Chasing Water

2011-10-11T23:42:00.000-07:00

Faaaarrrk. Went to the Wainui today, big rain last night and we drove in hoping there wouldn't be too much water. When we got on we realised it was pretty high and pushy - especially in the rapids. You know when you look at a rapid at low flow and think "This would be mean with heaps of water" Well I'd thought this about a lot of rapids on the Wainui and it turns out they kinda didn't do what I thought they would. The whole thing got pretty rowdy and just shunted through super fast.

Running the left boof that we've always looked at on B's rapid. (It must be noted that this was not intentional and I was pretty well peaking right here)

Mr Brown took himself out of the game early on (on the same rapid as above) grating a couple of his fingers down to the joints and slightly modifying his face as well.
This left four of us - John Snook, myself, and the slalom grommets to finish the rest of the run. Everything else went pretty smoothly, John decided to boof the 60 but luckily there was lots of water so it was a fluffy landing and no back issues...

Rolling into the freight train slide - at least all of the slides were nice and padded out today..

...and the view from the lip - apologies for the blurry shot, the old gopro was well fogged by this stage.

All up it was a sick day - the Tuna was awesome, it has definitely proven itself on the steep stuff now along with being all good off the big drop which I was interested to see how it would go. It still catches me out with how fast it comes out of holes and drops and I've had to throw in the odd backstroke to slow her down.

Still plenty of water around so we'll see what happens tomorrow...

A long time between drinks

2011-10-09T11:50:00.000-07:00

Up until about mid June this year we were getting pretty regular rain every few weeks (which kept those of us not going overseas slightly happier). That all stopped just as winter really arrived and we got absolutely no rain in any of the catchments which have good creeking. Enter last week's storm. After an epic thunderstorm on Monday night - one of those ones that sent you running to your Mum and Dad when you were little, the Kaimais got just enough rain to make it worthwhile for me to take a mental health day and drag Mr Joshua out of bed for a foray into the hills.
While driving up the Kaimai summit road it soon became apparent that the only option was going to the the upper Ngamuwahine. This river drains the very top of the Kaimais and starts in a swamp on the plateau. Because of this it usually holds water for a day or so longer than the other creeks in the area. With a big shuttle, a savage 4wd track and a bit of a walk/paddle in, it definitely makes for a full days adventure.
We teamed up with Cole and Laurence - a couple of the Tauranga slalom grommets, (who we're slowly converting to the dark side and who may or may not have been skipping a day of school...) which made for a good little crew.
Here's a little video of the trip, I can't really claim to have edited this - it was more like Josh - 80%, me 20%....

Right now, I'm eating my toast and watching the rain come in sideways, my lawn has a lake on it and all my gear is soaking wet.
Can anyone say Wainui.....
Stand by.

Yea Nice

2011-08-14T14:39:00.000-07:00

While I'm writing just now, I'm sitting in a house in Christchurch having just missed my flight back to Rotorua. Why you ask? Mainly because the four inches of snow outside have closed not only most of the roads in the south island, but lots in the north Island and all of the major airports in the south. Luckily we made it out of Queenstown yesterday with a lack of sleep and rather savage hangovers being the only hindrance to our travels.

The reason we were in Queenstown was actually due to us being in Wanaka for the week prior for a little event which I've been to for the last few years called the Burton Open. It's an excuse for me to A: Get off real work for a week, and B: ha
ve a weeks fully funded snowboarding in exchange for having to put some flags up each day (the reality is a little bit more harsh than just puttingflags up but you tend to forget the hard stuff....)
I also recently acquired a gopro so I decided to make a little edit of our week instead of yet another essay. Said week finished with the afterparty in Queenstown where we proceeded to try and drink two boxes of monster (not recommended) along with various other alternatives (highly recommended). Oh and we rocked out toshihad, Optimus Gryme and Sunshine Soundsystem until 5:30am. Hence the fun drive home. Same old.

Pipe Finals

Yea Nice.

TUNA!!!

2011-07-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

Right here we go. After a nice long R & D period, Bliss Stick have got their new creek boat - the Tuna to almost production stage. I was lucky enough to get my hands on the first one out as a demo boat and have been paddling it for ten days or so now so I thought I'd share some thoughts on how she goes (for the overseas contingent)
Firstly - a few things to keep in mind: 1- I've only paddled it on the Kaituna - no steep creeks or big water yet but it still gives you a pretty good idea of how it performs. 2 - These are just the things I've noticed - obviously there are much better paddlers out there who are a lot fussier than me.

For anyone out there who isn't from lil'ol Nooo Zeeeland, Tuna isn't actually referring to the fish which lives in the ocean and is often eaten from a can. In this case there are a couple of different reasons for the name. Tuna is the Maori name for eel - and reflects posibly what Bliss Stick wanted from this boat, something that was sleek, fast and manouverable. Secondly, Tuna is the nickname for New Zealand's most famous and most used kayaking river (the Kaituna), and is where co-designer Kenny Mutton lives - you can find Kenny at the put in, every day, rain hail or shine, at 6:30am putting on for a race run (he even has a stopwatch taped to his paddle) These race runs are a big factor for why kiwis are dominating the extreme racing scene right now - almost every top kiwi racing paddler right now is based here.

Speed: This is the thing everyone has been asking for so I thought I'd start with that... I'm glad to say, comprehensively, that this boat is fast. Faster than any other creek boat I've paddled. The length and rocker on it are designed for speed and that's exactly what they do. The boat just lifts over everything and keeps driving in rapids, and on the flat water it sits nice and level and doesn't feel like you're bulldozing water. It will be sick to see it in the hands of the monsters who are actually fast at racing (unlike me) to see what they can do.

