It all started in Bivouac on the Terrace. I was flat out working as usual when Ray calls me and says there is a spare place on their trip down the Waiototo (because Andréa and Bolke piked out ). The decision had to be made that same afternoon. Seeing that I would be down south anyway and that I had always wanted to go further down the West Coast, and figuring I would probably have enough money I said .... "Yeah man". A month or so passed by and before I knew it the annual Buller trip was coming to an end.

The Buller turned out to be a good warm up. After lots of driving , looking at glaciers & fluffing about Clare, Ray, Alan, and I all managed to be in the same place at the same time and with all our gear. However it didn't always remain this way.

On the way to the river mouth we stopped at the chopper base. There was this young gun pilot there with his shiny new caterpillar boots, a pair of ear muffs and a cheesy confident grin. He says " sweet mate, just leave ya gear here and It'll be sweet mate... see ya at the air field". So I'm thinking "Hmmm" but I figure he probably knows what he's doing so we pile ourselves back into the car and drive half an hour to the river mouth air field. We're standing there all smiles and grins with excitement when a Hughes 500 circles over us and lands. A hughes 500 with 3 boats, a raft, and enough gear for three people. Sure enough the young gun managed to cock it up and loose some essential pieces of kayaking apparel. Somewhere in the beech forest swamp between Haast and where we were, was a spray deck, lots of polypro, a camera, and a hot head. It was like a nightmare come true. I had disturbing images in my mind of driving for two days and catching the ferry back to Wellington.

Fortunately lovely Clare decided to go in the raft with Alan instead, and leant me her spray deck.

5 minutes later we were squished into the chopper with no seats and all (most) of our gear. The flight up the valley took about 12 minutes. The pilot took us up fairly slowly which allowed views of some rapids and lots of flat stretches. After touching down in Bonner Flats and the handing over a thick wad of 20s the chopper disappeared. We packed stuff into the narrow raft with all our gear and its two paddlers Alan and Clare and we were off. The raft promptly capsized on the first small eddy line and from this moment on I had a feeling the trip would be a long one!! From then on the daily job of loading the raft became a fine art. Alan and Clare soon learned how unstable the raft was and became more skilled at negotiating the grade two rapids with time. The first campsite was at Axis Flats. Low cloud prevented views of the surrounding mountains but there were still awesome views of waterfalls coming out of the clouds and cascading down hundreds of feet of steep cliff face.

The morning of day two saw us next to a small hut beside a massive slip face. The amount of debris and the size of the beech trees smashed up in its path gave some idea of how powerful and fast it must have been. Lots of the schist boulders near the bottom were the size of tourist buses. After wandering around through the mess of rocks and busted trees we packed up camp and disguised the remains of last nights camp fire.

It was decided that before heading off down stream we would have a look at the Drake River (a tributary of the Waiototo). The water was crystal clear. The day before Ray, Alan, and I went for a look up this river. It had a very steep section which probably lost about 300 meters in altitude in only 250 meters distance. The small sections which were paddleable would have been grade 5 - 5+ but most of it was very unpaddleable. Due to the lack of time we decided not to paddle any of it.

By the time we finished scrambling around over big boulders and finished our little side excursion up the Drake it was already half way through the day. Considering the difficulties with the raft, and that there were much harder rapids down stream and that we had covered a quarter the distance in half of our time I was fairly keen to get moving.

The gorge section followed. The entry rapids were very nice and quite fun. They reminded me of pictures I had seen of rapids on the milky blue Arahura River, except these rapids were much smaller and easier. Finally the time came when we got to the hardest section.

I remember standing on the bank scouting for a couple of minutes before the others got out of their boats/raft. A reasonable straightforward grade 3+ rapid churned before us with a small area to eddy out before the river veered off around the corner and continued with more rapids. Ray signalled to me from the other side of the river and gave a complex concoction of gibberish sign language which I made out to be " I'll paddle down, get out, and take a picture of you coming down." So I give Ray the thumbs up. The next thing I see is Ray appearing on the horizon line by himself in the raft. Everything was going well until he reached the bottom of a smooth two and a half metre chute (the kind that you get on the Kaituna River) at which point our precious raft capsized. The weight of the raft was substantial, so Ray quickly motored himself through the churning waters to the side and up and over the schist boulders to safety. I just watched in disbelief as our raft with all our food, clothing, camping gear etc disappeared into the unknown. Shit! Within half a minute I had got to the top of the rapid, put myself in my boat with deck sealed on and was paddling towards the horizon line while concentrating on not becoming the second casualty in an already difficult situation. Soon I was 200 metres down stream where to my relief I spotted the raft pinned above a half metre drop.

At this point I was glad that both Ray and I had followed Mick Hopkinson's advice. "I recommend that every paddler carry two carabiners, a sling, and a throw bag". The next 4 hours was spent belaying using Italian hitches, tugging on ropes, clicking carabiners, and standing around picking noses while figuring out what to do. Finally we got it unpinned, and thanks to everybody's rope work in tying gear in we only temporarily lost 3 thermarests which were recovered a couple of hours down stream.

We were all pretty expended after portaging the raft and all the gear around the following grade 3-4 rapids. Tensions were high and fuses were short as we set up camp on some tiny patches of flat ground half way down a rapid. A big warm fire was started and Alan constructed some frames around it for drying out sleeping bags and warm clothing.

The start of the next day was an early morning rise and extra special attention was made to loading the raft with the heaviest stuff at the bottom. Ray expertly negotiated most of the remaining rapids in the raft, some of which were very long grade 2 stretches. After this point the Waiototo flattens out - a lot. Ray and I had a turn in the raft while Clare and Alan paddled our kayaks. This was the only time in my life when I would rather have a dancer or a sea kayak than my short fat slow X.

Note : paddling 15 km in a short play boat on still water is not fun.

I spent many hours trying to think of something other than the distance ahead of us, so I counted my paddle strokes and wondered what Megan would be doing back in Wellington. I got bored of counting paddle strokes when I lost count somewhere after 497. This part of the river was choked with countless beech trees washed down in times of flood. Shags and stilts stood upon some of them as we drifted past, so I figured we were approaching the river mouth.

Late in the afternoon at the end of a perfectly still day we spotted the road bridge in the distance. As the sun set our gear was packed into Rays Corona. Raft deflated, spirits elated, and bodies knackered.

For those interested in taking a trip down the Waiototo in the future I definitely recommend it. Take a camera, some old club dancers, a big raft, and a sense of humour with you and you're guaranteed a good time.

From Mark.

[ Back to VUCC Home page | More trip reports | Photo's from the trip ]