Mourgani river. Epic or Carnage?

This is a story that for us, mortal, recreational paddlers of the weekend, reveals the importance of a first deal with a somehow mythic river. To some may sound as plain common whitewater, well then... enjoy the funny side of it!

Mourgani, or Ion river. A pretty unknown and rarely paddled river, which had become a myth amongst Greek paddlers. Its remoteness and known difficulties, greater than most of greek rivers, together with its very short running period,usually discourage paddlers from it. But the wild beauty of this creek, as it was captured in the "Wall Fall" photograph in "Greco" guidebook, had been stuck in our minds, from the very first time we saw it, back at the intermediate school days.

Two years later, with the experience of paddling many class IV rivers as a team, we decided to include Mourgani in our scheduled runs for the spring of 2002. We knew that it would be difficult, hard and challenging, but that was why we were doing this sport, for the challenge and the adventure of it.
The team should be small and well trained and in readiness, as the sweet spot in time, would be very short in this case. We scheduled to go for it during Easter vacation, but the much expected rain came a week earlier.

Meteora cliffs looked magnificent once again, as we approached Kalampaka, a rock climbing venue in central Greece. I used to come here a lot, before whitewater became my passion over mountaineering.
Before entering the familiar town, we turn right, towards Theopetra (stone of God), another protruding rock, south east of Meteora. We reach the village of Koniskos, near the put in and we head west, towards the village of Flabouresi, trying to find an intermediate access to the river and have a closer look.
Following a dirt road from Flabouresi, leading to the general downstream direction, we reach after a while, a pen. We heard the barks and in a few seconds some mean sheep-dogs surrounded the car. They were wearing handmade steel nail collars, as a protection from wolf-bites, which only added to their already wild look. As there was no chance, of any of us trying to get out, we silently agreed that the scouting would probably end there. Suddenly, the shepherd came out of the pen and we were encouraged to leave our shelter.

Nikos with Charalambos, the sheperd from Flabouresi.

Charalambos, the shepherd, was very happy to see us. He asked all kind of questions about us, as it is accustomed in the greek province and our reason to be there. He thought we were crazy, planning to run the creek and warned us of some big drops upstream. "A wild place, you must be very careful" he warned us, but what did he know? We thanked him and walked down some terraced fields towards the river.
It was nothing special, a short class II stretch, in a general bonny, very low volume river. That of course wouldn’t apply for the gorges, but it was a disappointing first impression. Having seen nothing, we went back up to our car, hoping that Charalambos would still be there to hold the dogs.

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