She's long - and fast

Hull: The hull on the Tuna is pretty interesting. Overall it has a flat bottom which carries right through to just behind the cockpit where it starts rounding off to the tail. It has a fair amount of rocker in the nose, and then goes dead flat under the seat. Finally, the tail kicks up with hardly any transition - almost like a playboat. It's pretty long - 256cm, but when I'm paddling it I don't actually feel like I'm in a long boat. Obviously being longer it's a bit harder to boof, but when you land it flies out of the drop without lifting the nose too high and losing all your speed.

The edges are a little bit sharper than a mystic but they are not super wide so the hull still edges easily - it doesn't feel like you're trying to tip a battleship over, and they are balanced really nicely - the boat is super predictable on the turn and very stable on edge. I like the kicked up tail rocker because when you flatten the boat off and jump on your draw in an eddy turn, the tail is clear of the water and the boat whips round on a dime. It's also up out of the way when you've got the boat flat in boily eddies (of which the Kaituna has an abundance of) and I haven't managed to catch a stupid edge in it yet. Lots of rocker in the nose means it jumps over holes - I haven't had the chance/misfortune to bury it underneath a decent hole yet but hopefully the rocker will make it resurface well and the big tail should stop her backlooping.

The tail on the Tuna is awesome. I'm only just starting to come out of my habit of expecting the tail to catch and bog when breaking out of strong eddies (like the chute). Instead, it just lifts and drives the boat across the current leaving you to concentrate on what is happening in front of you. It doesn't get caught in strong seams (like running trout pool direct) and gives you extra confidence to just keep on booking. It gives the boat a nice balance and keeps it driving over the top of boogie water instead of bogging down and losing speed.

Note the tail rocker - kicks up sharply just behind the cockpit.

Cockpit/Outfitting
The cockpit is the same, mean, comfy Bliss Stick one we're used to, the rim is a bit bigger than a Mystic so if your deck is tight on a mystic it will be even more so on a Tuna. I don't feel like I'm sitting in a big boat (even though it has a lot of volume). The other big boats I've paddled (Magnum 80, Habitat 80) feel a little bit like I'm in a bathtub, with the Tuna, the knee space feels quite low, as is the cockpit rim, giving you lots of room to reach/rotate. Even though the Tuna is designed for bigger paddlers, it will fit a huge size range due to the nice cockpit layout. My favourite part about the cockpit is how low it is at your hips - when I rotate for a sweep or go over on a brace I never catch my elbow on the boat - it feels a bit like I'm in an old school river runner.

Ergonomics
There are some nice new design features which make the Tuna nicer to use etc. The grab handles are recessed into the deck of the boat so no more crushed fingers on the screw underneath when your lowering it on a sketchy portage. The bars behind your hips have also been done away with, this makes for the low point as mentioned above and also will hopefully make that part of the boat stronger. There's nothing to catch your thumbs on down the sides and the high point doesn't get in the way when you're on edge. Overall the Tuna is only a 1kg heavier than the mystic, although this may or may not change once they figure out the moulding.

Side on - pretty low profile

Mystic side view for comparison

The Tuna is quite low in the cockpit area - no big bulge in front of you

The only thing you might have to be careful of is flat landing big drops - the flatness of the hull underneath the seat might not be too forgiving. There is a pretty easy fix for this though... Get forward or don't boof so much! While it will fit a large size range, smaller paddlers will definitely have trouble boofing it simply because of the length - it is designed for bigger paddlers and will perform bettter for larger people.

My overall impression of it is that it does everything (so far) that I want a creekboat to do; It's ridiculously fast, stable both on edge and flat, and it turns well. I haven't found any weird habits and possibly the most important thing is that it's predictable. I jumped straight in it (admittedly from another flat-ish hull boat) and would be completely comfortable taking it straight into any run, grade five or other that I can think of. A good creekboat should make hard water easier and as far as I can tell, the Tuna will definitely do this. As much as I love the mystic, I think the Tuna will be my next creek boat for quite a while.

**If any of the cuzzies want to know any more details, chuck a comment on or facebook me. I've probably forgotten some key thing.

Essays

2011-07-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

What to do when you can't find anyone to go kayaking with in the middle of winter* - A photo essay**.

Unfrost vehicle. This is so you can perform basic operations such as open doors which have been frozen shut and see out of windows which are frozen over

Stop at splendid local cafe/store/beer garden. Try to get girlfriend to make coffee. Fail.

Intravenous caffeine not yet available. Settle for next best thing. Make own coffee.

Select music. Glitch not available - dubstep will suffice.

Try to avoid driving off road due to combination of aids fog, copious amounts of ice, texting, and trying to change music/fix Ipod all at once. Priorities people.

Too early? Never too early. Three creamy mayo cheese burgers thanks. Turangi love.

Faaarrrk. Start to question decision to go kayaking.

Stop questioning decision to go kayaking. Aha. Figured out where this was going have you?

First Tuna on the river. Ever.

Sneak peek. Full testing to commence tomorrow on the Kaituna. Because I was too scared to run the Rangitikei solo at 70cu. Bomb! Boom!

*Because someone who shall remain unnamed decided that mountains were more important. Cough. Bernard Oliver.
**For people who like photos. You know who you are Josh Neilson.

2011-06-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

Snaffled this little gem off dark horse Bayly's blog of our high water run down the Mangawhio a couple of weeks back.

Sick times...

