La Temporada de los Rios

Back to school for a third year of teaching in Mexico from a great river season in Idaho and Montana. Back to the indoors and a schedule. What better way to ease back into teacher mode than run a Mexican river every weekend.

I usually begin with scrolling over the region on GoogleEarth looking for canyons. Then I check in with Rocky Contos on SierraRios.org to see if he's run that river before and when the water level might be the best. So far this rainy season seems to be pretty low. The Rio Verde, Rio Marabasco, Rio Coahuayana and the Rio Ostula have all been painfully low. But a running a river with some water is better than running no river at all.

GoogleEarth with my markers in SW Mexico

With GoogleEarth I've been able to tag possible put-ins, take-outs, look at elevation profiles and logistical stuff. All of this information comes in useful on rivers that rarely ever get run. So far I've had two 8 hour paddling days covering 45 km+ with portages and low water. On the Rio Verde I had to pack out a nearly 80lbs. pack up about 2,000 feet up the Barranca Huentitan outside of Guadalajara. On the Rio Marabasco I inadvertently swam a class IV after my ducky slipped out of a micro eddy. On the Rio Coahuayana Chris Swiggum and I flipped and swam seven times as our overweight ducky slammed through a multitude of class III. Half the village of Ostula came out to see Mark and I off on the Rio Ostula as we floated into the Pacific in the southern state of Michoacán.

Every bit of it has been an adventure. There are no boat ramps, no guidebooks, next-to-no fellow boaters, and no gages. Just getting to these rivers is challenging. On the Marabasco a group of four of us drove up into the mountains of northern Colima. Once we found the bridge, the other three Estadounidenses in the car had to navigate out on the dirt road to Barra de Navidad on the coast. Then in 7 hours they would drive to Cihuatlán to pick me up. 8 hours later I had paddled over 40 km and was still 10 km from Cihuatlán. But I finally had cell service and was alongside a dirt road. So I called them to pick me up there. An hour later I was wondering what had happened to them. Did the police pull them over? Did some cartel hoodlums catch up with them? Did the car die? I hitched a ride in the back of a small pick-up into Cihuatlán and waited beneath a statue of a man digging with a shovel near the cathedral. Another hour later they showed up. They had taken a different dirt road, one with no cell service.

One of the best part about the rivers along the southern coast is ending up on a beautiful beach like La Ticla or La Lloronain Michoacán after paddling the Rio Ostula. Or eating seafood in Barra de Navidad, Jalisco after the Rio Marabasco. Viva Mexico.

September 15, 2013: The lower Rio Ameca near Puerto Vallarta. A nice mellow class II float.

September 21, 2013: First descent down the Rio Atenguillo, Jalisco.

September 28, 2013: Class II float the Rio Juchipila in Zacatecas.