Well there we were. As fine a band of kayakers as the central North Island had ever seen – ready to take on the multitude of rivers, natural hot springs, muddy campgrounds, and service station coffee that VUCC’s annual Easter trip could throw at us. If only we could actually get going…
Eventually Duncan, Felix, Christina, Andrew S, Kiri, myself (Dean F), and a very late Dean B (Deano) hit the road for the camping spot at the get in to the Access 10 section of the Tongariro River. Kathy, Garth, Eaon, Jon, Nat, Andrew C, Nick, and shuttle bunny Missy were to meet us tomorrow for a jaunt down this enjoyable stretch of grade 3 water. But first we had to survive the night!
After driving round trying to find the prime camp spot we eventually set our tents up at the standard VUCC area of choice. We had struck a bit of rain on the way up, but by the time we were setting up our tents it had reduced to a light drizzle. After the standard bit of banter about me being a softy for having an air mattress we all settled down to peaceful dreams of paddling difficult rivers with both grace and poise.
That is of course until the heavens opened up and the rain really started. It would be fair to say that we all appreciated ever dollar spent on our tents (or lack there of) that night. The electrical storm was one of the most intense I’ve ever experienced, with booming thunder crashing round us moments after the roofs of our tents were lit up by the day-light inducing lightning. Very cool – unless of course your tent was an old-as-the-hills A framer – eh Felix?
But morning came without anyone being fried and quick as someone can say “get your arse out of bed” we were at the get in waiting for Jon and Nat, who both turned up on time, and Andrew C, Nick, and Missy, who did not.
But once on the river such trivialities were forgotten as the excited crew finally hit the water. Plan was to paddle down to Blue Pool (grade 3) where we would meet up with Kathy, Felix, and Kiri to paddle the lower section (grade 2). The thing that always surprises me about the Tongariro is just how amazingly cold the water is. Easily as cold as the Hutt Gorge after a big dump of rain in the Tauraruas. Guess the trout must like it, but there was no way I was going to tip over today!
Duncan put me up front to lead paddle for our group which was a bit of a new experience. I found leading made me concentrate much more on eddy hopping and boat scouting instead of just crashing down the rapids aimlessly, which has got to be good for my kayaking (hopefully).
The river was still broadly at its normal level (more rain just allows the hydro scheme to extract more water), although the water was slightly discoloured. Bit of a bummer really because I always look forward to spotting trout on the way down the Tongariro. As always there were too many rapid to describe individually (apparently there are over sixty!). Of course a couple of events still deserve mention.
Deano conquered a few demons by not getting pinned on the third rapid of the trip (ah la Labour weekend 2004). Garth somehow managed to hit his head hard enough to get a black eye, but not hard enough to draw blood (for the record the black eye gave him a real Jake the Muss look – a very useful commodity in the Murupara Four Square). And Christina, after not paddling any river of note for over a year, managed to paddle four hours of grade 3 without having any major mares (don’t worry I won’t say anything about that last swim Christina).
Next stop was some random café in Turangi for a much needed coffee. As the sole economist on the trip I felt it my duty to explain to the waitress that the fifteen per cent holiday surcharge may actually be reducing revenue (the place was empty) rather than increasing it. She didn’t seem to understand though and still charged me $4 for my coffee.
From there we headed off to the beautiful Lake Aniwhenua. Quite a few cars stopped at one of the various hot springs. However, Duncan, Deano, Felix, and I, being the superior intellectuals that we are, pushed on to the camping ground safe in the knowledge that we would have a much easier time putting up our tents in the last remaining moments of daylight. How foolish of the others, we thought, to pass up this opportunity.
Switch back to reality. Sure, we got the campground before everyone else, but still well after dark. In addition, on our arrival we managed to catch one of the heaviest downpours of the weekend. After waiting in the car for ten minutes I decided that the rain wasn’t going to stop and put my tent up with the help of Duncan’s tarpaulin. As you would expect the rain stopped moments after I put my tent up…
But the conclusion of the rain revealed an extra surprise. The usual serenity (think Darrell from The Castle) was being broken by the steady roar of water crashing down the spill gates of the Aniwhenua Dam. It was simply amazing to stand on the viewing platform watching thousands of litres of water flow over the dam, creating the biggest and stickiest-looking weir I’d ever seen. Strangely enough no one was keen to run the drop, but it did present us with the possibility of running the section between the dam and Aniwhenua Falls the next day. But boy was there a lot of water flowing down the gorge!The next morning Jon and I went for a walk to see whether the section was runnable. It looked like the amount of water flowing over the dam had dropped enough and the rapids all looked pretty achievable – even the falls looked okay.
