Two reports on the Hutt Gorge at high flow.
Team: Dean Ford, Louis Tapper, Jo Dovey, Garth Low, Lincoln Mackay, Jon Parker and Paul Mason.
Its Thursday night at the pool and for the third week in a row I find myself telling everyone how I have been watching MetVUW all week and that the gorge is going to be pumping. Unfortunately, like the boy who cried wolf, people have started to take slightly less notice of my weather forecasts. Nevertheless after sending texts to everyone in my phone who has ever held a paddle (and you guys all thought you were special), I get positive responses from Jo (who took about 15 seconds to make up her mind), Dean and Lincoln. Garth kindly points out that the surf is looking good…
Onwards to Saturday. I have optimistically set my alarm for 8am, however having not heard any rain overnight rather than rush off to check I flows I resign myself to another faulty prediction. I am rudely awoken at 9.30 by Dean, who tells me that the gorge is at 1.7m, but that there has been a lot of rain and he expects it will go up soon. As Dean has not been known to cry wolf, I hang up the phone, quietly confident his prediction will come true.
Two minutes later Garth rings; the gorge is now at 2.4m. Wow, Dean is good! I find my heart racing, and not just because I am trying to make breakfast, eat breakfast, get dressed, hold 4 phone conversations and pack gear all at the same time. Finally the gorge is up! But is it still rising? I try and check the flow graphs, foolishly forgetting that they only ever work when the viewer is at the office and has no chance of paddling that day.
We arrange to meet at the get out at 11. At 11.50 we meet at the get in. I am pleased to see that Louis and JP will be joining us. It looks high. High enough to check out the gauge upstream at the weir. Dean helpfully tells us that the gauge reads either 0.5m or 1.5m.
After a quick unload of boats and changing of gear I get into JP’s car at 12.30 on the way back from the shuttle. “So Paul”, he says, “what are you paddling today?” “I’m in the I:3” I reply nervously. In a very calm voice he tells me that he has just called the flow phone and that the gorge is now at 2.8. I take a longing look at the creek boat left on the roof of my car as we pull away from the get out…
A few minutes later I am getting in to my trusty I:3 above the steps at the usual get in! I overhear someone on the river say something including the words ‘Paul’, ‘playboat’ and ‘surprising’, which (not for the last time) causes me to question my boat selection.
After a quick “12 minute warm up” which took about 2 minutes (everything moves fast in a flood) we are off. Unfortunately the extent of my experience paddling flooded rivers is limited to braving the Otaki at 40 cumecs last year. Boy was I in for a shock. It takes just 150m to get my first roll in as my tail is sucked under by a massive boil. Rather shell shocked I struggle to make what looked like a large eddy but turned out to be a rather large boily eddy line with a small eddy hidden somewhere behind it all. Paddling this water seems to be a case of pointing your boat in the right direction, leaning forward and hoping that you don’t get tipped over by the massive boils that randomly appear all over the place. Dean teaches Jo and I how to loosen our hips to counter the unexpected boils. This works very well when facing downstream, but for some reason I could not get the hang of it when travelling backwards, despite the large amount of practise I got.
I am not too bothered by this section of the river as I am quite happy to keep rolling all day. However, since I seemed to have even less control over my boat than Mr Farland had over my fifth form history class (think fireworks in the classroom), I was slightly (read extremely) worried at the prospect of the gorge leading up to the log drop.
We all successfully make it down to a relatively calm and quite big eddy which leads on to the most amazing wave I have seen, and the access right from the eddy is so good that even I manage to get on the wave. Louis pulls off some fancy moves in his playboat where he does a flip off his stern, which Jo almost copies in her creek boat!
Jo must have been fulled with confidence after her moves on the wave, as she did not even bother to roll up, preferring instead to carry on downstream on her own, upside down. Louis chases after her, and so does Dean. I follow quickly after Dean, partly to help out, but also partly because I don’t want to be left following a trail of creek boats. I tip up pretty quickly, roll, and tip up again. I roll up hoping no one has seen me, only to turn the corner just in time to catch Dean rolling up as well!
