|
High Water in the Austrian Alps Well since returning from Slovenia at the end of April we have had the worst May on record, in fact the snow was still falling on our house at the beginning of June! Since the ski lifts closed we have had over 60cm of new snow up in the mountains and have been waiting for the warm weather to turn up. Well, about a week ago it did, going from around freezing in the valley to over 30 degrees in just a matter of days has sent the rivers into overdrive.
The River Inn is absolutely massive! It has certainly been at its highest level in years. With the rain in Switzerland and the sun pounding Austria the Inn is on overdrive!! All the dams are open and turning the Inn into a chocolate brown seething mess.
This is THE biggest volume of water in the Alps, if you have ever boated in the Himalayas then the Inn has been remenisant of the mighty Sun Koshi in colour, size of waves and the pushiness of the water. The main difference was that there were only a couple of holes on the Inn (and you certainly did not want to go into them!), the rest were just wave trains and HUGE hits!
We have spent as much time on the river as possible and to be quite honest I think we are spending more time in the vans as the shuttle was taking way longer. Ute managed to get to some bridges for some footage and by the time she met up with us at the take out we were already chilling in the sunshine watching the Sanna get steadily higher.
These are good times in the Austrian Alps and we have certainly been making the most of it all, the Sanna was unreal at 6pm. Though the river has changed dramatically since the floods some 5 years ago we were pleasantly surprised just how good the river was. Maybe it was something to do with it being well over the high water level!
So if you fancy running the biggest volume of water the Alps has to offer come over to Landeck, Austria. If you can only escape the island for a weekend then just fly & boat. Fly over to Austria and pick up a boat from us here, you will be impressed!
Check out www.gokayaking.at for more info!
Bye for now
Steve
P.S. Apologies for the low quality photos, they're taken off a video camera. There is absolutely no where to take photos on the side of the river so they had to be done from bridges, put ins and take outs. (Posted on the 15th Jun 2010 by timb) |
RSS 2.0