So with breakneck speed the VUCC team swung into action. It was decided that a team of seven (Jon, Duncan, Deano, Eaon, Andrew S, Garth, and myself) would paddle the upper gorge, and the rest of the crew would wait for us below Aniwhenua Falls next to the power station.
One thing I’m coming to realise is that the time it takes VUCC to get going in the morning is inversely related to the distance we have to travel to get to the put in. The crew is happy to be away by 9am if we’re driving an hour and a half to the Otaki River, but put us in a camp site five hundred metres from the start of our run and we’ll piss about like nothing else. Eventually the upper gorge team was standing by the river a bit after 11am.
The first rapid below the dam was a little weird. Sure, it was like any other rapid in that there was a heap of water flowing round a heap of rocks, but something was a little amiss. The thing was, instead of the river, over a long period of time, arranging the rocks in the river bed, the rocks had been dumped by the constructors of the dam. And since water only flowed through this stretch of the river on a handful of days a year, there was no real channel through the rapid.
After looking at it for some time Eaon decided he wasn’t going to run it. “It’s not that the rapid is especially difficult, it’s just that there is a big chance of getting your paddle caught on one of those rocks”. Sounded fair enough to me. There wasn’t anything difficult about the rapid, so no big buzz from running it, but it sure looked like a good candidate for breaking a paddle.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, Eaon, along with Jon, carried their boats up to the top of the rapid, got in, and ran it. Everything was looking good for Eaon for about the first metre. After that he got his paddle caught, snapped the shaft, and bumbled down to the bottom C1 style. Bugger. Next up Jon got about halfway down before spinning round, getting flipped, and running the rest upside down and backwards.
After that fine display of kayaking the rest of us decided to get in below this rocky excuse for a rapid.
From there the river was basically one big long pool, punctuated by several gorgy, steep rapids. The first was a fairly straight-forward grade 3 chute, but seeing the horizon line drop away as we entered it gave us a taste of what was to come.
Next up was the first rapid worth a scout. The river split just before the first drop so we had a couple of options. It looked like most of the water was going down the left hand gorge so we decided to take that line. After a lot of scouting, humming, haring, and a bit more scouting we all managed to get down safely. A couple of hundred metres down the river our left hand line gave us an extra bonus in the form of a three metre waterfall as the two branches joined. The landing was pretty shallow, but a reasonably simple boof saw the entire crew down in no time.
Next up was a rapid that I propose shall be called from this day forth “The Big Easy”. Reason being that it was really big, but surprisingly easy. All the braids of the river had joined up into this big volume chute that dropped several of metres on about a one in two gradient. The wave chains as the bottom were MASSIVE. Just about everyone who went through couldn’t resist letting out a wah-hoo of some sort.
Then came Aniwhenua Falls. After watching Jon run the drop without incident I got into my boat and paddled out into the current. Everything was going fine until my rail got caught on the tongue of water I was trying to get onto above the falls. Unfortunately the paddle stroke I used to get my rail back to the surface also pushed me away from the tongue. Next thing you know I was spun round and heading for the falls sideways. There was no way I was going to get my nose back round, so I put in a quick sweep and went over backwards! Given that I couldn’t see where I was going, I let my paddle go as soon as it gave a decent tug. Once I was flushed out I hand rolled up only to find that my spraydeck had popped – things were getting complicated. Eventually I got my kayak upright and hand paddled into an eddy. The judges held up a mixture of nines and tens.Easter Sunday dawned bright and clear, and after a quick Easter egg hunt we all headed through Murupara to the forestry roads on our way to the Jeff’s Joy section of the Rangitaiki. For some reason I found my first time down this stretch quite intimidating. I don’t know whether it was the long rough drive to the get in, the realisation that I was about to paddle a grade 4 rapid, or the sign at the get in warning about some killer ‘Rock A’ being just round the corner. Either way I was scared. But after a few trips I’ve learned to appreciate the river for what it is and hardly get scared at all (well maybe a little).
Just what was going through the heads of the twenty odd tourists when they decided to sledge the thing I have no idea, but without exception they were all shitting themselves when we saw them at the get in. Now this is in no way a slight at the guides. They seemed quite professional and knowledgeable about their sport, but the pre-speech of “prepare to be yelled at for the next hour, and now bow your heads for a Karakia” must really have got the butterflies fluttering!
