Wohmawagen

Mission "Wohmawagen" or "The main thing is that the Neo is dry tomorrow" - Landeck - October 2001

It is well known that there are important people. With influence. And Camping-Huber "Fuzzi" is one of them. Because he allocates the electricity flat rates. And thus had a not inconsiderable influence on the fact that we began to love comfort on our canoeing vacation.

The "Wohmawagen", as Pascal called our home away from home, contributed the rest. But let's start from the beginning:

Who was there:

  • Rike,
  • H.-D. and
  • me (Beni) as the RainRiders delegation,
  • Winfried "Rauschebart",
  • Christian "sky gazer" (quote: "I sit in front of the TV at home to watch the scenery!"),
  • Robert "grins at every hole",
  • the double W,

  • Canadian Jürgen from Belgium and a few others.

    All of them are good to excellent paddlers and messy to chaotic logisticians. But there was also H.-D.'s family: Anja "Shuttle-Bunny", whose logistical masterstrokes rectify the most serious transfer errors, as well as Conrad, Adina and Pascal (in ascending order from 4 months to 4 years).

    Where it goes:

    Landeck (Austria), situated on the Inn and Sanna rivers, the charming little town with the bridge over the Landecker Durchbruch, which you drive over almost every day, taking a routine look through the right-hand window: Water - absent (the Inn is regulated by a power station at the Landecker Durchbruch). In general, the amount of water in one of the most beautiful areas of the Alps is rather limited in October. And so the streams mostly present themselves from their atypical, technical side.

    The next morning:

    The Neos are dry thanks to the electricity flat rate, fan heater and Wohmawagen awning. The awning smells accordingly. As if to achieve the greatest possible contrast to the golden October in terms of temperature, we drive into the Ötztal (routine view through the right-hand window: Landecker Durchbruch - no water) to the upper Ötztaler Ache. Glacier-fed. Around 3C. The clouds hang precariously low at 1500m. But the first few meters of stream make us forget the ambient conditions: With lots of steam, the Ötz gurgles down step by step towards the Inn, beautiful white water in the third and fourth grade (below Sölden). If you ask our "forerunners" in the morning about the expected difficulties, you usually hear something like: "Come along and try it out." But Rike and I are slowly learning to read the hidden signs: If Winfried is riding topo, we need to dress warmly. If he puts on the nose clip, it gets pretty sporty...

    Today he sometimes rides with a nose clip, but his Bliss. In hindsight, it turns out to be a successful combination.

There is another good reason to like the Ötztal: south of Längenfeld there is a sulphur spa. Above body temperature! The Ötz doesn't get significantly warmer down there either, but lying behind the log cabin in a kind of garden pond is a particularly pleasant form of "après kayaking" (south of Längenfeld, signposted "Après-Kayak"). Längenfeld, signpost at a parking lot, contribution towards expenses welcome).

And the Ötz really does everything it can to warm up: On the way home, we take a look at the Achstürze (WW VI) and the Wellerbrücken section (WW V-VI). It's hardly surprising that you come across a well-fed Schorschi Schauff there...

And after the drive home to the Wohmawagen (routine view through the left window: Landecker Durchbruch - water: no sign), the small advantages of a family vacation await you, e.g. Anja's warm soup. And a warm Wohmawagen awning to dry the Neos.

Another day:

Problem: Eight people (at least three of them with stream-dried neos) want to paddle on the Inn (at Giarsun, WW II-IV, and the Ardez gorge, WW IV-V-X), two others will be transferring cars. Of the eight, all will paddle the route to the bridge at Ardez, three will definitely go further down, two definitely not, three possibly. Every paddler knows: this is real logistical fun! Which car to take where, where to put the dry clothes, no, the diapers for the little ones stay in the Sharan, "Will you take my spare key?", "I've had enough and I'm off!", "W.! Finish your beer!", "See you later! (Hopefully??)". At the (first) exit, the super disaster: the supposed second key was a first key, and it's not where the car is now. But the clothes are in there. One part of the group freezes, the other drives on. To the second exit. Or at least to where they think it is. Only the drivers don't. So the chaos is perfect. But how lucky we are to have Anja, the woman with the shuttle bunny logistics diploma...

And so the lesson learned from the day is: paddling is chaos, the Prussian catapult is still skidding and if Robert drives into a hole with his salmon pink topo with a grin on his face, that doesn't mean you should follow behind with every other boat with the same grin. Because then the roller says "hello"! And a routine look through the left-hand window tells us on the way home: Landecker Durchbruch - water: no sign.

What else we drove:

  • Inn, Imster Gorge (WW II)
  • Inn, Tösens to Ried (WW II-III)
  • Sanna (WW II-IV)
  • Venter Ache, Lehen to mouth (WW III-IV)
  • Loisach, Griesenschlucht (WW II-III)
  • through Salzburg, in future never again without a compass (V-VI, technical)

The difficulty ratings refer to our extremely low water level!