This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
unrise on Easter Thursday saw us enjoying an early morning breakfast in Omarama. By mid afternoon, thanks to Maurice Nolan's jetboat skills and a high river level, we were set down well past our expected drop-off point up the Waiatoto River. The Waiatoto is south of Haast on the West Coast of the South Island. We deposited raft-building gear and headed two hours up the river that afternoon. The following 4 days were best forgotten, with sandflies, bitter cold and rain and unbelievably thick scrub and deadfall, hindered by packs bristling with crampons, ice axes and other paraphernalia. We headed left out of the Waiatoto and up the Drake River, covering just under 4 km in two days. On our first night in the Drake we were awakened in the middle of the night by boulders crashing past our campsite (nestled in the middle of a big landslide ~— duh!). Fearing the whole slip might descend upon
Lisa Lee-Johnson
us, we hastily grabbed the still erected tent and stumbled in our underwear across the rain-swept landslide, to re-pitch our tent in a nice safe patch of nettles. On day 6 the sun came out, the scrub dropped away below us, and the world was a wonderful place again. The next few days were fantastic; high mountain passes, views for miles and not a sandfly to be seen. We climbed out over Drake Saddle, ice axes out for the steep exposed descent into the head of the Te Naihi, then up out onto the ridge on the true left, with views as far as Mt Aspiring and out to the West Coast. Climbing over Mt Achilles, we sidled across to a lovely lake below the spectacular Mt Alba, which would be worth coming back for sometime. After a lovely campsite nestled above the lake we arrived mid morning at beautiful grassy flats high cont on page 13 cont from page 12 above the Te Naihi, and settled down for a rest-hour (in lieu of a rest day since the poor weather and slow travel at the start of the trip didn’t leave us with any spare days). Moving on upwards, the sloping schist slabs gave the appearance of impassable bluffs ahead, but revealed hidden ledges which gave easy travel onto the next tier. Sidling across to the top of Bosky spur, we stopped above the bushline, reluctant to descend back into sandfly country. Our delays earlier in the day were much regretted later on as darkness saw Chris doing a lemming impression off a bushclad bluff, clutching frantically at snapping branches as he plunged 40m into the deadfall below. After hours of frantic clambering above the drop and bellowing at the distant glimmer of Chris’s torch far below, the party was reunited at the top of a large slip which gave a precipitous path through the bluffs. The grassy flats of the Te Naihi were a welcome sight for the weary team. After 9 days of non-stop travel, we at last had our packs down to a more reasonable weight (despite the common tramper’s problem of “expansion phenomenon’, which causes pack volume to increase every day during the trip). After the previous night of blundering around in the dark, I was outvoted in my enthusiasm to carry on, and we camped early before the last bush sidle out to the Waiatoto. We spent the evening relaxing around a roaring campfire telling stories late into the night. Our early camp was probably smart, as despite the daylight the following morning Lara still managed a repeat of Chris’s lemming impression, plunging several metres onto a ledge with much snapping of trees. Stu was so overcome by seeing Lara nursing a sprained ankle on the ground below, that he threw his pack at her.
Fortunately he missed, and the pack bounded off down the hill to disappear in the dense bush far below. Eventually we were all reunited with packs and people, and not long after were trudging the last few kilometres down the valley to our raft-site. After a vigorous afternoon of tyre pumping and branch splinting, by nightfall we had a serviceable looking raft. We tested it in the fading light, and were pleased to find that our makeshift craft was stable and quite manoeuvrable. First light saw us putting the finishing touches on our boat, and the intrepid three were launched into the current. Lara, probably with a little more sense than the rest of us chose to walk the first few kilometres. Some frantic paddling and _ cries of “left...right...paddle damn you, paddle” saw us through the more exciting sections. We had a few nervous moments pinned against rocks or logs, but nothing our sturdy craft couldn’t handle. Picking Lara up at Long Beach, we launched back into the rapids. Actually we could have done with a few more rapids as the river was quite low and progress in some of the lower sections was fairly slow. Despite this we made steady progress, and it was a nice change to keep moving whilst resting. Dodging the many trees imbedded in the riverbed, we managed to snag on a few but arrived mid afternoon at the Waiatoto bridge with our raft still inflated. Our intrepid team then spent many hours trying to get the car started, and arrived safe and sound back in Christchurch in plenty of time for me to miss my 10pm flight back to Wellington.
Punters were: Chris Middleditch (Christchurch), Stu Bilby (Auckland), Lara Wilcocks (Hamilton), Lisa Lee- Johnson (Wellington, scribe).
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Stu, Lara and Lisa rafting on the Waiatoto Lisa Lee-Johnson
Trip Reports