We catch up with Jo and Louis in a small eddy downstream for a short recovery before once again submitting ourselves to the fury of the river. A little while later we regroup in an eddy and Dean gives us instructions on how to get down to below the log drop... Right, so we go on river right, turn left, turn right, head to river left right down past 2 massive holes head to river right over drop, all right? Fortunately this was preceded by a “follow me” which I did manage to remember. And boy was I glad I had the line right as the first hole we passed looked like it would swallow a small house. We carried on down river left and I was a bit surprised to find Dean leading us through hole after hole. I found my self being held upright in one for a second or two before being rocketed out down river. Suddenly after what felt like 20 seconds after the top eddy we were heading across to river right for the log drop. Even more amazing about 5 seconds later I was still upright and in an eddy.
From here on it was just a case of following your nose down stream and weaving through the massive holes. After a little while I picked up confidence and started picking my own lines. I very quickly regretted this as I found myself heading straight for the middle of a hole about 6m wide just 10m ahead of me. With no hope of paddling around it I prepared for the worst and dipped over the lip with a quiet curse to myself to accompany the expectation that I was soon to get the biggest beating of my life. Somehow luck must have been on my side, I still don’t know quite how it happened, probably helped by the force on the river and that my boat was perfectly perpendicular to the hole, but I managed to pull my way through it. I carried on down stream laughing hysterically to myself.
After this I was careful to follow someone the rest of the way, and was especially thankful to JP for pointing out another hole I was heading for that spanned half the width of the river.
We quickly found ourselves down to the gauge, and were stoked to find that the river had now risen to 3m! One definite advantage of paddling at this flow is that when you get out of your boat you only have a few meters to walk to get to the cars.
And that’s it. There were some very relieved paddlers at the get out (as well as some for whom it was just a normal day out). Thanks heaps to Dean and the other poor souls who found themselves leading me down the river. It will certainly be a trip I will never forget.
After attending a somewhat “interesting” alt rock gig on Friday night, I was dead to the world when Paul called me at 10am to tell me that the Hutt Gorge was at 2.4 and it was time to get ready. The obligatory million text messages later, it was established that the water level had in fact risen 700mm over the course of an hour, and a sensible crew from HVCC were planning an Akas trip given that it was still on the rise. Nonetheless, JP (leave pass signed, we’ll have to take Natasha next time), Lincoln, Louis and I headed off (coffee in hand) to meet Garth, Dean F and Paul at the put in for the Hutt.
The water was lapping up to the bottom of the top step and Fordy was playing on the wave on the bit of the Hutt you don’t normally paddle (“it only works when it’s high”) when I started seriously considering offering to run a shuttle and try and catch up with the Akas team, especially considering my previous paddle (also on the gorge) had culminated in 3.5hrs at A+E and glue holding bits of my forehead together (thanks to Eaon for patching me up on the river and Lincoln + Juno for keeping me entertained at A+E!)… I was keen for a confidence boost rather than an axing. After several “you’ll be fines”, I returned to my old policy that given that I thought I was unlikely to die on the run, I should harden up and paddle it.
My the time Paul and JP got back from shuttling, the flowphone was calling it 2.8m.
Paul popped his I3 on the water, the rest of us wondering why his creeker was resting on Brutus’ roof; all the rest of us in creekers bar Louis and Dean. Having only paddled the creeker once, it was probably the right call to make though it looked brave/daft at the time.
Fordy offered to paddle with Paul + I as the most nervous crew members, and we all set off. A few corners round a play wave was found; Lincoln + Louis having a ball, Paul looking flash till we realised then end of his 180 had resulted in him not knowing how to move his boat around any more. I was encouraged not to be an eddy flower and had a crack, only to point directly forward, get front looped and dumped. The second panicked crack at rolling worked but I was past the eddy and on round the corner. Another 2 attempt roll (upside down + out in front I realised it would be a pretty awful place to start a river swimming career) saw me paddling my arms off for an eddy, getting in to see Louis right behind me. I know you pretty much have to look after yourself at that kind of flow, but it was nonetheless pretty reassuring to know that he’d paddled after me pretty quickly as I disappeared round the bend.
