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Spring paddling season is coming to an end, leaving us with lots of new rivers and new friends. Amongst the highlights of the season I would place the first "Greek" descent of Selinountas gorge on April 11th and of Aspropotamos or Perivoliotis river, the northern tributary of Meleopotamos on May 4th. Both rivers were at the class III-IV range of difficulty, which will become classic in the next years.
Many visiting paddlers chose to contact TEAMadara, for up to date information and help in better organizing their paddling trip to Greek waters. We had the chance to meet some of them and paddle together.
Ciao Valeriano and everybody at the Cassano CKC. It was great paddling Kalaritikos and Arachthos with you.
Ciao Paolo and all the rest of the Italian paddlers from Tequila Kayak Club. We enjoyed paddling beautiful Acheron together.
Hi Wilko, Honza and everybody at the Dutch-Czech group of Meleopotamos. It was great meeting you at last.
Greetings to Miha and the Slovenian paddlers, we met at Vikos, after their successful run of Upper Aoos. Thanks for the wine treat guys and I'm waiting for action photos.
My best regards to Rok from Slovenia, Peter from Slovakia and Ermanno from Italy. Sorry we couldn't meet at the river – perhaps when we will visit your rivers.
It was a pleasure to finally meet the "lone wolf" of the Greek whitewater, the pioneer Franz Bettinger, who has never given up exploring and shared his new discoveries with us. We are all waiting for your new guidebook.
Our site's new content:
Agrafiotis, Meleopotamos and Kamneitikos river descriptions, data and maps were transferred from the old site, while we featured new river data and description for Acherontas and Selinountas.
Water Levels: What most people demanded from us, was updated water level information. We gathered info from local rafting companies, friends that visited the rivers and some of the info that you were sending us, to post a table of updated info for as many river areas possible. We will try to keep this working.
A small account of our Team's action for the month:
April 4th Evinos
Watching the national races at the new slalom course of Evinos, at Chani Mpania, was quite fun, as members of TEAMadara and many friends, were participating with Athinaiki Leschi Kayak team. The course was quite good, using the natural flow of Evinos river, a part of which is deviated through the course.
After the races we went for a play-ride in the gorge below Poros, an easy but very beautiful and friendly section of the river, where we had the chance to practise our strokes with Haris, Christos and Emilio. Read more here.
April 5th Fidakia
Konidis decided to let himself disqualified of the races final so that he won't miss our run at Fidakia. Together with Giannis Kolias, we enjoyed a fun run at this beautiful tributary of Evinos, taking advantage of possibly the last available water of the season. The water marking 60cm at the put in, was at the lower limit of The "Fun level" Nothing like 2 weeks ago, when Metavasi kayak school run the river with much higher flow, where continuous class III and a few class IV rapids, made it a struggle to keep the large group together!
Anyway, Konidis and I, both showed Yiannis that there are plenty of lines to follow, to get vertical pinned at the same ugly spot that was intended to avoid. Read more here.
April 11th Selinountas
Our first goal for new rivers this season would start with Selinountas. This river of north Peloponessos, that sheds east of the coast of Aigio, runs through a beautiful 10km remote gorge, with continuous class III to class IV rapids, resembling Erymanthos.
For 5 hours we were exploring a still unknown part of Greek wilderness, a soon to become classic run. Read more.
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April 17th Upper Mornos
After three attempts these past months, we finally rewarded with a good level to run the Upper Mornos gorge, a classic creek run in the central Greece. Small but commiting drops and tight chutes and rock gardens, up to class IV, in the first two kms, awarded us with a perfect ride. Afterwards we visited the small traditional tavern at the village of Pavliani, a "must" after-paddling place, that we discovered in our last visit's exploration. Read more here.
April 23d Acheron
Our "global contacts" guided us at Acheron river. A mythical gorge, that according to the legend was leading to the Underworld, but as far as I know, a beautiful river that we hadn't have the chance to paddle since 2002. Beautiful surroundings, class II to III stretches and a section with three steeper, class IV rapids, reward the ones that will dare to enter the "River of the Deads"
Fortunately, in this trip we were not alone. Two groups of Italian paddlers had joined us and as far as I can tell, enjoyed the river as much as we did. Read more here.
April 24th Kalaritikos – Arachthos
The next day, we traveled west, to Arachthos area. One of the Italian groups, Cassano CKC, also made the travel to meet us at Kalaritikos gorge. The flow was very good, marking 60cm at Christoi-Kipina bridge gauge, promishing a great run. After a short stretch of class IV, Melisourgiotikos river – also flowing strong – confuenced and doubled the flow to lead us into a wave train fun ride to the main gorge of Kalaritikos. We paddled the gorge together with the Italians and I can say that we all enjoyed this multiethnic approach of the river.
