All your rafting news fit to print

NYT today...

In Remote Chile, a Paradise Carved by White Water

By ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.

The white-water outfitter Eric Hertz spent a lifetime searching for the perfect river. In 1990, he finally found it, in Patagonia. Intrepid kayakers who had ventured into southern Chile the previous year said that the Futaleufú River could not be rafted. But Hertz and his partner, the Chilean white-water expert Roberto Currie, made an expeditionary first descent in 1993 and figured out how to safely navigate what today is the most intensive stretch of commercially rafted white-water rapids in the world.

Latin Trade Chile Correspondent Eduardo Coronado, October 2005

Wild Ride

Futaleufú means "wild river'' in Mapuche, the language of Chile's indigenous people. There couldn't be a more appropriate name for its powerful, crystalline waters, which run along the northern frontier of Patagonia, more than 1,000 kilometers to the south of Chile's capital city Santiago.

The river's waters, classified as Category V or VI for white-water rafting, carve a uniquely beautiful valley through the heart of the Andes, creating a paradise for adventure tourism fanatics. The town of Futaleufú is home to 1,826 people who in the rafting season - from November to March - share their town with 5,000 tourists on an adrenaline rush in a place that doesn't even have its own gas station.

"In Patagonia there is no pollution or industry, the water and air are pure, and there are very few people. Nature dominates,'' says Chris Spelius, a one-time member of the U.S. Olympic kayaking team who fell in love with the valley after traversing the river for the first time in 1985. Spelius's view, an apparently common one, is that Futaleufú is the most difficult river in the world where ordinary people can pay to ride the rapids. "It's dangerous even if you use all the appropriate security procedures,'' he says.