Croatia Trip Reports

These are the two trip reports that we wrote during our trip through the Balkans:

April 4th, 2004:

We started our trip Monday with two days of paddling in Slovenia on the Soca River. The Soca and surrounding communities are a whitewater boater’s paradise. There is whitewater for all abilities, from gentle Class II's and III's to Sieve and Undercut infested Class V boulder gardens.

After two days paddling in Slovenia we headed for Croatia. Some of you may have seen Croatian paddling in TGR's Valhalla. It is the land of Flat-water stretches linked by big (and small) boofs and clean waterfalls.


Our first stop in Croatia was a tourist side trip to the town of Pula, home of the largest fully intact roman coliseum in the world. Following the tourist detour, we started to scout out the rivers in Croatia. The river information we were going off was a Croatian river outfitters web page (http://www.huck-finn.hr/) and a road map. Miles of old bouncy dirt roads and encounters several warning signs about minefields and UN mine clearing troops dealing with landmines left over from the Balkan War in the early 90s, led to our first put in on the Mrzenica river.

After our adventures driving around the Croatian outback it was 3:30 by the time we put on. The website had said that the Croatian rivers were more like drop-lake than drop-pool, and they were not kidding. The Mrzenica River was sections of flat-water linked by straight boofs ranging in height from two to 15 feet. Since the falls were nearly vertical they did nothing to speed up our downriver progress. With out gravity to assist our trip along the river we were left to paddle the entire 12+ miles of river under our own power. Needless to say we ended up running the last 4 or 5 drops after dark and taking off the river around 8:30 PM, with a 9 mile bike ride to get back to the car.

We paddled another shorter section of the same river, decided that the waterfalls of the video probably were not to be found in the north of Croatia and started to head south.

All was not lost, as we approached the town of Slunj rounding a turn we saw one of the biggest runable water falls either of us had seen in person. It was at the confluence of two rivers. The first had cut a gorge at least 100 feet deep, while the second flowed into the gorge over the side in a series of waterfalls in three distinct channels. The road ran along the opposite bank of the first river giving a perfect view to scout the three waterfalls. The first two were definitely not runable. The first required that you boof out at least 10 feet to get over the rocks at the base, the second crashed down onto an undercut rock, but the third, a 40 footer with 30 feet of shear vertical was clean with a nice aerated pool to land in.

Running this waterfall entailed running a 6 foot class IV entry rapid, then a 12 foot shear fall that required a limbo under a foot bridge just prior to dropping over the edge, a big pool to collect your thoughts and then a 30 foot long entry to the precipice of the big falls.

Matt decided to run it first so I dropped him off at the start and drove back around to the good view to record the run on video. He ran all of the entry falls cleanly. He approached the big falls on line and as he paddled over the edge he ended up boofing and landing flat in the pool at the bottom, bouncing his nose off of his paddle and getting a cut and a swollen nose out of the otherwise clean run. He hiked out of the gorge and we switched places.

I ran the same line, but instead of paddling the whole way down the curtain of the falls, I simply let the river carry me over the edge. I landed in the pool just slightly past vertical on my way over the handlebars. The impact of the landing pulled my helmet up off my head stretching the chin strap, but nothing broke and I rolled up unharmed. That water fall made all of the previous flat-water paddling worth it.

We are taking a rest day today in the town of Zadar on the Croatian coast and will be back at it the next day. When I get a chance I will post another update on our progress.

Talk to you all later!

Jake



April 8th, 2004 written by Matt:

We just got done with two days of great paddling. We found a river that actually had multiple large waterfalls.

The first of the two days we paddled the Zrmanga River, which started out very tame, one drop of about four feet then about four miles of class I-III. But, just after the confluence with the Krupa River we found the biggest runnable drop I have ever run. We estimated the vertical to be about 40 feet or more.

Jake decided he had found the line so he went first. I was eyeing a different line but I thought his would work too. He was confidant and decided he was ready to attack this monster. I was still trying to decide what my line was going to be so while I videoed and thought about my line Jake ran the drop. On his way to the edge of the drop he got a little confused as to where he needed to be and wound up running a totally different line than he was expecting and on the way over completely disappeared from my sight. He thinks he went in pretty deep because he recalls’ waiting to surface for what seemed like seconds. When he did surface he was where I could not see him at first, but, when I moved down the bank I was relieved to see him up right and smiling. Now it was my turn.

I chose not to follow in my big brothers foot steps and ran a completely different line on the other side of this monstrous drop. My line went of with out a hitch and was probably the most fun I have ever had in a kayak. The rest of the run was flat water with two class IV drops and then a 15 foot vertical drop at the end. All of which made for a very fun day.

The next day was even better as we paddled the Krupa River. This was the best river we found in Croatia. It, together with the bottom part of the Zrmanga, had eight drops over 15 feet: two were 15, two were 20 and 25, two were around 30 and two were close to if not over 40 feet. All clean and all very fun.

The falls ranged from big slides to big vertical drops it was sweet!!! We paddled most of them without incident. But the big drop that we had run the day before tought me it was still in charge. I was just about a foot off line. I was going for the same line I had paddled the day before that rolled off to vertical. The line I ran this time didn't quite roll off as smoothly and about half way down the drop I found my self tipping over forwards with nothing to do but hold on and brace for the impending impact. The impact was worse than I thought it would be. When I landed I felt a searing pain in my groin area like I had just been nutted by a soccer ball. But I rolled up anyway and paddled to shore and after a few minutes of heavy breathing I was back to normal. Jake chose to run a similar line just a little bit right of were I went over and came over the falls without any problems.

The country of Croatia is very interesting. The coast is very modern and yet just a few miles inland the country is totally different. It has a very eary feel to it. There are shells of buildings with bullet holes, no windows, doors or roofs. They are what I would consider ghost towns. The people that live there are farmers and goat herders and it all has a very old world feel to it. We are now spending two days in the port town of Split waiting for our ferry and doing a little sight seeing before leaving Croatia and going back to Italy for three more day of sight seeing.

Croatia has been very fun and interesting but I am ready to move on and am looking forward to the steep creeks of Corsica.

So long for now,

Matt

Here is the video footage from our trip to Croatia:

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