This weekend definitely provided more than our crew bargained for during our recent kayaking trip. The Labour Weekend Special consisted of a trip to Westport on the West Coast of the South Island with a plan to fly in and kayak the two day Karamea, followed by a one day trip on the Oparara River. The weekend started well with a smooth flight into Venus Creek on the Karamea and a fun paddle down to the Karamea Bend Hut where we stayed the first night and enjoyed a warm fire, stunning scenery and a much needed warm dinner. We paddled much of the challenging Roaring Lion rapids the next day (class IV-V) and came to the last rapid of the river where one of our crew, while particularly experienced, lapsed in concentration and dropped unknowingly into a sieve. A sieve on a river is exactly as the name suggests, a feature where rocks allow only water to pass through, nothing solid. I watched helplessly from atop a rock downstream, frantically blasting on my whistle to alert the crew still upstream. My friend lurched in his boat, flipped upside down and disappeared. A gutwrenching time passed (I have no idea, possibly up to 20-30 seconds) and he eventually appeared downstream, conscious. The worst was not yet over as he swum through the remainder of the class IV rapid. Awful as it was, it was a relief to sit next to him and know that he was alive. I never want to see that again in my life. We eventually recovered the paddle and boat with some difficulty. [As an aside: I shouldnt let this marr an otherwise stunning run. The Karamea is stunning wilderness kayaking at its best! We saw whio, eel, trout, galaxiid, goats and signs of much more. All set in luscious green beech forest with beautiful, transparent, green water.] We finished the run and had a debrief over a pint and some hot food at the Last Resort in Karamea as the rain started to fall...the weekend wasnt quite over yet. The Oparara River is renowned as a run notoriously rare and hard to bag because of its isolation (top of the West Coast), infrequent flows and limited beta. We awoke the next morning and prepared for this run. We knew the rain that had fallen overnight should bring the river in and we were elated at the prospect of bagging such a rare gem! We were surprised to see how swollen both the Karamea and Oparara Rivers were that morning with 130mm recorded in the adjacent ranges over the past 12h. We later discovered the Karamea peaked at over 1,000cu (a rise in river level of over 2m). We expected the Oparara to be too high to paddle but arriving at the put in, we located the gauge (visual - river level flush with the top of the bridge footing) and found it to be perfect! In hindsight, Ive learnt a valuable lesson - these visual gauges are susceptible to river bed changes and are unreliable. We put on a dropping river in the sun (two ticks there) and proceeded downstream. This is where things start to turn... I wont go right into detail but the more difficult rapids (three of them) were over our head: steep and manky, often sievy, full of wood in subtle but unsuspecting and dangerous places and the level probably higher than we desired (although Im still not sure). We kayaked for an hour and spent some time at a rapid which stopped us dead in our tracks. Vertical 30m high gorge wall on the left, steep muddy, near-vertical bank on the right, virtually must-run. After a grueling 2h bash in thick bush, we managed to portage the rapid. The next rapid was three class IV moves, stacked, the second with wood in play and the third sieving out completely. Shit. After contemplating for an hour, we made the call to pull the pin. We spent the next 5-6h roping boats up, pouring over the map and compass to confirm where we were until we eventually made it to the road with an hour of daylight to spare. We were lucky in having found a cutting by fluke chance which got us back to the road, saving us from a night in the bush. We took 3-4h to get to this cutting, a distance of about 600m and another 1-2h to get out (800m) once on the overgrown but trackable cutting. Once back at the road, we were still 20km from our car. All people and all gear accounted for, we crawled into Christchurch at 3am feeling very sorry for ourselves. We took all necessary actions possible and didnt take any unnecessary gambles but sometimes the holes in the Swiss cheese simply align against you. What a weekend. Cheers to the lads for keeping safe and making good calls!
Posted on: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 23:04:55 +0000
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