First descent of Chile's Río Cuervo: extreme kayaking through Patagonian jungle
With no road in, the team flew by helicopter to a volcanic lake and paddled the Río Cuervo to the sea through jungle, gorges and gruelling portages. The film 'First Descent Rio Cuervo' tells the story.
Few rivers on Earth remain unrun. Chile’s Río Cuervo was one of them. An international team of elite kayakers has completed its first descent, and the expedition is now on screen in the documentary First Descent Rio Cuervo, reviewed this Saturday by ExplorersWeb.
Six kayakers and a helicopter
Kilian Astorga dreamed up the trip, joined by Dane Jackson, one of the world’s best-known whitewater kayakers, plus Tom Dolle, Eirik Hansen, Adrian Mattern and David Sodomka.
Getting there was the first problem. The Cuervo starts at Lake Mayuin, a volcanic pool. A road reached it about forty years ago, but it has disappeared, so the team flew in by helicopter, with gear hanging from a rope below the aircraft.
Jungle, gorges and portages
What makes this descent remarkable isn’t just the rapids, it’s the isolation:
- Long stretches run between dense jungle and steep banks, with no way out of the river if things go wrong.
- The river was swollen by recent rain, and the film shows the team running a 3.5-kilometre gorge.
- They used drones and satellite images to scout, and had to portage (carry the kayaks overland) many times, hacking slowly through the vegetation.
- They camped in the jungle in bad weather for much of the trip. Conditions improved in the final days, as the river widens towards the sea.
On a first descent there’s no guidebook and no beta: any bend could hide an unrunnable drop.
A film that knows what it is
According to the ExplorersWeb review, First Descent Rio Cuervo stands out for its clear purpose: it’s a film about kayaking, not one that tries to turn an adventure into a grand statement, and it’s funny too (the team compares the jungle to Dagobah and Fangorn Forest). A good pick for a rainy weekend.
Patagonia, still a land of exploration
Chilean Patagonia remains one of the planet’s great wild places. Read more in the places where nature is still wild and in our pick of the world’s wildest rivers, which includes another great Chilean river, the Futaleufú.
Sources and references
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