The Ardeche – an Adventure Playground

I’ve been working in the Ardeche area & on the river itself since 1989 & despite leading in excess of 2000 trips down this gorge I learn something new every time & am continually taken aback by it’s natural beauty.

Some Detail

The Ardeche was formed 20 million yrs ago & populated 350000 yrs ago. The cave paintings at Chauvet Pont D’Arc Caves tp://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/index.html are about 31000 yrs old & are some of the finest representations of cave art ever found.

The largest recorded flood in the Ardeche was on the 22 Sep 1890 (17.3m) with an estimated volume of 7500 m3/s. 28 bridges were wiped out in that flood & at least 50 people lost their lives.

The Gorge is 32km long and has some 4000 C2′s descending per day during the high season (July/August). It is a pool drop river with mostly class 2 rapids.

It is illegal to wildcamp in the gorge. There are two bivvy sites (Gaud &Gournier) that accommodate around 250 people each, although these figures are doubled for extraordinary dates.

It is illegal to paddle down the gorge without a personal flotation device or to paddle the river after 1800 hrs. Children under 7 yrs old are not permitted to do the descent.

Accommodation

Tourism is the number 1 industry in the Ardeche so there is plenty of accommodation available to suit all tastes & budgets. Try this site:

http://www.vallon-pont-darc.com/site/vallon-pont-d-arc/activites/plan-des-gorges/3460-1459,les-gorges-de-l-ardeche.htm

Amazing that an official govt. tourist site doesn’t have a language choice button – how very French!

Shopping

There are a number of supermarkets around the Ruoms/Vallon area. The biggest & possibly the best is the Super U in Ruoms – significantly cheaper & better presented than the Intermarche in Vallon. There is Lidl between Vallon & Ruoms, & Netto between Ruoms & Pradons. These are considerably cheaper than the bigger shops but you need to wipe your feet on the way out.

If you’re after souvenir stuff then both Vallon & Ruoms have the usual trinket shops & they have brilliant markets – Ruoms Fri a.m., Vallon Thurs a.m.

Top Tip

Avoid the road between Vallon & Ruoms on these mornings during the peak season. You can waste 1hr on a 15min drive.

Eating Out

For a cheap/fun feast try Coco Loco at the main entrance to Vallon. Gourmets head to the Charabanc in Salavas for traditional French or the Chapouliere which is on the Ales road from Ruoms & a real treat for lovers of sea food.

Top Tip

The Folie En Tete near Pradon do good food & perhaps the best night out in the region on a Fri/Sat when the have live bands. Try the Mohito & dance out on the terrace perched 100 feet above the river.

The Fetes

Pretty much every village has a fete at some point during the summer. If you haven’t experienced one then you need to. The most talked about locally is Vagnas. This tends to be on every other wkend during the summer & is something to behold. Personally, I think the St Gely Fete (near Goudargues in the Gard) is by far the best fete in the known universe. 4 days of complete and utter madness in July.

Canoeing in the Ardeche

The main arena for paddlesports is the Gorge itself. The Gorge starts from Salavas Bridge & ends at St Martin De L’Ardeche. It’s 32km long & about 1000 feet deep. It’s main feeds are the Chassezac and Beaume rivers, & together with the Ardeche, they are described as the Ardeche Trident.

The Gorge is split into 3 sections: Day 1 from Salavas to Trois Eaux (6km), Day 2 from Trois Eaux to Gournier bivvy (13km) & Day 3 from Gournier to St Martin (13km). All three sections can be done in a day, but it’s a slog & you don’t have time to look around & appreciate the majesty of the place. A lot of groups go from Salavas to Gournier in a day then have a comparatively easy last day down to St Martin. The best way to do the whole Gorge is to split it over 3 days using the first day as a warm up & acclimatising paddle.

Bivvy

There are two official bivouac sites, Gaud & Gournier. They are govt. run by the French version of National Parc wardens. The staff that work there have been there for years & have a knowledge of the Gorge that is second to none. They speak English & are an essential contact point in case of emergency.

The bivvy sites are well equipped with toilet & shower facilities. There are BBQ’s & they offer free charcoal. Camping there is approx. 8€ per head a night or a little more if you want to book into their pre-erected marquees.

