We first heard of the 8 chutes from the people who did the first couple descents of it. The information at the time was: «It’s too rocky at normal flows and it would be too continuous at a nice water level«. We got there with no level information, just to go and see what that river was all about. In My opinion, The 8 chutes is the steepest classic section of whitewater in Quebec. It has no flatwater and tons of super fun, yet challenging slides and rapids.
The first class 4 of the river is the only warm up before the first named rapid:«Disneyland«. It is the best way to start a day. This rapid is a nice multi-stages slide ending with a nice boof. Be careful at higher water this hole gets pretty big and can delivered bad swims.Then, there’s couple of good class 4 rapids.Again, Be careful since there’s not a lot of eddies and some rapid can be hard to scout. After the rapid with a big hole (no name on this one yet), the river will slow down a bit and you will get to the portage drop. It’s been run a couple of times, but the hole at the bottom is always super nasty.
More class 4 rapids will bring you to the start of some nice and steep class 5 rapids. The first rapids is the “Stuntman Double drop”. Then not super far away, the next horizon line is “ Atomic piton”. At higher water, you can aim for the rock and fly like a bird. Portage is on the right. After Atomic piton, there’s the “Monkey face”. This rapid is a nice steep slide with a reconnect in the middle. It’s hard to scout, and it’s not going to look good while scouting. It looks like you gonna break your back on this one, but it goes surprisingly smooth. Careful at higher water, you gain more speed in the lead in and we’ve seen people taking bigger it. Next one is “popcorn slide”. This one is another multi-stages rapid. Scout/walk on the left. At that point, the river changes and the slides are over. The next rapid is a super fun one. It’s call “octoboof”. Super friendly at normal level, but it is the biggest rapid at higher water. Scout/walk river right. What we usually do in Octoboof is to run the first part of the rapid, then we stop on river left and scout the last part of the rapid. Be careful for logs.
The stretch after is not the most shining moment of your day at normal/low flows. It is super manky and you will have to scout to avoid some pins and hard pitons. However, at medium high / high water, it’s a super fun and continuous section of class 4. After a nice 10 ft boof, the river will turn left and slow down. Eventually, it will turn back right and you will be right above the last drop. Scout river right. There’s no real eddy so take some space from each other otherwise someone will have to prob the drop blind. after this drop, it will be class 2 until you reach the take out bridge.