Winter

2011-06-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

Bit of a dry spell for the old blog posts lately. Reasons for this are along the lines of no decent camera, lots of other people doing updates on the same thing (the Wainui) and plain laziness.

*On a side note - There aren't any pictures in this post so if you're one of those people (who just look at the pictures).... you might be disappointed.

In non metaphorical terms, it has most definitely not been a dry spell. Apparently it has something to do with the El Nino year. Or is it La Ninia? I get confused. Anyway whatever it is, it's been keeping regular, big, grunty, northerly weather systems cranking down the bay of plenty coast which translate into two things. Firstly lots of rain in our favourite range - you guessed it, the Kaimais. At a rough guess I think I've been creeking every few weeks since Christmas which is basically unheard of. Secondly, the days after we go creeking are filled with more water sports due to the mean NE swells which have given the east coast of the country the best summer of surfing in a long time. I got a new board a while back and have been frothing on surfing lately which is a nice change from the Kaituna in a dry top.
Last month me, B and Ben went to the Mangawhio and got on at a high flow which was sick but made the entrance to the gorge quite exciting. Tragically there is a massive log right across the first drop in the gorge which necessitates a mongrel portage and ish nerve wracking seal launch back in for the 40 - where we all got pretty well violated in the boil. Happy days.

The last two weekends have been sick with good rain timing in perfectly for a run down the upper Ngamuwahine last weekend which holds its water a bit longer than others - it's got a cool steep section on it with a committing and pretty rowdy gorge and some fun rapids to finish with. Then yesterday we made the call to turn up to the Tuakopai to try and catch the water. We were bang on and got on right at the peak. Berno and myself bombed it and both flat landed the shit out of Douglas falls which rattled the teeth/spine - this was nowhere near as bad as Stefan Gilmour though who did the same on spa and got a cracked and compressed L2 vertebra for his troubles. Bit of a wake up call for a run which has become the 'easiest' in the Kaimais - get forward and stomp ya'll.
The Wainui also claimed another victim a while back with Douglas hurting his back on the 25 and only finding out the other day that he's got a crack in one of his vertebra as well which is average.

Ok so I lied, here's couple of photos -

Mr Brown doing his thing on the double drop on an earlier trip on the Ngamu.(shamelessy plagarised from louise Jull's blog)

And yet another photo of the biggy on the Wainui. Chur to Mike Dawson for snapping this one.

Hopefully the rains continue and we keep getting on all these sick creeks in our backyard and playing on the waves in our other backyard. Soon there will be enough snow to go and ride the white stuff in the neighboring backyard.
Stand by.

2011-01-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

We've been having a sick time here in the falls with Christmas and New years parties dominating the scene and various extra curricular activities filling in the gaps. Most of these gaps for the last two weeks have been wakeboarding and skiing at Orakei Korako (try pronouncing that one). I dragged Josh away from his supposed day of 'work' to come and play at one of my favourite spots anywhere in the world - I'm glad they dammed this part of the river... Anyway we found a choice new place for adventuring and Mr Neilson had the gopro so we filmed some stuff and he made a choice little edit.

"What did you do yesterday"

Waikato river day!!! from Southern Underground Productions on Vimeo.

Christmas creeking

2010-12-20T14:25:00.001-08:00

Last week our household decided to roll with Jamie on one of his trips around lake Waikaremoana in the Urewera national park. It's a four day walk around a sick lake - especially when you have a boat to carry your packs/beer/wine and other assorted vital supplies from hut to hut. We had a mean time and with weather which wasn't amazing but fine for walking we happily started the drive back to Rotorua where we had missed a rather savage bender (by all accounts) for the xmas at Kaituna party.
Anyway, it just so happened that it had been raining the whole time we were away and things were starting to come alive in the Kaimais...
After being home for five minutes. I was sitting on the couch checking the guages (looking promising) and trying to get constructive conversation out of Josh (not so promising), when I saw a certain dark green Subaru with a full rack of boats fly up the road. Emergency measures were taken as a quick phone call established a Tuakopai special was in progress. paddling gear was fired in the back of the car and without further ado, team stinky took off to meet the other crews heading back towards the wairoa.
The put in found it on the low side but still good for a 12 person twilight bomb down one of the funnest (is that even a word?) creeks you can find anywhere.
With more rain being forecast, plans were made to keep the ball rolling for the next day and get back amongst it. The Waipapa was next on the list and with a slightly smaller crew we headed back over at the crack of morning tea for a run down a creek with some of the sickest boofs in the Kaimais.

B firing 'jism falls' - a 20 footer with a super super tight landing which launches you straight into a sick slide.

Me just about to maim the slut boat on the entrance to mojo gorge - there was about a 50-50 split of dented boats whether you ran the rapid or the seal launch right next to it...

J dog running some in between mank

Berno experiencing his first taste of the Kaimais on the second best boof of the day - the exit of mojo, a glorious 20ish footer with a sick entrance-to boof-to kickdown. Happy Christmas.

All in all a mean five days and a good bit of luck getting some creeking in a week before Christmas! As I'm writing this the lifestylists of Okere Falls (who haven't used up their get out of work free cards) have gone South to chase the rain; possibly near Taihape, possibly the Tauranga Taupo... watch this space.

Waihi First Descent

2010-12-20T14:15:00.000-08:00

At the end of October Myself and Tyler rallied down to the Hawkes Bay to try and tick the Waihi stream which Matt Danes found a couple of years ago. without any real idea of the scale of this thing we arrived to find it pumping - a section of big wide bedrock about 900m long which lost 100m in gradient... Anyway here's a video shot and edited by the esteemed Mr Neilson who was on camera due to a broken wing. Epic times.