Use this link to reserve your bivvy http://www.gorgesdelardeche.fr/bivouacs2.php

Doing the Ardeche & not doing the bivvy would be missing out on the best part of the journey. Kicking-back with a group of friends around the BBQ, glass of wine in hand & tall tales at the ready… Priceless! Wild Boars ransacking your supplies… Priceless! Removing the bivvy is akin to removing 50% of the adventure. PGL – what on earth are you thinking??

Top Tip

When you arrive at the bivvy pull your boats as far up the beach as possible. EDF (Electricity De France) release water whenever they feel like it & don’t give any prior notice. Nothing worse than getting up to find your boat is on it’s way to Africa!

Safety

Considering the number of people who go down this river each yr the Ardeche is an extremely safe river. Nevertheless it still claims between 1 & 2 lives each yr. & should not be taken lightly. There are a number of security points along the river & a permanent security presence at high risk areas during the peak season. These are operated by the Sappeur Pompiers from Vallon Pont D’Arc. There are powered boats, 4 wheel drive vehicles & helicopter landing points. Each bivvy site has pretty good first aid facilities and telecoms. Not all mobile networks work in the gorge, but you can usually access a connection point within 1 or 2 kms.

Boat Hire

There are over 50 hire companies operating in the Gorge. They are easy to find, mostly on the main Gorge road with lots of neon & people getting kitted up in the car parks. If you want to hire real boats rather than the plastic sit-on-tops your options are limited. One company does have a fleet of antiquated Old Towns but only operate the pre-Gorge section down from Vogue. This in itself is a nice paddle early season when the levels are higher but is on it’s knees by mid June. LTA offer an outfitting service with or without guides. Our boats are the real deal so you’ll need a qualified person in charge to look after them or book a guide. Our knowledge of the river is considerable & I’d say that booking a guide will only enhance your Ardeche experience. There are lots of hidden gems we can show you & some top tips to improve your boating skills.

Canoe or Kayak?

For me the Ardeche is a canoe river. There are thousands of kayaks going down there during the summer but I think it’s a slog in a little boat, & you don’t get the same exped feel. Don’t be one of those mugs that battles with their playboat down there. There’s only one play wave & I can surf it easily in my open boat so it’s no great shakes in a kayak – I’ve seen it surfed on a lilo!

Access/Egress

I you hire boats they sort out drop offs & pick ups from private beaches. Mostly everybody takes out at Sauze, just above St Martin. Seeing 5000 people getting changed on that 400m2 of concrete is quite a sight to behold. Definitely no environmental impact there. There are public (free) access & egress points but they aren’t well signposted. You can access at Salavas bridge on the north bank or at Pont D’Arc from the North bank. The public take out is also at Sauze about 100m upstream from the concrete mess on the north bank. South bank is river right & north bank river left.

There are restrictions on paddling at certain water levels. A gauge on the road bridge at Salavas shows you if the level is green (anyone can paddle), orange (guided groups only), red (qualified individuals only). The gauge is only visible from the south bank.

Wind

The Ardeche is affected by several winds. The most dominant is the mistral which travels south down the Rhone Valley & takes a detour up the bottom end of the Gorge. If it’s windy & in your face you will remember that final 2 km uphill paddle to the egress.

Top Tip

In the Gorge itself the wind tends to be fluky. Don’t give up if you get hit by something you simply can’t paddle against. Walk your boat along & over the beach if you have to. Around the corner the wind will probably drop off completely, or change direction.

Weather

It gets unbelievably hot in the Gorge 40+°c, so take plenty of water. There are springs throughout the descent but you need to know where they are.

Top Tip

Always take cold weather gear, no matter what the forecast. I’ve seen hailstones in the middle of July & had to bail out hundreds of tourists & the occasional pompier with emergency bin bags over the yrs.

Rapids

Nearly all the rapids on the Ardeche are, bizarrely, right handers. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the deep, outside, line is the line to follow. Quite often the big, boat wrapping, boulders are on the outside & this is where the majority of the joe public (rent-a-crash) end up going. To my mind the shear number of zero skilled tourists on this river can force the grade of a rapid up a notch. As I said earlier, the river is pool drop by nature; there are handy collecting pools at the bottom of every rapid & occasionally some crafty Frenchman with some snorkeling kit picking up your Oakleys from the bottom of the river!

