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Paddling the River Feshie – in February of course
publication date: Mar 1, 2008
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author/source: Polly Evans
 The forecast was for a great day on Cairngorm Mountain. I was set to go telemarking – a free-heel style of skiing which uses climbing 'skins' to go uphill – with Mike Gale of G2 Outdoor. But when we got to the car park at the foot of the mountain, a gale was blowing. We joined the crowds in the café – they’d all been lured here by the plentiful snow and fine forecast. Outside, the screaming winds continued unabated. ‘Oh well,’ said Mike as he drained his cup. ‘The weather’s no good for telemarking. But the water on the river’s really high. Let’s go rafting instead.’
We drove to his warehouse in Aviemore and dressed in dry suits with many layers of fleece beneath. Mike strapped a 'mini-raft' – thinner than a normal raft, rather like an inflatable canoe – to the van’s roof, and we made our way to the Feshie.
Blizzards had battered this area a few days before. Most of the snow had now melted, and the river ran high and white. We carried the raft to the river’s edge, tramping through amoebic blobs of snow that lay like melted marshmallow on the river’s banks.
Mike gave me a brief pre-expedition briefing. ‘If we capsize,’ he said ‘you’ll get a really bad ice-cream headache, and you won’t be able to breathe.’
We launched into the river. This was class three white water – the highest category is six. We whooshed through the rapids and leapt down little falls, through grey rocky gorges and a beneath a dry-stone bridge. And, as we came to the end, we noticed: there were two astonished walkers standing on the banks taking photographs of the madmen who’d gone rafting in the very depths of a Highlands winter.
Getting there: G2 Outdoor (www.g2outdoor.co.uk) offers ski touring, telemark and snow and ice climbing in winter, and rock climbing, mountain biking, hiking and paddling in summer. But winter’s the time when the water is highest, and those dry suits are fantastically warm…
There’s skiing and a funincular on Cairngorm Mountain. See www.cairngormmountain.org.uk for more info.
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