A few years ago when I was working for Caffé L'affare, the company secretary admonished me for making a small cock-up. "You should learn from me," she said, "When I make fuck-up's I make big ones!"
Even the most patient boat tires of internment, and as I dragged my Prijon Fly out into the winter sun, I could sense her excitement. Three months since her last river trip and in the interim she had stoically endured the Alpha's "back in my day" stories, while adding insult, a family of spiders had made home in her grab loops. After evicting them I went back to grab my paddle (of undetermined sex) before locking the gear shed door, barring those long boat's from public view like an attic of Victorian cripples.
Pushing off, the scrape of gravel, and then sudden buoyancy and ease of movement is always delicious. Luke and I played for a while on the small wave at the get-in and then drifted into the main river. The shuttle drivers caught up with us at the first rapid and then we headed off. The beautiful bush of the first km of the river gives way at the pipe bridge to wind stunted scrub clinging to steep faces above the mouth of the gorge. This is the last get-out if you aren't feeling comfortable. Two hundred metres past here is the first of a sequence of drops. A bit of scouting aside, the section through to the last of these, Anne's Drop, went fine. A look at Anne's Drop confirmed what we had suspected; that the river was about 0.3 metres higher than the reading we'd got from the gauge before starting out.
Putaputawhetu Stream enters on river right and a few hundred metres further on the river turns to the right and steepens, again closing to a gorge. This is Chicane. We got out in the eddy just above the first of Chicane's two drops and had a look. The left hand half of the river was dropping into a nasty looking "Your Mama" type of hole. Complicating matters, in front of the clean, river right side of the drop was a large rock, meaning you had to start left, head right and then quickly turn to the left again to avoid the wall at the bottom. Duncan ran the first drop no problem. I somehow found myself next up and after a few semi-concious preparations (deep breaths, water splashed on my face and a quick helmet check) I paddled out into the current.
I don't remember how or when I flipped; just that I was suddenly upside down having an unpleasant time of it. I couldn't get into roll position, and felt my boat hit something solid. I finally rolled up just in time to get flipped again by another hydraulic. This was nasty. Again my body and boat were being shunted around everywhere. I briefly got my head above water, gulped air and went under again. The adrenalin switch clicked on - "... shit! Just hang on ..." fragments of thoughts, self advice crackled through my head and my heart whacked into my throat. I finally got in a sweep stroke to roll up, gasped and spluttering, and just as the relief registered, I realised I'd hit a rock wall and was listing beyond the point of no return.
Under again, my mind quickly degenerated into a crimson sea of adrenalin, but I do remember my boat pushing me against the wall, and that my paddle was wedged against my boat somehow and that I couldn't move it. Fuck this. I ripped my deck off, but with the way my boat was pushing me, it seemed to take a horrible, endless time to pull my self out of it. I remember thinking "I'm going to die" just as I broke the surface, adrenalin crazed, coughing and spluttering all at once. I didn't know where I was, just that there was a bank a few feet away and I was getting there. Pulling myself out of the water I turned round in time to see my boat disappearing down Corkscrew, the rapid below Chicane. I felt sick.
Shivering on the bank, I couldn't believe that I was on my own. No one in sight - no one had come after me. It all started to sink in. I was stranded on a rock in a vertical gorge I couldn't climb out of, with a rapid I didn't want to swim down not far below me. It was already mid-afternoon. I tried to calm myself down but kept on being hit by waves and waves of nausea that made me feel like retching. Eventually Chris (wow, even upright) came around the corner. A few minutes later the rest of the group turned up, staring at me shouting and gesticulating wildly like some attic dwelling lunatic.
I managed to avoid Corkscrew by rafting on the back of Nick's boat and grabbing a line thrown by Luke. I swam across a deep eddy to meet Duncan, who poured me a cup of hot chocolate. Gulping it down, I realised how cold I was. I wasn't wearing a wetsuit, and the wait and swim had considerably chilled me. I was calm enough now to realise how potentially serious this was. As I talked to the others I felt incoherent, almost absent. Thankfully Luke was wearing a wetsuit that he was able to lend me and then the hard work started. I scrambled around the rapids that I could avoid and rafted on the back of Luke's boat down the ones I couldn't. By the time Duncan (thank God, thank God, thank God) found my boat in an eddy about twenty minutes later, I was exhausted. I wouldn't have been able to carry on in the water much longer and was facing the prospect of spending a cold night in the bush.
Back in my boat, with a set of split paddles, it was a reasonably easy ride to the get-out. As we got changed we had an informal debrief. The main things to come out of it were roughly:
Adrian
PS: This monograph is dedicated to the memory of a fine and loyal Robson paddle...