French Alps Trip
June 2024

As UK whitewater paddlers, we’re blessed with a wide range of awesome environments to explore. On our doorstep we have the southern and mid Wales valley and hills, to our south with have Dartmoor and Exmoor and to our north we have Snowdonia. A little further afield there are delights to be experienced in Yorkshire and Cumbria and Scotland still further north. However, there’s one thing all these places have in common. We need rain to bring our rivers into condition and make them paddleable. As a result our paddling “Season” tends to follow the rainier periods of the year, autumn through to spring, when the weather is cold, the days are short and the rain is coming in sideways. It can be difficult to plan ahead as without the rain, rivers are often not paddleable, so we need to be ready to go whether the rain is, and the forecast doesn’t always materialise how we’d want it to.

There is however another option….

The Alps - a mountain range that extends from the south east of France into Italy, Switzerland and Austria, offers some incredible paddling opportunities and is a region that is relatively easy and cheap to get to.

The paddling season here tends to start in the spring and run through until mid summer, where the rivers are fed by the melting snow from the mountains. This means that we have glorious hot sunny days; clean, crisp and cold snowmelt water and the most incredible landscape in which to paddle. There’s plenty of options for each day to suit a variety of desires, those that want to float along and soak in the impressive scenery, to those that want to challenge themselves on some more difficult water.

Back in June, a small group of members from Cardiff Canoe Club took a trip out to the French Alps for 10 days to explore the rivers of the region around Briançon and Embrun, not far from the Italian border. This is a short report to give an insight into the trip, including both the rivers we paddled and the logistics of how we made it work.

The Paddling

Many people would say that paddling in the Alps is a whole different experience to paddling in the UK. And they would be right! Rivers in the UK tend to be “pool drop” rivers, where the river slowly makes its way along a relatively flat valley and where changes in the bedrock, formed over hundreds of thousands of years create ledges, obstructions, twists, drops and other features, that create the whitewater that we crave.

Alpine rivers in this region are generally steeper and more consistent than their equivalent rivers in the UK. In addition, they can evolve from season to season, as the features tend to be formed in part from loose rock that is brought down the mountain in seasonal floods. The rivers we paddled were all around grade three, but whilst they picked up and eased off in places, I can’t recall a single flat section of river.

We found fairly quickly that the rivers were far more challenging than expected. This was down to a few factors:

The rivers paddled were steep and continuous. This doesn’t make them more technically difficult, but it does mean as a group we needed to think and react quickly to what was in front of us, with little time or pause and take it easy.
The loose nature of the riverbanks and riverbed, seems to mean that large eddies are few and far between (they either fill with debris or are washed away quickly), so we’d sometimes travel several miles before being able to take a breather as a group. By splitting our group of seven down into a three and a four that paddled more independently, we could better manage our group.
Even areas that looked like eddies from upstream turned out not to be, either they were shallow gravel beds that you couldn’t get your boat into from the flow, or it was easy to drift out the back of them and back into the flow, catching all of us out at some point during the week
We didn’t get out and inspect much, largely as the rivers were so consistent, you could have ended up walking the whole river when checking ahead. It also meant we’ve got limited photos as there was little opportunity to stop and watch (and film) other paddlers in the group coming through sections.
The conditions we had during the week (late snowfall in the winter season) meant we had some higher than usual water levels.
Some of the rivers evolved during the day. Levels were low in mornings after the cooler nights, but by late afternoon, the higher temperatures and sun on the snowy mountains had increased the snowmelt, sometimes raising levels by as much as 20-30% in the space of the day. Getting on a river late in the day, even ones that we’d paddled only a few days before were unrecognisable.
For everyone on the trip, we were paddling rivers we didn’t know (either as first time paddlers in the area or because it had been decades since we last paddled out there), coupled with our relatively early session trip meant that we couldn’t be sure if the route ahead was clear.

As the water is coming straight off the mountain and is mostly snow melt, it was exceptionally clean, clear (sometimes crystal clear) albeit ice cold. The mixture of hot weather, clear mountain air and ice-cold water is incredibly refreshing. It did pose some kit quandaries, whether to go light with shorts and shortie cag, which is great in the sunshine, or go for trousers and long cag or drysuit should there be a break in the sun or you spend some time in the water.

The Rivers

On to the paddling though. It was very easy to understand why this is such a popular paddling destination.

Day One - We started on the Souloise, A grade 2 and 3 run with a portage in the middle. The water was as clear as tap water and the river pretty remote, between arriving at the get on and packing up at the end, we didn’t see anyone else on or off the river. This was our first insight into the continuous nature of the rivers. The river provided continuous grade 2 to 3 white water. Whilst it eased off for a short period, it was still very much whitewater and would quickly up the difficulty again.

