Paddling whitewater is a tough pursuit. To accomplish it with style, one needs to have the right equipment, the right skills and the right headspace to know when to say when. Russians might not have any of these, but they definitely have the grit to make it down the toughest rivers in the world. And they’ve been doing it with some of the most archaic equipment available. This expedition from 2012 proves that. There are stories of Russians hiking into remote Siberian waterways, building rafts and running Class V. Then there’s craft like the Russian Bublik, a donut shaped raft that has seen its operators run some of the most difficult runs on Earth.
This particular trip is from 2012, when a group of Russians that call themselves Team RATT ran the Cherchen River in Xinjiang Province in Northwest China on a cataraft that looks like it was built in 1982. Check out how tight these walls are, with no way to scout the rapids–once you’ve committed to the gorge, your only choice is to run the river, regardless of whether or not there’s a terminal hydraulic hidden within its walls.
