Finally, our movie from mission to the beautiful Caucasus and great land of Georgia is done! Check it out!

Big thank goes to the Archie Jakobia, Levan Tapladze aka Ponchik, Kaki Kob. and David Katsarava!

Edit and Camera Vojta Hejtmanek
Voice Jan Liska

Sometimes is better to start the story from the end than from actual beginning. We were exploring Region Kazbegi almost at the end of our trip, Military Highway lead us there and its’ quality is great in comparison with other Georgian roads. It took us two hours to get there from the capital city – Tbilisi. Monstrous structures in the middle of nowhere give little space for doubts about Russian dominance in the history of this great country.

History epic constructed in the middle of nowhere.

Single skiing resort make you smile when you recount number of ski lifts and slopes in comparison with developed resorts in the Alps, however options for freerides are fabulous. Five thousands meters high peaks and untouched hills, spines and plains anywhere you look. I guess even if you spent month time with everyday heli-skiing, you would not covered whole area.

Lookout towards Tbilisi

We managed to cross high altitude pass and started to slowly descend towards river Tergi as we cross huge sulphurous blast and truck stucked in the snow.

First stop is a police station. We wanted to get actual information about restricted areas to prevent unintentional issues as we were really close to the borders with Russia.

Police station and mountain pass we just crossed

Map full of details

I really wanted to go kayaking even it was late afternoon. We briefly scouted section beforehand from quite a distance. River looks like nice but continuous afternoon run. Probably another Georgian classic – steep continuous creeks and rivers with few eddies and good amount of water.

Surrounding landscape is unbelievable. Standing in the middle Caucasus mountain range with ancient ruins on the right, old-time watchtower in the front of us, massive mountain spine leading towards Mt. Kazbegi on the left side and snow-covered pass right behind our backs. Georgian village built at the foot of the mountain and herd of horses running around. All of these elements completed by perfect weather and great water level. It can’t get much better than this!

Truly magical place

River Tergi, section Upper Truso Gorge is steep right from the first bend. It’s nice Norwegian class three. All of us are in expectation of some nasty surprise as we didn’t scout 100% of the river, but this time nothing happens. Difficulty is slowly increasing, but I guess we got used to it and after pleasant hour or so of paddling we reached takeout village.

Best rapid

Right after our take river drop into the walled Upper Truso gorge.

Gorge is not difficult and contains just one rapid, which was created by loose boulder, but we didn’t run it as it got already dark

Petr Snizek getting ready for a bender

Our great friends, which helped us so much and took care about us during whole mission, were waiting with car at the takeout. Party which followed was one of the best. Kaki Kobiashvilli invited us to his summer house, which was 5 minutes from the takeout.

Preparations – saslik, salad and wine, lot of wine.

Ten participants multiplied by two equals twenty liters of great Georgian wine. We were surprised by the standard Georgian attitude towards drinking wine – all in. Party highlight was when Archie called to our friend in Czech Republic to congratulate for child birth. It started with something like this „Ahoj, jak se máš? Já jsem Karel Gott!“ in perfect fluent Czech!

Morning is covered with hangover, but Pavel Lichtag went for trip to nearby monastery

Mega sculpture

Text by Petr Civrny
Pictures by Pavel Lichtag (Boatpark)