Southern Underground Productions: Waihi First Descent: "Waihi Stream First Descent 2010 from Southern Underground Productions on Vimeo."

Anyone want to argue about waterfalls now??

Big. Water.

2010-09-19T15:04:00.000-07:00

Over the last few seasons the crew from up here have slowly been ticking off the creeks which run off the eastern side of the Kaimai ranges in Tauranga. The established classics like the Tuakopai and the Mangakarengorengo have turned into after work/school bomb runs and people have been looking further north for adventures into seldom or unrun drainages.
These runs are characterised by big slides, lots of vert and then usually a big beast of a drop down the bottom where a hard band of rock must run the length of the Kaimais, creating for the most part, a big portage.
After a wet winter, the boys had ticked off lots of runs, some new, some old and some revisited. The Rataroa, Te Puna and Aongatete (try saying those fast) all got checked out along with the Waipapa which is turning into the 'go to' when it's raining hard. I got back to the falls just in time for some horrid weather which fully soaked the ground to the point where the water was just running straight into the creeks - ideal.

A day off on Sunday and a Northerly front cemented the plan on Saturday night - get to one of the reputedly 'best creeks in the Kaimais'. With only one descent a few years back, we were keen to check it out after hearing the stories and seeing the odd photo of super cool drops and slides, not to mention 'the big one' a suppposedly clean, unrun 90 footer....

B and Ryan (along with Wills who got lucky having another week of uni because of some earthquake) were the instigators of said plan and we woke up early on Sunday to some doubt about the conditions (not quite as much rain as hoped) but decided to go anyway.
After all the usual stops (bakery, navigation, scouting, farmer, other farmer, toilet etc) we finally made it to the put in super fired up about what we were going to find downstream...

And what a find it was! Horizon line after horizon line, all big, all clean, no manky boulder gardens just big drop/slide combos which kept coming. Constant rain stopped most chances of pics etc but we got a few...

B running the second part of a rapid - a similar sized drop above into a slide into this. Sick!

A wee way in we came to a drop we had been waiting for. Scouting missions along with a tiny little thumbnail in kayak session from the first trip in here had us frothing about it. The drop had a tricky little entrance into a beautiful 25 foot drop. Right about now the rain stopped so we got cameras out and after some deliberation ("Bro what do reckon the line is?" "Well I dunno about you but I'm gonna boof the shit out of it!") young fulla sent it first. Everyone had sweet lines and the smiles got even bigger.

Bayly getting it done again - mean

Below the drop we carried on down for a little bit, off a sweet little eight footer and then eddied out above one of those horizon lines that looks like it's dropping off the face of the earth. Yup, the biggy - supposedly 90 feet but undoubtedly a monster.
Getting out on the deck on the left we got to the lip and found ourselves looking a long way down at a narrow spout which looked to be throwing pretty far out. Not 90 but still a big drop - dubious glances were exchanged as we tried to talk ourselves into the line.
Ryan was pretty keen but wanted to check it from the other side so more to keep him company than anything else I went over to check it with him. B and Wills were portaging by this stage not liking the view from the left. We spent a while discussing lines etc and then I think the conversation went something along the lines of; "Bro worst case scenario is landing flat and that's not going to happen - and that portage looks savage", "Yeah shall we just send it?"
So the scene was set. Ryan was fired up to go first so once B and Wills got there to set safety it was game on.
He pulled out of the eddy, took a stroke off the lip and then tucked, where I lost sight of him it looked like he had a perfect line. Turned out that he had gone pretty sideways and separated his paddle on impact. Then it was my turn. I gave the old whistle then drifted down the eddy line, I pulled out into the current and as the lip went under me I felt just a tiny touch of rock on my hull - not ideal. Luckily I was already pulling on my right blade which straightened me and lifted my nose just a little. As I tucked I saw the landing and was pretty sure I had it sorted. It ended up being a super soft hit and I rolled up to the ubiquitous Ryan Lucas scream.

Ryan sending it on the first D - 60 to 65 we reckon

My turn, getting ready for the hit.

After the big one we asssumed the river would have run out of gradient and we just had some boogie to the takeout. We were ever so mistaken. Big rapids just kept coming at us, all super cool and surprisingly clean. Including the biggest slide of the day..

"How deep do you reckon the bottom is"?

Wills probing

Ryan at the bottom giving some scale to it.

More rapids led us to still more horizon lines where we came across this gem.

Happy times

Me about to fly

Some low angle slides and fun boogie (not the usual Kaimai boulder gardens) finally got us to the take out tired, sore and super stoked at the sick day we just had. Definitely one of the best runs in the Kaimais for sure. Cant wait to go back!!

HB Gem

2010-09-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

After a very cold stint in Wanaka/Christchurch I made it back to the Hawkes Bay on the back of a storm (and in front of an earthquake) so all of the rivers were up nice and high. I'd already recruited my little sis Harry to paddle with as she was on uni holidays. We scavenged a couple of boats and made our way up our road (the Napier/Taihape) to check out a section on the Tutaekuri river (unfortunate name that, means dog shit...) The Tutaekuri is one of the bigger rivers emptying into the Bay and for most of it's length is super shallow and braided. However right up the top it's got a bit of gradient where it drops off the Kaweka ranges.

The reason this section hadn't been run was because of two waterfalls marked on the topo map - an 8m and a 5m, which given the nature of the gorge they're in would be pretty full on to just bomb into. We'd already scouted the section prior to our Cali trip though and we were surprised to find no big drops, either the topo map was wrong (gasp) or they had been filled in with shingle from a big flood.