JP’s eyes looked as big as mine felt as we paddled over waves and round holes – eddies surging and preventing tidy entry and exit at the usually-favoured top. After another roll I started thinking I really should have been on the Akas, but managed to snap out of that as I was committed to the gorge and thinking like that was no good to anyone. I looked ahead to see the nose of Garth’s yellow Salto (what a great boat) standing vertically up and twisting round before dumping flat – all from a whirlpool-y eddie line. I resolved to lean forwards and drive my boat, gradually relaxing into the run a bit more and letting my hips loosen up and work with the water as Dean had suggested.
I followed Dean’s sweet line down Anne’s drop – a named rapid reserved for high flows. We caught eddies where we could and my usual instinctive group counting made way for a quick check for Dean and Paul and then checking that at least I was all there after each rapid. Things calmed down a bit till the left hand bend where the stream joins from the right – Dean gave Paul and I a quick run down of the upcoming massive holes – we’d be running right round the first mid-river hole, then left past several more, then heading right at the tongue that I’d hitherto known as the log drop. We paddled it as Dean had said, the confused water pushing us towards walls and close to holes to paddle away from – I got stopped in one but managed to side-surf it till I got my tail out the back – thank goodness for the practice on the Kaituna play hole at Easter. I didn’t look at the hole on the left at the log, though Lincoln later described it to Dean B “it could re-circ your car”. I had a roll somewhere near a wall at the left after the log and our three regathered. I was pretty stoked to have got through an intense section, know that my roll was finally working first time, and have put some hole-escaping practice to use. The others took the same line with Lincoln having to fend off a rock with his hand to avoid a piece of undercut wall – you do what you have to do.
Things eased a bit from there, though by eased I mean relatively – there were massive waves with a few less massive holes. The group joined up again and I followed Louis for a bit – copying his boat positioning and forward vision making the holes a lot easier to skirt than had I been trying to figure it out on my own. We paddled round the outside of bends; there were few chances to catch a last eddy to get a look at a rapid, but at least that gave more time to choose a route than taking the inside line from the top.
Apparently JP and Paul were also rolling plenty – I didn’t bother counting but think it must have been 6 or 7 for me. Near the bottom Louis made a fairly tight change of boat angle and a ludicrously clear thought suggested to me that I might not make it. Instead of trying to follow, I kind of ploughed into it and got flipped – I felt pretty stuck but luckily clarity of thought stayed with me and I remembered Dean’s “in case” advice before paddling the Kaituna weir at Easter – the deeper water’s flowing downstream while the top is recirculating – gradually straighten up your posture in the boat and if that doesn’t work push your paddle down (while holding tightly!). Mercifully the trick worked and I rolled up to great relief from me and happy sounds from behind me.
We paddled on down the flat but much faster than usual bottom section and did the obligatory gauge-check, the water lapping around the 3m mark. Paul and I were supremely stoked to have paddled it at a fabled level, Paul’s application of his game face and some tough-minded paddling proving his boat choice was a good one. I think I’ll leave the 3.5 and 4m runs to others, at least for a couple of years ;o)
My sleep that night was dogged with massive wave faces and churning holes, but when I woke up the next morning it still seemed like a good idea to go and do it all again, though at a far more civilised 2.4m. I think I’ll let Amber or Christina write that one up.
Great trip – it blew my mind. Trying to liken it to anything I’d paddled before, it was a bit like Access 14 crossed with Awesome Gorge with 5 times more water, or maybe a bit like a long continuous Gunslinger on steroids. Thanks to the whole crew – I had some nervous moments and you all helped me get through it for a totally memorable trip.