At the take out, we had the chance to spend some time with our new friends and – while Konidis and Kayaker were loading the boats – I couldn't refuse a treat of some very tasty Myrto corsican wine. Ha Ha!
April 29th Meleopotamos
With a week off work and my trusted Terios full-loaded to a kayaking trip to the north, I drove to Grevena area where Kayaker and I would meet with TEAMadara's site friend, Wilko from the Netherlands and his Czech companions, to paddle Meleopotamos together. We all camped at the take out below Spilaio and in the morning, after a marathon drive, we reached the put in, where Guido, another Global paddler – German this time – would join us. At this point I want to declare that everything that you might read at Wilko's website, about the Greeks getting lost in their own country roads, even if they had the latest and detailed maps and GPS units, is not as …impossible, or …untrue as it sounds. He might have a small point!
Well, at least it was a great drive!
May 2nd Voidomatis
After a short brake for a traditional Greek Easter weekend, with lamb on the spit, at the island of Corfu, Kayaker and I were back on our paddling trip, with Voidomatis fountains as our first goal. Together with a team of paddlers from the town of Konitsa, we shouldered our boats down the foot path from Vikos to the place were the fountains were doubling the flow of Vikos, changing the name of the river to Voidomatis. All along the way down, we couldn't stop gazing at the strangely bright blue color of the river, winding its way into the high and inaccessible canyon. But it's not only the color of the river that makes it define from all the others, it's also it's clarity and it's cold temperature that leave you with memories so intense.
The rapids into the canyon were virtually shining and after the one and a half hour we reaching the public place at the bridge between Aristi and Papigo, we decided to make the run once again!
Just before leaving the village of Vikos, we met Miha and his Slovenian paddling friends. We couldn't refuse Miha's treat for a glass of wine at their camp, as they felt they had to thank us for the information we had given them for their trip. My friends, we were glad to help and you are always welcome. It was great meeting you and had that small paddling chat, about rivers and kayaking, both in Greece and in Slovenia.
May 3d Kerasovitikos
Waking up late at Molista, the small village on Smolicas mountain, that Kayaker was born, we had all morning to walk around and visit the next village of Ganadio. By noon we found ourselves scouting the only steep section of Sarandaporos river, at the 83d km of Ioannina-Kozani main road.
The 300m stretch, constricted by a sheer rocky wall to the right, runs through multiple ledges up to 1m high, between big holes and wave trains. Unfortunately, the water was quite muddy at the time, so we sticked to our plan to run its western tributary, Kerasovitikos, below Agia Paraskevi village to the main road bridge, just before the confluence to Sarandaporos.
Put in was at a stormwater drains pipe bridge, a few kilometers below the village, where a worksite has started operations to build a dam at the waterfall section.
The river is actually a small torrent, with a small but continuous gradient, that offers non stop action and very few eddies. The difficulty is not over class IV though.
May 4th Aspropotamos Grevena
This river was first paddled last year, by Austrian paddlers, who presented the first information about the difficulties found – up to class IV. Franz Bettinger, who run it alone, a few days later, graded it more difficult, possibly because of higher water flow.
It originates from Perivoli area, just north of Pindus National Park. The put in is below Agios Nikolaos church, at the confluence of two smaller tributaries and the take out is after 5.5 kms of class III – IV at the bridge of the road that follows the river from the left and reaches Mikrolivado 6kms later. There are a few stretches visible from the road – the last rapid is also accessible – but not the most difficult stretch, after the first right tributary, where a 4m staircase like rapid followed by two 1.5m drops and a log jam, are the highlight of the steepest 300m stretch of the river. The most beautiful stretch is the Meandrous section, where the river tightens up and carves its path through high rocky slopes, with a tricky chute over a blind left turn.
May 5th Karpenisiotis
On the last day of our trip, with Kayaker returning to Athens, I crossed Redina mountain path from Karditsa towards Karpenisi and met with perhaps the only other Greek paddling group that may be active that time, three old timers of the kayaking scene in Greece. With Antonis Voulgarakis, Spyros Panagopoulos and Dimitris Thomopoulos, we run Karpenisiotis the last river with medium flow in Karpenisi area, as Krikelopotamos and Agrafiotis were gradually turning low. Having run lower and upper Erymanthos in a good flow of 88cm the previous days and catching up with the last water at Agrafiotis, the guys had themselves a great paddling trip too.
Having breakfast in Antonis's auto-caravan, we had an unexpected visitor. Franz Bettinger, preparing his new guidebook on Greek whitewater, came over and we had an interesting chat about new descents, river protection and more interesting stuff.
Karpenisiotis itself, was just great at a gauge of 30cm below Gavros. Continuous class II to III, with a 1km long stretch of class IV rapids, starting below the point where the road was built in a semi tunnel and ends after the very steep canyon of Vothonas, falling from the left.
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