Anyway, Harry and I set the shuttle and walked the 15 knee destroying minutes down the Mackintosh track to the put in.

This is the first view you get of the run and the put in - pretty choice!!

As soon as we got on we found ourselves committed in a super deep and pretty inescapable gorge. The rapids alternate between little bouldery 3/4 numbers and some super fun little slides and bedrock sections.

Harry on her first creeking outing on a cool little slide with a bit of an undercut to keep the heart going

The bedrock section in the middle is super fun and waterslidey and will be sick when we get in there when she's pumping. There's a cool six foot sloper...

The point and shoot not quite up to the old 'hold the button down and get more than one shot deal'

and not coping very well with moving kayaks and lack of light. Harry testing the depth - it's deep.

The end of the bedrock section is the crux of the run with a boulder garden enticing you down and then swinging left and tightening up into a very Waihohonu-ish box hole complete with a recirculating eddy. This alone will be the deciding factor for super high water runs - not sure if it will get worse or wash out. You can't really scout or portage it either so it will be interesting...

Harry about to discover the joys of paddling upstream out the back of an eddy. It's steeper than it looks in the photo and the right hand side had a bit of a cavey pockety thing.

After this rapid there were lots more boulder gardens and another cool grade 2/3 gorge where a big side creek comes in from the right.

Harry soaking it all in in the super cool gorges.

This run was super fun and ideal for someone just getting into creeking with nothing too hard and minimal sieves/wood to deal with. Any less water than we had would make the boulder gardens pretty average. It's a mean run for us to have on the back doorstep and adds that little bit more to the area.
Not really sure who reads this stuff but if you're from the HB canoe club it would be a mean run for you to use. I've got a more guidebook type write up I can send you.

As for now I've moved back to the falls and straight back into epic spring conditions for the Kaimais. The boys have been going hard with Tuakopai, Waipapa and even a Whatakau run. To top it off we jumped on the Wainui the other day and had one of the sickest days boating I've done in NZ. Can anyone say 60 footer...

Wake up!!

2010-08-05T15:02:00.001-07:00

Here's a little vid from our clear lake mission a while back. Shot off Josh's gopro, sorry some of the old action shots are a little shakey due to our extremely advanced filming technique (hold camera in hand while trying to balance on bouncy ass boat) Anyway, enjoy...

Next week I'm off to the other end of the spectrum - below zero temps and snow at the Burton NZ Open. Should get some mean photos. Stay tuned.

Money shot

2010-07-24T16:20:00.000-07:00

I used to think that if you were going to make a river it would basically be like the Kaituna with maybe some more waterfalls; warm water, easy access, sick rapids and german beer at the takeout/put in.

I was wrong.

There are some places in the kayaking world world which attract dirtbag gypises like moths to a flame. Places like the Nile, the west coast, Chile and California are notorious for the lifestyle and whitewater on offer.

However, there is one river in particular and one section of that river which holds one of the most photographed and iconic drops at least in Cali if not the world. Ever since I started kayaking I remember looking at photos and video of people flying off in a locked in granite gorge and thinking "if I ever make it to that place I will be a happy little chappy"
That place is Cherry bomb gorge on the Upper Cherry creek.
This run doesn't give itself up easily, with a 12 mile walk and a 35kg hunk of the most unergonomic plastic it is possible to engineer on your back, it's pretty much a given that you're going to be hurting by the time you reach the put in.
Once again we found ourselves at a trail head with a huge crew of nine kiwi boaters, three trail support/professional shuttlers, 15 cameras, our chief strategist/ball of enthusiasm/live guidebook and a dog.

I won't bore you with a description of the walk other than to say we started at 5:30 in the morning and it took 5-6 hours. Average.

The put in was awesome though - a huge granite valley with no dirt in sight and miles (literally miles) of low angle, super chilled out slides.
When we finally made it to the cherry bomb entry I believe the quote for the day was "Everyone's running it, it's mandatory, I won't allow anyone to portage!!!"(Garcia, 2010) With that decision out of the way we rallied into the upper cherry bomb gorge. Some cool slides and rapids get you to a lake in the gorge which then gets you to a portage right above cherry bomb.
Cherry bomb itself is a sick slide to kicker that drops you straight into a sick gorge with another ten or so drops back to back. One eddy and then it's into the jedi slides - awesome slides which lead straight into the teacups. Words don't do justice to this section of river at all so I'll leave the essay here and put some pics up.

The walk from the bottom of the teacups, I have no idea how many times we did this walk over two days but it was lots.

Twelve people rolling into the Jedi slides - sick

The bottom teacups

From the other angle... Our camp is on the left of the big pool

The money shot - cherry bomb, glorious.

On a slightly different note... some culture - Mum wedged under the tunnel tree after we all got out and she lifted a little... Not pictured - driving back under at twenty miles "pin it we can fit!!!" ish nerve wracking..

What would you write as a caption here?? Seriously? Heavy petting can lead to unplanned pregnancy? I just don't know.

Glorious

Lauder - Conspicuously absent, Roil - average to poor, Neilson - fair to above average, Bayly - glorious

*All pics for this post are from Rach and Brad. Cheer Cuzzies.

