Sletdale Burn 4th September 2009

Callum and I stayed at Rogart overnight at SLEEPERZZZZZ!!! This is a bunkhouse where the accommodation is in old train carriages. Pretty neat. Nice facility. In the morning the rivers were raging and the fields all flooded. We needed to find a run that was feasible in what were flood conditions with rain still falling. Decided to drive north and check out Glen Loth, just north of Brora, feeling that a small catchment would give us an adventure for such a day, possibly an opportunity to run something that would rarely have enough water. We were not disappointed!

At the Loth and Sletdale confluence the water was pounding down, so we elected to start by walking up the only one of the two tributaries that looked feasible, the Sletdale Burn. All rocks in this burn were just covered and it looked perfectly feasible and out in the open, compared to the wood shrouded Loth. We set out to hike in 2kms.

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

We walked in on the north side of the Burn and hiked to just above where the valley veers to the northwest and the gradient eased.

Putting kayaks on a rucksack really is the way to go. Am astonished at the folks who shoulder or drag their boats. We did not have to stop once on the way in. Shouldering or dragging would have been exhausting by comparison, and having the boat on your back allows you to put most of your gear in the boat so you stay cooler.

The run was a fun grade 3 with some easy grade 4 sections thrown in. Fast and furious fun.

A typical rapid with just the largest boulders showing.....................

Rapids were long with few eddies..............

Occasionally reaching easy grade 4...................

Not the place to flip......this is a shallow river...........

That keeps you on your toes nicely :-)

Eventually the river joins the Loth, just after this bridge where we had parked the car. We already had left a bike down at the coast with a view to going on down the Loth Burn. We had placed some stones at the river level at the confluence to gauge hgow much the river was dropping. Fortunately the Loth had dropped a few inches by the time we made it back down from Sletdale and we felt more confident continuing down the bigger river and into the gorge below.