It had been raining all night in the Brecon's, so Matt Price, Andy Shan and I hit the road early and headed to the Nedd Fechan. I hadn't paddled this river in years, but it used to be a regular run so I know the river well. I remember the first time I ran it in low water in my little Necky Chronic.... how things change! Today however it was pretty high! But it was dropping so we needed to get on quickly.
We inspected the first drop and set up safety, it's an interested two tiered drop which kicks hard right into an overhanging wall, a perfect warm up! I fired it up first with a little success but got launched into the wall, but all good! Andy went second and flipped before the second lip and got pushed upside down into the overhang, he quickly pulled his deck and we had a difficult rescue on our hands. Downstream of the drop there is an island and both channels are blocked with dangerous trees so floating down is not an option! We managed to get Andy back in his boat stress free and Matt hit the drop with the best line (guess he learnt from some mistakes..).
Andy at this point decided he wasn't feeling it that day and decided to walk back to the car, but he ran safety for us on the next drop. This next drop is a 20 foot waterfall with a challenging lip and shallow landing. About 3 feet from the lip is a stopper which can kill your speed and kill your boof, and pencilling this drop isn't a great idea! In the past this fall was considered a portage, but now it is much more commonly paddled. Matt decided to go first and after a long wait he flew off the lip, unfortunately he missed his boof stroke and came down with a crazy angle. Luckily he came out really well and pretty stoked! This didn't fill me with confidence but I was sure that I could do it. Sitting in the eddy at the top it's really hard to see your line as the actual lip of the drop is behind the stopper. This left me a little uncertain as I peeled out of the eddy, all too quickly I boofed the stopper and put a strong boof stroke on the lip and took a pretty smooth landing. Great drop! Certainly gets the blood flowing, technically easy/high consequence.
After this drop is another 20 footer, this one lands on a concrete slab and is almost always portaged but has been run a few times in the past, we portaged. Unfortunately the Nedd Fechan has a lot of trees in it at the moment so we had to portage a few great drops but the rest of the run was still great paddling. We walked up to the Pryddin drop, a 40 foot clean drop with a shallow landing. It's been run a lot recently but we decided that it needed a little more water and with just the 2 of us, an accident would not be great.
Over all an awesome, successful paddle!
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