Rapids of note are:

Charlemagne – most technical rapid in the gorge approx 6km from Salavas Bridge. This is a real bottleneck rapid with multiple route choices and a playwave at the very end. Great place for lunch where you can watch 20 boats all trying to get through the same 2m slot at the same time. You’ll get some great photos at the bottom of the wave where tourists re-emerge from their impromptu dip in various stages of undress!

Pas de Mouse

About 2km below Charlemagne. This is the biggest drop on the river & a real peach. A photographer high up on river left ensures those embarrassing moments aren’t consigned to memory. Straightforward line but you just can’t escape the drop!

Black Tooth

Sounds nasty & it is. This is the first permanent pompier point & for good reason. The deep/main flow takes you right onto the tooth & a good chance of a wrap. The left (still deep) line works well but there is a chance of a horrible broach & siphon below. Hard right is shallow & some might call the chicken shoot. My wife pointed out to me recently that, at a certain age, the words “chicken shoot” get mysteriously transformed into “dry line”. For me it’s a dry line!

After Black Tooth there is one small rapid (Beaver Shoot) before the first bivvy site (Gaud).

After Gaud you get to Can Opener.  This used to be one of the most dangerous rapids in the Gorge until there was a fatal accident some yrs ago & the Pompiers decided to fix the problem with dynamite!

Around the corner is Chat (see image at the top of the blog), a great little rapid that produces some big bouncy waves in high water & a surfable wave.  PGL used to have a centre here on river right some yrs back that was accessed by a cable car!  Riding down in it was strictly prohibitted, yet fun & terrifying at the same time.  The bar that they kept there when the centre was closed was one of the best kept secrets in the Ardeche.

The paddle down from Chat to the bivvy has some nice easy rapids & you always get the feeling that you have moved deep into the Gorge.  Just before Gournier bivvy site is Le Mas; one of the longest rapids on the river with a bit of everything: technical stuff at the top, big standing waves in the middle & a mess of a wave at the bottom.  The line down is straightforward & the bath at the bottom unavoidable.

Fantastic stuff!

Adjacent to Gournier bivvy is a rapid called La Toupine.  On the face of it it is a simple left/right shimmy and an eddy out right with a well committed edge; yet this rapid is mythic amongst Ardeche legends & the cause of the most consternation I have seen over the yrs.  The problem with La Toupine is that the main flow washes straight onto an undercut with a cave underneath.  More people have died on this rapid than on any other in the Gorge.  Back in the early 90′s a pompier asked me to get my group of kids to create a large circle with their torches so that a helicopter could see for landing on the beach.  I thought this would be exciting for the group until I enquired why the helicopter was coming in.  Their divers were recovering a body that had been stuck in the cave for over a week.  The group didn’t stand on the beach but I did & I can tell you that when you see something like that you get a healthy respect for a rapid.

After La Toupine is Whirlpool A or Nigel’s Rock (named after a TOP’s instructor who nearly left his hide behind in 1989).  The flow goes straight onto a rock wall with a nasty whirlpool behind that can give you a thought provoking amount of down time.

From here on in the rapids get more friendly & dispersed.  Madelene is possibly my favourite rapid on the entire river, not becuase it is just upstream of the nudist colony & surrounded by naked people, but due to the high percentage of capsizes here.  Before the advent of sit on tops literally every other boat would go in & the oocupants rescued by naked people.  Most of the people I saw would have preferred not to have been rescued.  I’ve seen some great names in paddling come a cropper on this little gem. We paddled down the Gorge a couple of weeks back with our good friend Chris Dalby, an Ardeche Legend in his own right.  He looked so upset when he fell in at Madelene that I had to wait a couple of km’s before I started the banter.  My wife however felt no compunction to wait so started laughing immediately & was still tittering when we got off the river.  I promised not to tell anybody, so please keep this between us.

http://yellowpark.net/cdalby/

Another rapid worthy of mention is British Airways, which is super bouncy in high water; a real roller coaster & has a superb surf stopper.

The last major rapid in the Gorge is Crusher.  This develops a hole of raft-eating proportions in high water, fortunately with a huge collecting pool at the bottom.

The final 2 km to the egress is flat & affords a good wind down.  Unless, of course you get that head wind!