Flying Over Britannia Creek

Just 4 days away from departure for the Huallaga, The TRL crew and a massive extended family of paddlers and friends converged on Britannia Creek to huck a couple of waterfalls and film it all from the air. Matt Maddaloni is the man when it comes to rigging zip lines in places where you would think near impossible. His has all the gear, the experience, and most importantly the will power and work ethic to pull off the big mission. We had been eyeing up Britannia ever since the ultra successful zip project on the Ashlu River last fall. Despite water levesl being higher than ideal, we manged to set safety from a high line and three of us decided to fire it up. I think it was something like 5 hours of rigging and about 5 minutes of kayaking, but we had fun. Here are some pics...

Matt Maddaloni and Todd Gillman coiling one of many ropes to be used.

photo by Chris Bozeman

Matt Maddaloni and Steve Rogers high in the air below the second waterfall

photo by Chris Bozeman

This was a much faster zip line than the Ashlu rig...Matt and Steve flying overhead!

photo by Chris Bozeman

Below the second waterfall there was 1 eddy above a boulder jumble into a 60 plus footer. This was the crux and why we had to set up a unique safety rig. We had a high line arocss the river, a person attached to that line with a pulley, then that person was live baited to another person on shore. The system worked sweet. However it was still absolutely critical that you stomped out the last waterfall.

Bryan Smith acting as a catcher's mit.

photo by Lise-Anne Beyries

Kyle Mclutchen ushering Bryan into the eddy

photo by Lise-Anne Beyries

Nice view of the first waterfall. It had an extremely technical lead in which Kyle described as "rowdy". All of us ended up in the cave between the first waterfall on river left.

photo by Lise-Anne Beyries

Bryan on waterfall #2. We figured the first one was 15-20 and the second 20-25. Perfect waterfalls, but no room for error.

photo by Lise-Anne Beyries

Drew had the most insane line off #2. Here he is mid air.

photo by Chris Bozeman

And the sequence which reveals his stomp.

photo by Chris Bozeman

Not a ton of time to develop the complete story right now. Todd is going to have some pictures as well. Just wanting to get something up in the chaos of getting ready for the Huallaga. Huge thanks to everyone that helped and hung at Britannia all day!