After Uganda I went straight to Sort, a little town in the middle of the Spanish Pyrenees where I currently live. I was born and lived till I was 17 years old in Girona; 400km to the east, 100km from Barcelona and 40 minutes drive from the Mediterranean coast. There’s only one river there, the Ter, and I was lucky enough to live really close to it while I was young so I got into kayaking when I joined the local kayak club, the Salt-Ter.
Sort is now my home town, I have lots of friends there and I really like that place, specially after a while being away. The Noguera Pallaresa is our local river and has lots of fun kilometers of good kayaking. Right now the water levels are medium-low so we can paddle the commercial secretion, the slalom course and the white water park which has two holes right in the middle of town. We’ve also run some creeks at really low water and the upper section of the Noguera. There are lots of other activities to do as well in Sort; rock climbing, bouldering, partying, skiing, biking, trekking… it’s a good place to hang out! I can walk out of my flat totally dressed up, walk for 30 seconds and put in at the slalom course to paddle down to the freestyle holes.
Freestyle Kayaking in Sort with the Uno!
After some really nice days with warm weather it got colder now and it’s been raining for a few days now. Last autumn and winter were really dry with almost no rain or snow, so the current snow pack is almost inexistent in some valleys and low on most of them… this makes it a low water spring as all rivers here are snowmelt dependent. Hopefully it’ll rain loads and we’ll paddle some high water runs, fingers crossed!
Paddling some of our local runs at early season low water, still fun!
As said, we’ve been paddling a bit of everything, here are a few pics of the freestyle spots in downtown Sort, some little creeks and other runs we’ve done. More soon with all the expected rains!
Gerd Serrasolses
