Luke Partridge: Feith Talagain

With the temperatures rising and rain falling in the mountains the rivers in the highlands have once again been at stonking levels. A day off in between running winter skills courses for various providers and work with West Highland College, coincided with a day where both Jonny Hawkins and Bastien DeMange were free. Our original plan was to try and get a run down the elusive spate run of the Ossian and Ghuilbinn, however time constraints meant we had to look for a potentially shorter run.

The Feith Talagain is a tributary that winds it's way out of the mountains near Laggan to join the upper Spey at Garva bridge. This Spate run offers a truly adventurous feel, with a long hike in dragging boats for several kilometers into the hills to where a flattening in terrain marks the put in.

Right from the word go we were met with technical, tight, typically Scottish whitewater kayaking, weaving in and out of boulders.

Jonny on one of the earlier slides

As the river weaves it's way through the glen the gradient rapidly steepens up and with the increase in gradient comes an increase in difficulty of the rapids. Large slides and drops give excellent, difficult kayaking with many technical lines and linked drops to run.

High river levels gave pushy whitewater, and we opted to scout and set up safety for almost every major rapid. The river flows through several steep gorges, and within them large falls and slides. The largest of which we opted to portage, due to both there being no clean line and the danger of trees that had fallen into the river. I later found an account of someone running this rapid in what sounds like similar levels only to be smashed on the river left wall, knocked unconscious and swimming the next rapid unconscious before being rescued by his friends. Definitely a good option to walk!