And eventually ran the Upper Fuy


	Before we ran the lower Fuy the second day, we stopped to look at the Huilo Huilo falls. They were amazingly cool. The falls were formed when a lava flow from the nearby volcano blocked the course of the river. The river eventually carved a narrow path through the lava, just a few feet wide but tens of feet deep. If you were to end up in there in a boat, you would be in a world of trouble as right around the corner and too late to get out, the falls drop almost 100 feet onto an ugly rocky looking landing. Very impressive to look at. There was a class from a university doing a survey of the forest there by the falls. There was also a logging concern nearby - I don't know if those two facts are relevant or related.	The very narrow gorge above the Huilo Huilo Falls. The unrun, 100ft Huilo Huilo Falls. No, that's not a line on the right!
	Our final day on the Fuy was the day we ran the steep drops of the upper section. I was up early and went out for a walk as the sun came up over the lake - it was a scene out of a tourism brochure. So I took some pictures in case I ever went into the tourism brochure business.	Lake Panguipulli, on a calm morning in Choshuenco.
	We put in where the Fuy flowed out of a beautiful alpine lake. The weather was cool and cloudy - not rainy but almost dreary. There wasn't much place to change though, and we attracted a small crowd including some photographers a video guy from the local tourist bureau. They were there to get some shots of us at the big drops, and the fellow in charge got into a boat in his dress clothes and paddled around on the calm part of the river without a sprayskirt. I was secretly hoping he would tip over, as his underlings were filming his exploits, but he was very slow and careful and it didn't happen.	A playspot on the Upper Fuy. Ken paddling down along the upper.
	The paddle down was fast and mostly straightforward, and reminiscent of the Upper Yough. There was one rapid that was a bit tricky - a ledge that had a big cubic chunk broken off and a tree stump stuck on the river left side. I chose to walk around this, as it looked like it would be painful to bounce off the broken chunk, but several of the other paddlers proved me wrong - they bounced off of it, and it was loud but not painful. Eventually we arrived at the pool above the lip of the big drops - Las Leonas. The first, biggest and most impressive drop was about 25 feet, and was really easy to run. You could paddle right up to the edge and look over without running the drop if you wanted - there was almost no current in the pool above. This made picking the right spot pretty easy. Ken and Juliet ran down first. Ken set up a rope to keep swimmers from swimming the next drop while Juliet stayed in her boat.	The horizon line at Las Leonas. Ken directs the mass of falling kayakers. Peter takes the plunge.
	We all took our turn running the drop. It was actually really fun, and not particularly frightening. You paddled right up to the edge, going in super slow motion, and as you started accelerating with the falling water your boat tipped up at a much steeper angle then it felt it should - then you were just falling. The pool was deep and the landing was pretty clean - just a sudden acceleration as the boat carved its way from vertical back to horizontal. Everyone had a fine time running the drop. The next drop was about 12 feet, with a boof required to keep from landing on rocks. Then there were 9, 15 and 20 foot drops immediately after that. Sitting down below all the drops you could look back upstream and see all the falls and realize that you just came down through there - it looked beautiful and impossible.	12 34 56 My run of Las Leonas. It was really fun! For scale, my boat is about 11 feet long. For a bandwidth-consuming, cheesy, full-size animation of my run, click here. (431K)
	The camera crew that was with us at the put in met us at the falls and took pictures and video of our runs. This time the boss was not too keen on paddling our boats. I imagine that we might show up in some local tourist brochure in Chile some day - keep an eye out for us. The rest of the river was pretty smooth paddling. We took out and went back to the hotel to eat and drink more pisco sours and get ready to go on to the San Pedro river the next day.	Looking back upstream. This picture was taken too early - later on you could see 4 falls at once but I was out of film!
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