Belated update

2010-07-15T08:20:00.001-07:00

Seeing as I have been busy/lazy and haven't updated anything for a while I decided that you can just read everyone else's blogs for our Dinkey/West Cherry/Hospital rock trips and I will post stuff about our extra-curricular rest day activities which are highly entertaining, informative, all in one, drive in, pre packaged, americanised national park experiences which we then proceed to demolish with a characteristic combination of New Zealand charm and Kiwi mongrel. This can include but is not limited to; Climbing all over delicate rock formations which took millions of years to develop, driving through pristine meadows with the doors/windows open/down playing obnoxiously loud power ballads, stalking wild bears in fields which then turn out to have cubs up the tree you just walked under, drawing a face on a watermelon and carrying it on a public walkway and then making fun of the person in front of you who has their ridiculous pomerian rat dog in a carry harness on their chest....

Oh and we had a fully sick, punky brewster day on the East Kaweah yesterday with a perfect flow. Redemption was achieved after our last misadventure in there at high flow. Here's some photos of all of the above. I have lost my mind with all of the rubbish coming out of my head onto this page.

Garcia styling triple drop. Fancy that.

Sanga boofing in, pre rolling in the boil and doing the second drop upside down

I'm going to eat you!!!

Mr Bayly cruising into the drop that got me the first time around

'Double drop. Excellent.

James Anthony Garrod backflipping off a bridge in Yosemite. Shortly after this several rangers in short shorts felt the urge to tell us this was actually illegal and we were setting a bad example for the "children and families" The same rangers then noticed we were parked illegally and our registration on mum was out of date. Peace ensued as we talked our way out of a fine. See what I mean about the charm/mongrel dichotomy?

*On a side note to this, note all of the rafts in the background. They will put thousands of people down this stretch of river in rafts all year but we get arrested if we kayak in the Yosemite national park. This is America! We're Americans! Retards.

Bayly. Craaaaggggggssss.

Casual mum bear deciding we were too close to her cub and we should probably leave...

Biggest trees in the world apparantly. 1300 tons that fella. Good firewood though.

Team kiwi with token american. And a dog.

Oh and all of the photos were shamelessly taken from Mr J Mitchell's camera. Nice work nug.

Royal Gorge

2010-07-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

This has to be one of the most anticipated runs in the whole of California. A sketchy put in, super remote location and some HUGE rapids make it one of the runs which gets spoken of in reverent tones in beaten up cars and dingy bars all over the state. Stories of epic trips come out of Royal every year which only serve to fuel the gossip mill.
This season, like everything else, Royal was flowing 5-6 weeks later than normal and we had been eagerly waiting for the flows to drop into the runnable window (of course this differed for some with a super early trip going in super high and walking all of the big stuff).

It was like waiting for a Christmas day which kept shifting further away and I was getting stressed that I wouldn't get it. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. With a little kiwi crew of Brad and Toni we joined up with Evan Garcia, Will Pruett and Drew Duvall. Evan wanted to wait until flows were a little lower becasue he was hatching a plan - more on that later.

Ok bear with me here because I have to set the scene a little bit.
The put in for Royal is on private land and even though it's only for 5 metres the owners/manager are known for stopping kayakers getting on and even having them arrested for tresspassing. For this reason you have to be cunning and get your boat all loaded up and your gear on before you get there. We did all of this at a pull over further up the road and it pretty much just served to make us more and more nervous about the run.

We got to the put in and it was a mad scramble getting boats off, running to the river and putting on before anyone came and tried to stop us. We had a 200m flat to warm up on, a portage around a dam/weir and then it was all on.
Royal gorge didn't muck around with any lead in rubbish - it was straight into some pretty steep, very tight, low volume creeking. With Evan and his photographic memory leading the charge we made good time through the steep, semi mank into a cleaner section (which was still steep). An hour and a half saw us at the first of the biggy's of the run.

Heath one from the lip

The heath springs gorge is the first staunch part of Royal. It starts off with a burly lead in then a 35-40 footer - Heath one. It then carries on to Heath two, a 40 - 50 footer into a pool with a slot 15 footer to exit. After this the river enters the lower Heath gorge which is a staunch set of 5+ rapids in an inescapable canyon.

Me running Heath one.

We all ran Heath one with good times except for Brad snapping his paddle. Evan and Drew were fired up for Heath two so we set safety/cameras everywhere. Evan went first and greased it (funny how he seems to do that a lot..). Drew went over the bars and his deck imploded and he only just made the eddy before the slot drop which would have been savage to run with a full boat. The boys then ran the gorge while we portaged around it.

Drew running Heath two

After the Heath gorge there were some fun rapids and slides until the rattlesnake entry gorge. This had a portage and then a rapid with a rather retentive hole in it.

Evan boofing clear

This lead us straight into our campsite for the night and possibly the sickest campsite I've stayed at on a river. Rattlesnake falls - a 50 footer is right next to it and the boys were fired up to run it as soon as we arived. They all had nice lines and we had a super chilled time at the camp that afternoon.The rattlesnake campsite - sick!

Brad on the rattler

Me sending it.

Day two kicked off with me and Toni firing the rattler up, she greased it and I went over the bars a little but it was still a pretty soft hit. Lots of choice rapids lead us slowly (or actually quite quickly) to the biggest drop in the run. Scott's drop is the stoutest thing I've seen over here so far, a 30 foot drop into a big hole into a slide into a 20 foot drop. It's unbelievably big and scary. Evan was fired up to run it so we quickly portaged around it and got out the throwbags and cameras.
Evan came in and styled the top of the drop but got kicked over the bars at the bottom hitting a rock in the landing and getting ejected. It was a super impressive line and unlucky that he didn't clean it.
Drew's line went a little diferently however.. He went over the bars on the first part but rolled up in the pool, he then had to work hard to get left and he din't quite make it. The same rock that kicked Evan threw him into the wall where he proceeded to get the equivalent of a curb stomping on the wall losing four teeth and getting a concussion just for good measure.

