Looking for Futaleufu advice

[mescalimick]

Outfitters, time of year, airlines...it's all good.

[erdvm1]

Liquid skills= kayakfutaleufu.com
February cheapest flight you can find.
Givee me a PM I'll give you details. One of the best trips of all times

[treewell]

I stayed at Spelius (sp?) camp near the confluence for a week many years ago in Jan. Wished I'd taken more clothes. Rained all week so most tents get damp. Snow line one morning only ~ 1000 ft above camp. Paddling was amazing. Saw stars briefly one night. Feels like you are on a different planet since nothing is immediately familar.

[will rawstron]

Don't have great Fu advice but my two trips to Chile, one with A Fu week, really clued me in to all the other FABULOUS ww in Chile. If you only do Fu, then you're really missing out on seeing lots of other rivers. Get yourself to Pucon and boat everything there, on the way South from Santiago you can hit the tazas and countless other amazing runs from micro creek V, bigwater, and every other difficulty and style of river.

Have fun!!

[Merl]

We did a futa trip this last feb, tward the end, we ended up geting there right after some huge water and it had just come down to a runable level.

We went with and outfiter that one of the guys had a hookup with, bio bio expeditions. It was kick ass, killer camp, killer food, right on the river , put in and run the most common day run. bar, hot tub, its sweeeet.

A little spendy,but well worth it, trying to do your own trip on the cheap would be way more work than its worth, with too much logistics, its way out there in BFE, spent that time working an extra job here so you can style your self there.

Our guides where great, kick ass paddlers that pushed us the whole way, they allways wanted to kayak and where up for customizing our trip for what ever we wanted (boooz cruz raft on the lower section at the end of the day). It was they type of thing where the guides where more your bros than guides by the end of the trip.

get a group of 10 or so and you will get a good deal and have full run of the camp. Here is there website


http://www.bbxrafting.com/page.php

Let me know if you got any other questions, I got some pics to I can post if you wana see them




Merl

[Merl]

This was the highlight at the end of the day, Paulina would have a full on bar set up waiting for us at the end of each day... Like i said well worth it


hot tubb and Bar....

[bouldrmatty]

I was there last March, and stayed at Expeditions Chile (Spelius). I had an excellent time, and Spelius's camp/operation was incredible. Food, guides, River, were all top notch...

I believe there are really three operations that work out of Chile.

Expeditions Chile
http://www.exchile.com/guide.html

Liquid Skills

Bryan Maddox (out of Fort Collins).
http://www.patago.com/

Expeditions Chile is a great river running outfit, Liquid skills is more orientated at river play. I can only speak about Spelius's outfit as far as the experience is concerned, and it was great.

Regardless, GO!! It is a must. Also, December/January the water is big, February it comes down and the weather is very nice, and by March it starts to rain again, and the river volume goes back up. If you send me a PM with an email, I could shoot you some sweet Photo's...

[onefatdog]

Yes, you really do yourself a great injustice by going all the way to Chile just to run the Fu. It is classic big water, but there's a whole lot more to paddle in Chile.
Spe the other outfitters at the Fu are real spendy and run only one valley of whitewater. Don't get suckered into the outback option from ex chile either, lots of travel and down time to get to the Fuy.
Give yourself two weeks. One to run the rivers around Pucon then to Argentina and about 5 to 7 days on the Fu.
Contact Ben or Nathan with Kayak Chile for the trip logistics at kayakchile.net

[mountainbuns]

I'm sure other companies down there also are great, but I'll second a huge recommendation for Bio Bio. Those pics are right on - that's the nature of the place - hugely gourmet yet super friendly, and well worth what they charged me in 2005. If you're a Coloradan you might recognize Alex Obregon and Jorge Esquivel who spent a couple summers kayaking/guiding in CO around 01-02ish. Anyways, while there in Jan/Feb 05 I got on every major section of the river easily in my 10 days. I'd suggest something sto ask companies is 1) what is the itinerary and how do they vary it depending on skill level of the group? and2) who are the guides - names, ages, years guiding, where are they from? I really enjoyed my experiences paddling and hearing stories from Alex and Jorge (from Costa Rica), Pierro (Peru), Diego (Argentina) and the most kickass of all Rachel (NZ). I noted that other companies seemed to have a lot of young Americans on staff (nothing wrong with that, I just really enjoyed the experienced international staff at BioBio). BioBio also is a great place to bring non-kayaking friends or family as they offer rafting (their primary focus), mountain biking, horses, duckying, etc.

[yojimbo]

I can second or third the recc. for Spe's place. I thought it was a perfect blend of frontier (camping in the trees at the confluence of the Azul and the Fu) and luxury (home cooking, wine, massages, wood fired hot tub and the world's finest moss rock shower). It was a 'few' years back. Jay Kincaid, Rob Kelly Jr, and Mike Hipsher were the guides and were amazing. Spe had a new baby and was mostly around for dinner story telling.

We went late Feb for 2 weeks for the lower water time. It was cool and wet the first week and then sunny. Next time I would go for a month to have time to explore further and do some other things.