Day Two - Briançon Gorge and Prelles section on the Durance, A short stretch through a tight and committing gorge. A novel kayak slide right at the start takes you through / over a small hydro scheme and gives a fun and photogenic start. Unusual for a river, there’s a set of traffic lights part way down that warn whether a hydro outlet is discharging into the river, fortunately for us, it wasn’t! We followed this section into the next stretch which reminded us of a high river Usk, for the fourth section of the day we jumped on the Sunshine run, a grade 2 section of the Durance at it’s widest and largest volume, around 150 cumecs (for context CIWW runs at 4 to 10 cumecs), with big waves but little to trouble us as paddlers

Day Three - The river Guil was particularly high, but we ran two stretches in the upper reaches of the river, the first stretch was a short and easy section of very continuous grade 3, the first eddie we caught was at the get out! The section below was slightly harder, still only grade three but certainly felt more challenging through some tight, technical and committing gorges. Having skipped the classic middle section, we then paddled the lower reaches into the Durance, another high volume, big and bouncy run, looking up at our chalet high on the mountain side above us

Day Four - Started the day on the Guisane, grade 3, with a harder section in the middle. We were aware of a tree portage and took some time to find it before getting on. Immediately below was a long grade 3+ rapid that didn’t have any particular must make lines or moves, but was pretty consistent over several hundred metres. Everyone nailed it, but we all needed a breather and a chance let the heart rate drop after that stretch. We walked the lower, more difficult section to inspect it from the riverside path, but time got away from us and rather than rush to get on and risk issue late in the day, we saved it for another day. Some of the group headed back to the Briançon Gorge at the end of the day, it was one of those days where with some hot and sunny weather the level had shot right up and we saw our first swimmer of the trip and a temporary loss of a boat.

Day Five - The next day was the Onde and Gyronde, a glorious baking hot day. The Onde was a great adventure, but saw us having to make four different tree portages in the relatively short section, a great adventure, but hard work to spot the trees, find the safe landing points and carry around them. The Onde, meets the Gyr to form the Gyronde, with a couple of hydro plants to walk around and a short portage. The section included some great boulder gardens, dropping around and in between van sized rocks in the main flow.

Day Six was on the Claree, an early season river that is often too low. The gauged marked it as well above high though for us. Some of the less experienced members of the group started leading this section. It was clear that recent floods had brought a lot of trees into the flow and we had a few more portages. A previous storm or landslide appeared to have blocked the original river channel for a stretch with the river now flowing through a forest of pine trees to slalom between. Soon after there was also a very old low bridge that needed limbo skills to navigate. We finished the day with a quick run down the Gyronde again, a relaxed and easy run having done it the day before.

Day Seven - A longer drive to the Severaisse, a beautiful valley framed on all sides by high snow capped mountains. The water was barely above zero degrees, but an incredible river. One of the few rapids we set up protection on and ran in groups (and therefore got some photos of). We did have a swimmer here and ended up with a split group as we hunted for a missing boat. We followed down the next section from here, another 12km of grade 2 to 3.

Day Eight - Between a few muscle tweaks, minor injuries and some upset stomachs, we were light on numbers and all tired. We’d headed for the Gyronde for a familiar run that we were comfortable with, but found it very high. We left that for the day and did a full run down the Durance, two long sections in higher water again, up to 220 cumecs. There were large standing waves, holes, boils and whirlpools along the way and a few large trees making their way down along with us. We’d planned ahead, slipped a few beers in to the back of our boats and stopped for a drink on one of the islands on the way down.

Day Nine - Final day on the Claree. With a long drive ahead and a few people still under the weather, we headed back to the Claree, looking for something familiar and not too taxing. Similar run to the previous trip, although levels were slightly higher, meaning the low bridge was even tighter. It was a great chilled-out way to finish the trip and concluded with a visit to a pizzeria for lunch before getting on the road for the long drive home.

The Logistics

OK, so the area is not quite on our doorstep, but it is remarkably easy to get to. You can get cheap flights to Lyon, Grenoble, Chambery and Geneva, which are all then a couple of hours drive into the reion. Some groups will fly in with their boats and hire cars for their trip. We chose to drive from the UK though, meaning we didn’t need to travel light and could take all the kit we wanted. We managed with two vehicles (both vans) and had plenty of space for all the kit we needed and all out boats including some spares.

It’s about 850 miles to the region from Cardiff. It’s a long drive, but as easy drive as you can image, the French motorways are quiet, good quality and rarely affected by roadworks, so you can turn on the cruise control and drive for hours without easing off. We left Cardiff around 6am, crossed the channel just before midday and drove down to Lyon, arriving around 9pm and staying in a cheap motel. This meant we could cover the last couple of hours drive the following morning and get on the river that day, before checking into a chalet for the week.

There are LOADS of river options in the region, some on our doorstep, some further away, but we rarely travelled more than an hour each day to paddle. The return journey was similar, we paddled on our last day and got on the road soon after lunchtime, getting around half way back to Calais before staying the night, finishing the journey home the following day. From leaving on the Friday morning, to getting home on the Monday, we covered around 2700 miles and got 9 days on the water, 19 different sections across 9 different rivers (having taken just 7 days annual leave!) Total cost for the trip, excluding food was about £650 per person.

Keep your eyes peeled for a Club Trip to the region in the summer of 2025!

Paddlers:

Hugo Keene

Pete Attfield

Iain Padwick

Simon Hawker

Kent Fyrth

Craig Jones

Steve Wilford