Rafting Russia's Bashkaus River

Editor’s Note: In 1993, four Americans embarked on a 28-day descent of the hardest whitewater river in the Soviet Union, with 10 Latvians they met by chance. Eugene Buchanan, Bruce Edgerly, Van Wombwell and Ben Hammond had received a Shipton-Tilman grant—the first that W.L. Gore & Associates had ever awarded for a river trip—to run the relatively mild Kalar River. But when their connection fell through, Latvia’s Team Konkas found them at the airport. Soon after their vodka-fueled introduction met the Moscow dawn, all 14 adventurers were boarding the train for Siberia’s feared Bashkaus River. The following is excerpted from Buchanan’s Brothers on the Bashkaus, available from Fulcrum Publishing (www.fulcrumbooks.com).

Singin' Bye Bye Soviet Pie: the author belts out a tune for his Latvian hosts.

Today we face four Class Vs as soon as we put on. “If that’s the case,” says Van, pouring coffee into the pot as nonchalantly as John Wayne gearing up for another shoot-out, “then we’d better make a pot of some good ol’ American joe. Olga be damned.” He’s only half joking. Olga is the wife of the Latvian trip leader, Ramitch, and resident food cop for our diminishing rations. Earlier in the trip, she had admonished Van for using too many grounds. After yesterday’s flip in Kamikaze Rapid, he’s not taking any chances.

In analyzing the flip (and buying into superstition), a couple of things went wrong beforehand. First, I accidentally left my cotton underwear on beneath my pile suit and rain gear.

Second, Van only left one cigarette behind at one of the memorials we passed yesterday commemorating rafters who had drowned on the river. Third, and perhaps most importantly, he didn’t have any coffee before we shoved off. “I’m telling you, that’s what did it,” he continues. “Never underestimate the power of coffee.”

“Strong coffee, strong country,” Edge chimes in, on cue. Draining our steaming mugs, we load our catarafts and put on. During a rare flat section leading up to the day’s first rapid Edge launches into a soliloquy about the difference in team concepts between us and the Latvians.

“Think about it,” he says. “Where we brought four cameras, they brought one. Where we brought four journals, they brought one. Where we brought four books each, they brought one that they pass around page by page.” “At least they don’t share their underwear,” Ben says. “At least not that we know about,” Van adds.

What we do know is that the homemade catarafts we’re paddling, made from old germ warfare suits and log frames, had gotten us this far. That and our growing camaraderie with the resourceful Latvians, whose lifejackets are made from old soccer balls and wine bladders. We’re in the heart of the Lower Canyon, a 30-mile abyss with inescapable 2,000-foot walls that will take us a total of two weeks to negotiate. Ever since the start of our trip nearly three weeks ago, Ramitch, the trip leader, has fretted about both the water level and Lower Canyon. “You have to be strong to run her,” he said one night, adding an ominous toast to “running the team’s strongest rapid ever.”

At times, Ramitch has displayed an almost militant approach to his leadership, but it’s one we begrudgingly admit has helped us survive. The only woman along is the coffee miser Olga, who monitors our deplorable food rations with the same attention Ramitch gives the rapids. Despite the language barriers—Olga, Ramitch and two other Latvians named Boris and Yevgheny are the only ones who speak any semblance of English--we’re starting to work as a team. We have to in order to make it to another round of Van’s coffee.

It won’t be easy. The meager rations have everyone lethargic around camp. According to Ben, an assistant director for the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, Wyoming, most expeditions pack two to two and a half pounds of food per person per day. The Latvians brought 400 grams per person per day, less than half of that. We’ve been augmenting it with some of our rations (they’ve never seen peanut butter, popcorn or PowerBars) and on one occasion, by trading rotgut vodka to gun-wielding horsemen for a sheep. It’s not that they don’t like to eat. It’s just that they’re used to carrying everything they need for a 28-day river expedition on their backs, oftentimes hiking for days just to reach a put-in. We’re simply starving by association.

By now, everyone has gotten pretty good at sizing up portions. If you get to the lineup early, you have a few extra seconds to pick before the hordes move in. While deciding, I see Boris, who has an uncanny knack for selecting rations for maximum caloric value, go for one bowl of fish-eyeball soup and then put it back in favor of another. That’s all the data I need. Since he at least touched it, I figure it has to be a good choice. The same tactics hold true when picking out pieces of dry bread. Does the wider girth make up for the broken-off corner? Watch Boris.

We also get good at holding onto the piping-hot aluminum soup bowls, even if they sear our hands. More than one of us has yelped from being too quick on the draw. But once grabbed, like a raccoon with his paw caught in a trap, we don’t dare let go. The stakes (my diary says steaks) are too high. After scouting thoroughly, we all get through Obstinate, the day’s main rapid, wet but fine. We’re in three catarafts, us Americans piloting one and the Latvians split between the other two. Two people kneel on each pontoon, with our gear loaded onto the log frame connecting them. The homemade craft handle surprisingly well, both for paddling and portaging.

Obstinate is indicative of the rest of the Lower Canyon: a tight, boulder-choked ribbon of white cleaving the canyon’s impenetrable walls. The flow is maybe 5,000 cfs, which becomes a frightening torrent in any one of the run’s hundreds of steep, boulder-choked rapids. A hole buries and drenches us, but only momentarily. We keep the craft straight, avoid a series of undercut rocks, and emerge well positioned for the rest of the rapid.

Rafting the Bashkaus River

Our first portage of the day takes us across bedrock, a welcome change from incessant boulder-hopping. Another welcome change is that I’m starting to develop a rapport with Sergei the Small, one of four Sergeis on the trip and captain of the third raft. Since we’re often scouting the easier rapids together and then reporting the lines back to our raft mates, we’re starting to catch each other’s eye a bit, before and after our respective runs. Despite the language barrier, he is even making a more concerted effort to communicate at camp. Through sign language, he’ll describe the day’s run, using hand signals to indicate waves and fists to represent rocks.

Later, we come upon a rapid called Stubborn. The main rapid is meaty enough that even Edge, our strongest kayaker when paddling back home and who’s always the last to give in to a portage, says it might be worth lining our raft down it. But Ramitch and Sergei each have good runs, so we give it a go with Boris subbing in for Ben, who chooses to walk around and meet us below. We clip an eddy and spin but make it past the crux.

But just after the rapid, when we think we’re in the clear, Sergei the Small’s raft hits an undercut wall on the right while leading the pack around a tight corner. His boat rises up the wall and then flips when the river grabs hold of its bottom tube. There’s not much you can do when this happens. The high tube climbs the wall and upends before there’s any chance of reacting. The scarier part here is that the wall is undercut and could easily trap a body. Thankfully, everyone pops up in the main current. We help gather them up and usher the overturned boat to shore, pushing it with our bow. This rapid isn’t named either, but it broke their raft’s birch-log frame—an indication of what we face every time we confront a rapid with a name.