Khe Le - "Middle" Section
Section Length: ~ 2 km
Put In: Phuoc Binh Church Take Out: Unnamed Road |
Difficulty: Class I (!) (P)
Est. Flow: ~ 50 cfs / ~ 17 cms Paddlers: David Watts, Kit Davidson |
9/1/2017 - I'll start this short writeup with a warning: you shouldn't paddle the Khe Le. We shouldn't have either. However, to get the goods you sometimes have to deal with the shit too, and this was one of those days.
We were only on this stream because I had seen it whilst scouting another river in the area. I happened to drive over this stream and it was flowing quite nicely, and I thought it might make a nice warm up run to get some of the rust off before the wet season. Some Google Earth scouting revealed a flatwater stream with what looked like overhanging vegetation. In looked like a great place to warm up and practice the paddling motions and have a fun day.
We were only on this stream because I had seen it whilst scouting another river in the area. I happened to drive over this stream and it was flowing quite nicely, and I thought it might make a nice warm up run to get some of the rust off before the wet season. Some Google Earth scouting revealed a flatwater stream with what looked like overhanging vegetation. In looked like a great place to warm up and practice the paddling motions and have a fun day.
However, quickly after putting on, we found the trip to be quite an adventure, bordering on Type 3 fun. The run revealed it's main obstacle pretty quickly; what I had taken to be overhanging trees ended up being huge brakes of bamboo that were growing right out of the river channel. The result was a nasty, often riverwide dam of bamboo branches that made the river altogether impassable and required either thrashing through bushes, or outright portaging. Sometimes tiny channels offered themselves up, but these led to a boat full of leaves, sticks, and best of all: spiders. Dave and I stopped at one point and I think we were up to 3 dozen spiders in our boats between the two of us. Then, just when we were having lots of fun thrashing through bamboo dams and portaging and getting spiders all over us and our boats, we came around a corner and right there in the stream was a damn buffalo. We eddied out and waited to see what would happen; eventually the buffalo decided we weren't worth the time and wandered off into the brush. We hadn't gone but 100 meter before we came around a corner and there was another one, this one with a much more defensive posture, standing right in the only channel. Fuck. What to do now? Well, we waited patiently and this one finally moved away too. And finally, as a nice kicker on the day, at one point as we were dealing with yet another bamboo strainer we had the pleasure of watching a poo-filled diaper float by. Awesome.
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At this point I don't think you could pay me money to go back to Khe Le, and if someone invites you to go with them, you politely slap them in the face and tell them "no". Even with more water, Dave and I were talking, we think while it might be a little more fun, it's also going to lower reaction times when approaching those awful bamboo dams, or buffalo, or any other issue you might run in to. So, bottom line, just don't do it. Go run something else. Don't say I didn't warn you. I'm not going to provide a map because if you want suffering this much, go find it yourself.
All photos and videos copyright Kit Davidson.
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