It has been 5 years of planning, scouting, checking the seasonal river levels and finally this July the boys dropped into the Rosanna Gorge in St Anton am Arlberg. St Anton is famed for its hardcore skiing and backcountry routes but for a bunch of local kayakers it was the gorge that has been working away at them.
There is not much information about the Gorge, apparently it has been run but we are not too sure by whom and how often!? All we knew was that it looked committing and you can only scout just a small piece of it.
So on a sunny Sunday morning Steve, John, Andy & Ute caught the bus (private vehicles are not allowed in this little valley during the day) up to the Verwall Hut. As the boys warmed up, did their final checks before putting on, Ute headed down to a track with a rucksack full of climbing kit incase the kayakers could not run the gorge and had to ascend on the ropes out!
It was certainly a bit of a bump and scrape at the start but then we soon entered the gorge, the walls closed in and the drops started.
The team were working well, our biggest worry were the trees that could be in there from the avalanches in the winter and spring. The river was starting to steepen up and we were pretty much scouting every drop!
Some clean lines were run, some manoeuvering around trees and branches was needed plus some must make moves above nasty syphons.
The river was just over 7Km in length and it took us some 4 ½ hours to successfully complete the gorge.
We had a couple of portages, one where a huge tree was across the whole river (this would have been the best rapid of the river) and another where after running three drops the water was pushing under a nasty undercut rock and with no chance of sneaking a line past this undercut we had to walk around.
Just before the exit of the gorge the rains came and it got suddenly dark but with just 2 more rapids to run we made our way down to the old Rendl Lift station.
What an amazing day!
The grade well it was all class III down the middle if you use Ramiro’s Rio Apurimac grading though we would say it is a Class V/VI.
Life is good in the Austrian Alps and more updates will follow.....Steve
