GUIDE TO ALLT MHUIC

NAME OF RIVER: Allt Mhuic.

WHERE IS IT?: West side of Scotland, Scotland, a tributary of Loch Arkaig. Drive past Gleann Cia-aig for a few miles and park on the right hand side of the road in a gravel car park and the Allt is on the left hand side, looks rather flat here!. Map.

PUT-INS/ TAKE-OUTS: We walked up river right on a small path until we reached a forest track and got in just above the bridge.

We took out after the double drop with an arch after the second drop – pretty obvious! In high flows you may be able to go further but this seems to be the end of the action.

APPROX LENGTH: 500 m.

TIME NEEDED: Depends how long you like to look at things for.

ACCESS SITUATION: Unknown but no problems, forestry blokes didn’t seem to mind.

WATER LEVEL INDICATORS: Scottish guide suggests spate but that’s up to you! The river was fairly low when we ran it, but all the drops and rapids ran but the smaller drops (not really mentioned in the description) and rapids were scrapy. Someone more local would have to suggest what the rest of the area needs to be like as we were just confused as rivers were all over the place! Give it a go!

GRADING: Waterfalls...

MAJOR HAZARDS/ FALLS: The drops.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION: We started at the slide above the trackbridge.

Followed by two more 10 foot ledges.

After this the river continues down with a couple more slabs to run. With this being the second of the two and the first seemed to have an autoboof ledge on it!

The Scottish WW guide (edition 2) mentions a Big Shallow Drop which wasn’t run. We couldn’t work out which one this was so we ran them all down to the road. If anyone knows where the guide gets in and gets out please enlighten me!

The next drop was a double drop (maybe the shallow one?) with a weird lead in!

After this the final drop of the river appears which is a double drop through a nicely placed natural arch!! Named keyhole falls by Paddy! This drop sent two of us left into the gorge wall and dented the mighty Huka!

The main drop is followed by a 10 foot slab with rock on the left hand side, go right, left hurts especially if you’ve just hit the gorge wall.

We got out here but I guess you could carry on down if the flows were high, just to save the walk out!

The drops are all linked by smaller drops/rapids but you sort of forget about these when you go off the drops!

Pictures of the Allt Mhuic

OTHER NOTES: Still don’t understand the Scottish WW guide even after running it but it’s a good fun trip if you want some drops.

CONTRIBUTED BY: John Pinn www.kayaking.fotopic.net

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