Drew just about to eat it.

This made things a little more serious, being so remote walking out was pretty much out of the question so Will and Drew decided to just bomb out in one day to get Drew to the dentist - no mean feat when you are concussed and juiced up on candy.
We carried on down to the last big drop on the run where Evan wanted to cap off his grand plan - run all of the big drops in Royal in one trip which hadn't been done before. Funnily enough he greased the 70 foot Wabena falls in the same freakish style he had done the rest of the run with.

Evan getting ready to take it deep on Wabena

After Wabena we cruised through some more rapids and stayed at another sick camp where we were mercilessly savaged by mosquitoes until dark.

Sweet as lazy boys even!

The last day was a bit of a slog through about 25 miles of easy rapids to the takeout where the ever reliable MUM was waiting to take us to the closest available fast food outlet.
Next up we are off to Dinky creek and the southern drainages which are coming in left right and centre. I'm fired up!!!!! (in dirty southern accent)

All pics from this run are from the esteemed Ms Toni George, chur!!!

Golden Gate

2010-07-02T08:38:00.000-07:00

The last couple of weeks here have been pretty busy, there were a lot of different plans happening at once so it was a bit of a juggling act trying to figure out what to do. After a cheeky run on the Lover's Leap section of the South American with Nick Wimsett and a bunch of Americans I finally managed to catch up with the old boys (they like to call themselves the masters team but we can't let them get too carried away) after a lot of missed communication via roaming NZ phones which don't work that well.

The call was for golden gate - another run on the South American which is supposed to be a long day of super cool rapids.
We got to the put in and found Mr Johnstone dozing peacefully while the others ran shuttle and it slowly transpired that we were going to have ten kiwis on a run in California - sick!

The run starts off pretty chill with everyone cruising down all over the show and then we got to the first scout. After this the gradient just stood up and didn't let up all day, sick boat scoutable boulder gardens interspersed with bigger rapids which precipitated scouts (or probes by John and James..) Everything for the day was ran except for F-111 which has a pretty terrible hole and no one could be bothered because it was right at the end.

Check the photos - this was my favourite 'river' run so far in Cali.

T Pickering on the runout of the first big rapid of the day - drainpipe

Snook probing 'Taco Bell - the last place you'd want to be'

Now I know this is semi bad form but apparantly this is a rare image - Mr Keith Riley getting a little mixed up and going over the main drop of Taco Bell backwards and upside down...

Me on my favourite rapid of the run, I'm not 100% but I think its called 'All Fucked Up'??

DJ in the midst of All Fucked Up

After a sick day we made a plan to do the upper Silver fork of the South American. We lost a couple of people and gained one so we still had a big crew. We had another cool day on another cool run - no photos but that's ok. It was mean catching up and paddling with more crew from home - B is coming soon which will be awesome but in the meantime... shiver.. Royal Gorge was in...

Kimshizzle

2010-06-14T08:22:00.001-07:00

The last week in Cali has been the best of our trip so far. We started off with a sick day in the Arches national park in Utah on our way home from Vail, then we had a pool party at a mates place.
We then got a little lap on the Slab creek section of the South fork American river - a cool little 4-5 mission.

Thursday saw us back in the UMC (Upper Middle Consumnes) for a sick day of creeking. Unfortunately Josh took himself out of the game trying to plug V-Slide upside down - we had to nurse a very sick, very sore little man out of the rest of the run.Me running what we dubbed 'no lookee' on the UMC (apparantly it has a name but it's way more fun making up your own)

Friday started slowly and we finally made it to do the summit run on the South Yuba which culminates in a sick drop called East meets West which got the hearts going nicely. Mr Neilson organised another party for us to go to down in Clear lake which we did in style and then Saturday dawned.....

The crew scouting east meets west

I pretty much got to live out a life dream - ride behind big mean wakeboard boat and try to huck myself until I blow an eardrum. Turns out Josh's friends came equipped with a sick house, a sick patio boat and an even sicker wakeboarding boat. We hung out all day cranking dance music and watching Wes and Vince throw down some savage tricks behind the boat and even getting to ride a little ourselves.

Me throwing the fronty, pic - Neilson

Vince packing a tantrum, pic - Neilson

We finally managed to drag ourselves away from paradise (it was a tricky decision) and rally to meet B1 and B2 (Barny and Jordy) in Oroville. They had just got off South Branch and were broken so the next day we found ourselves once again in the very capable navigational hands of Mr J Neilson winding our way into the hills once more for one of the runs we've been waiting for all season.... Big Kimshew Creek.
This thing gets talked about in reverent tones by all of the locals and semi-locals alike as being one of the 'big 5' - the five best day runs in Cali. So it was with a mixture of excitement and trepidation that we put on at the island portage for a day of adventure.

Josh showing me how to use the go-pro (I didn't really succeed)

The run kicked off in style with the first real rapid having a pushy lead in, to 15 foot auto boof. We then got stuck into a few hundred metres of pretty full on boulder gardens before another set of stacked rapids, some more boulder gardens, some more rapids, some more boulder gardens.. you get the picture??
Then the character changed and went all slidey which was super fun, low stress creeking. After a wee while of this we came to the first big one and the signal of the start of the stouts.
Kimshew falls is a pretty rowdy looking 40-ish footer with some reconnects etc which looks like it might air you out or send you over the bars. We were pleasantly surprised to find it goes a lot better than it looks and all had nice lines.

Kimshew falls from the top - check the stacked gorge below it, swimming would be awesome...

