Río Sordo First Descent

Issac Martinez, Iker Beristain, and I took a week to complete the first descent of the upper section of the Río Sordo near Jalcomulco, Veracruz.

Season: High water, August-November

Gauge: Visual, see photos

Put in: (19.4349664, -96.9117951)

Takeout: (19.4099116, -96.8950843)

I traveled straight from work to Jalcomulco, Veracruz to meet up with Issac Martinez for two weeks of exploratory kayaking. Issac picked me up from the bus station in Xalapa, and before we had even made it to his home we passed by a beautiful waterfall known as Cascada de la Orduña. We stopped to hike down to it, and it seemed to be at a perfect runnable level. We didn't have the gear to run it safely that day, but we quickly put together a team and headed in the next day.

Cascada de la Orduña

The entrance to the waterfall began with a 20' drop that landed in a tight, dark canyon with dangerous undercut walls. The river then banked a ninety degree corner with

a big hole before rolling off a difficult lip and falling over 60' to the pool below. We decided the entrance drop was too dangerous to run, but found a way to rappel into a small eddy just below that drop to run the main waterfall.

I rappelled in first, and climbed into my boat while still attached to the rope. I carefully unclipped in the boily eddy, put my skirt on, and warmed up in the tight space below the waterfall. Issac's dad radioed the safety team, and then gave me the go signal. I peeled out and paddled around the corner, through the entrance rapid, and off the lip.

The impact was soft, and I rolled up and celebrated with the safety team. Scouting had taken a lot of time and energy, and the rest of the crew was too tired to run the waterfall that day. We took some photos and paddled a section of the Río Antigua on the way back to Jalco before thinking about the next mission.

The team from Orduña

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Upper Sordo

After Orduña, we looked at the section below, where the creek met the Río Sordo. Here, there was a long section of river with no known descents, and we started piecing together the logistics for this section. We made a map of our route with some potential big drops and options to hike out if we needed to.

Issac and I put in at a bridge just below the confluence of the Río Pixquiac and the Río Sordo. We were using the drop above the bridge as a flow reference and put in with the boof looking to be at a good medium level if you wanted to run it.

Gauge drop in the background at the put in of the Sordo

The water quality was poor here because Sordo drains from the city of Xalapa, but the high water helped with the pollution. We headed downstream and quickly came across a stout 10' ledge in a tight gorge. I got stuck in a pocket below the waterfall after almost flipping in the entrance, but managed to fight my way out. After this, the river opened up for a bit before another short canyon. The next drop was our favorite of the day and one of the best boofs I have ever seen. Issac ran this drop first and named it Quetzalcóatl.

Issac powering through the whiteout and roosting off Quetzalcóatl

We continued downstream, and banged down a bit of mank before coming to one of the drops we had identified from satellite imagery. This drop comes up on a blind corner and drops about 80'. The lip and curtain looked clean, but we were only a team of two and we couldn't see the landing so Issac and I did a 40m rappel on the right to get below it.

Rappel around Nayuaca

The waterfall looked almost perfect, but landed dangerously close to a rock shelf. A tiny bit more water would make me more comfortable in knowing that it clears this shelf. Keeping with the serpent theme we named this waterfall Cascada Nauyaca.

Cascada Nauyaca

Scouting and portaging had taken a long time, so after Nauyaca we started to look for a way out of the canyon. Below the Nauyaca gorge we found a natural spring with a big pool and some sketchy concrete steps leading up the cliff out of the river. We sent out an inReach message for a pickup and called it a day.

Issac had to go to school the next day, and I got really sick and couldn't paddle for a few days. When I recovered we still had good levels, but Issac was still busy with school. Issac had posted a video from Quetzalcóatl that caught the attention of Iker Beristain. Iker messaged me about joining our mission and drove out from Mexico City the next day to meet me in Jalco. We made a plan and put in where Issac and I had taken out.

We ran a few small ledges and ran into some trouble in a mank rapid. Iker rolled and lost his paddle. I tried to toss him mine but missed, and we both floated around a blind corner with no paddles. When we came around the bend we were looking over a massive horizon more than a hundred feet tall. Iker grabbed his paddle, but mine was moving slowly towards the lip, and I was barely able to catch up to it and pull into an eddy before it went over the waterfall.

We caught our breath here and then started scouting the waterfall that we had almost run blind. It was a two tiered waterfall with a small pool in between. The first drop split into three channels and dropped nearly 80'. We didn't think it looked very runnable, so we rappelled around it and looked at the next drop. The second drop was 50-60' pool to pool, with a slide entrance into a 30' vertical drop. Iker rappelled around this one and set safety, and I got in my boat to run it.

Coming down the slide on Hidra 2

This drop went really well, and we stopped below to rest and take some photos. We named the waterfalls Hidra 1, and Hidra 2 because of the split channels on the first drop like a three headed hydra.

Iker below las Cascadas de la Hidra

We took out shortly after, above a big, unrunnable waterfall and went back to Jalco for some well deserved caguamas and to celebrate Iker's birthday.

I left shortly after this, but Issac went back in and completed the lower section of the Sordo from below the unrunnable drop to the Xico river.

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Nauyaca

A year later I went back to Jalco, and Issac and I dropped back in to the Sordo with higher water than our first descent. The curtain of Nauyaca stuck out a little bit farther, and we were more confident that it cleared the rock shelf behind it.

High water Nauyaca

I scouted it for a while and felt good, so Issac rappelled below and I got ready to run it. The curtain touches the left wall about half way down, but the rock shelf at the bottom is worse on the right, so the line was very tight splitting these two features. I managed to get where I needed to be, but boofed a little bit and didn't go very deep. Luckily the boil was pretty soft so I didn't get hurt and was able to roll up off the right wall.

Issac and I finished the run, running the second and third descents of Hidra 2, but leaving Hidra 1 still unrun.

I made a quick video for a film festival, including some clips from this descent, which can be seen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MycvCbT7vKA

That's all for now, thanks for reading!