The eight of us (myself, Deano, Jon, Eaon, Duncan, Garth, Andrew C, Nick) arrived at the top of the rock garden about the same time as the sledges, but since they wanted “five minutes to prepare” we decided to go down first. We worked down in pairs with Nick and Andrew headed down first, followed by Jon and me. We all made the first few moves without incident, then my next bit of fun started. After watching Jon work his way downstream I broke out of the eddy I was in, ferried across the flow below Rock A and turned downstream. That’s about when it happened. You guessed it, twenty odd sledges and three screaming guides came hurling down the other side of Rock A. I thought to myself “better not bugger this one up”, and pushed for the next eddy. Naturally, I received one of the best tail-standings of the weekend in the next hole (some reported a full two hundred and thirty centimetres of my 232 were out of the water). Somehow I managed to avert back flipping, and caught an eddy just in time to avoid being run over by the holiday-maker express!
Next up was the rapid we were all here for – Fantail Falls and Jeff’s Joy. This time round we decided to wait for the terrified travellers and were treated to a fine display of the art of sledging while we scouted on the right bank. Andrew waited above Jeff’s with a throw bag at the ready, but we all managed to run the rapid without incident, including Deano who made his first run of the rapid. After everyone had been through Andrew got in at the eddy above Jeff’s Joy (electing not to take on Fantail Falls this time round) to run the bottom rapid. I have seen a couple of people take this ‘easier option’ but have never seen it as being especially easy. Basically you have to make this reasonably tough ferry over to river left then turn and run Jeff’s Joy. To date, everyone who I’ve seen attempt it have been flipped as they ferry, and Andrew’s run was no exception. Full credit though, he did make the ferry – it’s just that he got flipped as he turned and proceeded to pull off a Full McEwan.
Now the Full McEwan is a term that had been lost to time by the current crop of VUCCers, but long-time member Nick reminded us of the term as Andrew ran Jeff’s upside down AND backwards (in hindsight I now realise Jon pulled off a FM on the first rapid below Lake Aniwhenua and I managed a Half McEwan down Aniwhenua Falls). Apparently the manoeuvre was made famous by a certain long-serving committee member.
At the middle get in we picked up the rest of the crew for the grade 2+ rollercoaster that is the lower Rangitaiki. Yet again too many rapids to mention with too many events to recall, yet again, however, a few certain moments deserve mention.
The first of which was a brilliant piece of rescuing on none other than Garth’s paddle. Kiri had a bit of a swim at the top of a rapid and lost the paddle she was borrowing off Garth in the process. While everyone else took care of Kiri I bush bashed back upstream on the off chance of finding the elusive paddle. And what would you know; there in the middle of the river, sticking out by a few inches, was the blue blade of the missing paddle. Some skilful ferrying and intentional pinning later by Duncan and Eaon and the paddle was returned.
And the second event of mention had to be the rock solid paddling of Nat. Last time I saw her she was one of those shaky grade 2 paddlers who was always on the verge of flagging the sport. But an intensive Murchison kayaking course (and no doubt a supportive husband) has seen her paddling improve out of sight. Catching eddies, playing, surfing, and even lead paddling for a little while there. Great stuff Nat, definitely time for the Hutt Gorge.
That night we stopped at the Secret Spot to cook dinner and take a much needed soak, before heading to the Full James camping spot. Unfortunately the wave wasn’t up in the morning, but we did have the added bonus of meeting up with James and Kate from their recent jaunt to the REM concert in New Plymouth. James, Duncan, Kiri, Deano, and Felix paddled the Ngaawaparua while the rest of us packed up to a quick get away to the Waihohonu River.
This River was situated about halfway along the Desert Road. After being assured that there was only a small chance of Ruapehu’s Crater Lake spilling into the river while we were on it, six of us put on for the final paddle of the trip (myself, James, Duncan, Deano, Nick, and Andrew C).
But just before we started Missy asked (after shuttling all weekend – what a star!!!) why in the world I would want to paddle this river – “It’s bloody freezing, how can you consider this fun?” Well Missy, as Supergroove once said, ‘you have to know if you want to understand’.
Given that it was my first time down this river, I was loving it. The river was quite low volume compared to the stuff we had been paddling over the past few days, but was easily as steep as anything else on the trip. The Waihohonu is one pretty much continuous grade 3 rapid, disrupted by a couple of supposed grade 5 rapids that almost everyone portages. I say supposed because, as is always the case with exceptionally difficult/dangerous rapids, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. That said, I kayak by the motto that if I can’t see the danger I always portage, because obviously the rapid is way above my ability. Anyway the half hour boat carried added a bit more interest to an already fun trip.
But eventually we all made it off, said our goodbyes, hugged, cried, laughed, and promised we’d do it all again in Easter 2006. Thanks to Duncan for organising, Missy for shuttling, and well done to Deano for nailing everything he paddled.
Fordy.
