and holes from here on and we played several as we meandered down to the take-out, which we reached by 10:30am.

We'd driven down to Will's cottage in Juliasdale on Saturday afternoon, which resulted in an early start and finish.  The Mutarazi Falls were spectacular, and appeared to have more water in the afternoon.  The long drive home was broken in Rusape by speed-cops (I managed to talk my way out of a fine) and lunch with Phil and Mandi, who farm near Peterhouse.