J-dog lining up first and greasing it

Me doing the same - I hit the water at the dream angle and came screaming out upright - soft as bro!!

After the falls was the sick gorge which had so many clean moves - It looked and felt like what I imagine the high sierra runs are like.. fingers crossed.
We portaged around triple drop which is super burly but goes - we didn't have enough time to set up the elaborate safety we thought we needed. After triple drop the river changed character and went 'cracky' - several slots and tight drops led us into the next big one.
Frenchies was named for some dude who bombed in and ran right and got punished as the drop is 30+ feet onto rocks on that side. It involves a portage of the entrance, a seal launch into a pothole and then a strong ferry across to set you up for the line. I was feeling fired up about it and decided to send it. Pulling out of the eddy I set my angle and rolled off a little left of centre. I saw the left flake go past and started to tuck - just as I felt my tail go a little past vert.. Big hit, semi over the bars but I rolled up fine with just a little sore head.

Geting ready for the hit

After Frenchies it was just rapid after rapid after rapid, everything went, hits were taken, rolls were had in dubious spots as we all lost energy. Finally we made it to the take out drop.

As is often the case - J-dog probing the line. In this case finding a rock in the bottom...

Jared buried in the curtain.

Me tired and just falling off. And yes I found the rock too.

This creek was the sickest thing I have ever run and also the sorest I've been at the end of a days boating. I can't wait to go back next time. Hopefully next time won't include the 10km walk out up the locked takeout road, but it's ok - the rose tinted sunnies have pretty much erased the walkout from my memory...

Consumption

2010-05-28T16:10:00.000-07:00

Apparantly it is summer here. Could've fooled me.
This last week has also been raining and cold all week but we've still managed to paddle most days despite spending large amounts of time playing Tony Hawk 3 (damn you Ben Jackson)
The run of the week has been the Upper Middle Consumnes. We did it on Monday with six of us and then went in yesterday with more water and ten of us. It turned into a bit of an epic with five swims, a broken paddle and a cracked boat.
I wont get too carried away with this post because Jamie and Jordy have got it pretty much covered on their blogs so check the links from here.
We're checking options just now and have a few things on the go so keep an eye out for our weekend antics.

Pauley

2010-05-26T12:59:00.001-07:00

Pauley creek was another little mission which people were saying was worthwhile - nice grade 4 in a super cool gorge. We rallied up through Downieville which is probably my favourite town so far in the states (think Arrowtown but way cooler and bigger) and met up with Leela and Toni and some other dudes. On the way in we saw a super cool looking gorge on the North Yuba which looked fun so we set shuttle below this (Pauley creek flows into the N Yuba).
Pauley turned out to be a little low but it was still fun with some cool boofs in a little mini gorge.

J dog running a little sloper to kick things off for the day

This right here children is a classic example of how to execute 'the burning man' Note the high arm position with weight as far back as possible - these are key features if you hope to finish the move in the classic, 'imploded deck to swim in hole' manner.

The last drop on Pauley - no it wasn't sweet, the camera managed to capture the moment just before my tail clipped and I found myself staring straight at the ledge at the bottom. awesome.

Feeling a wee bit despondent with the levels in Pauley we found redemption in some big water action in the gorge on the North Yuba - with big waves, big boils and big holes we had the time of our lives rallying down this section. Apparantly it has a name but I've forgotten it, but we had grins from ear to ear by the time we all popped out the bottom.

Summer?

2010-05-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

We haven't really been experiencing the textbook Californian summer of clear skies and super hot days - rain, hail and snow have pretty much been the go for the last week. As a result the water is still locked up in the snowpack for all of the big runs. Last week we got on a couple of small creeks along with the ever present South Yuba runs. We got on the Purdons section of the South Yuba (directly above the 49 run) with ten people and proceeded to blue angel four miles of grade 5 with ten people - needless to say I have no memories of any rapids (except where three of us got punished in a hole together) and no photos either.
One of the creeks we did get on was called canyon creek, it was flowing due to a release further upriver as part of a flow study (to see what sort of recreational use it gets). It started off pretty manky so the west coast part of our team (Jared) was off like a shot ("It's just like the Styx bro!!!") We followed at a somewhat slower pace not being quite so skilled at bouncing down tight boulder gardens blind.

When it did clean up there were some cool drops on bedrock - Skux getting it done.

Jared on the runout

Me on another little boof

After the bedrock there were some mini gorge rapids which proved to be quite punishing and we all took a few hits in some steep, tight rapids.
All in all it was a cool little mission - more NZ than California but it sounds like not many people have been in there so it was cool to get on something which doesn't go very often.

Chilling

2010-05-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

We've had a bit of a slow week here, we pretty much spent it waiting around for a chance to fix our car which had a terrible shudder (think massage chair) and so we were pretty limited in where we could go. We confined ourselves to the 49 to bridgeport section of the South Yuba which is only an hour away - and about the limit of what we could take from our van which felt like it was falling apart...
The 49 section is super cool, two hours of pool drop with some boulder gardens thrown in. There are so many awesome classic moves and no mank - and the best part... portages - 0
This run has become our afternoon/evening run when we've got nothing to do and we've had some mean runs down with lots of different crews. Here's a few pics.

Americans are funny

J dog on crack team/ten (we're unsure about the name because we can't understand Justin's accent when he's excited)

Jared landing the same

Me on another choice little boof

Me on the crux of the run - corner pocket, it has a tricky entrance down to a sticky hole and just to add to the experience, a terrible undercut which you are pretty much guaranteed to go into if you swim. Ask Jared - he came up blue, fun times.

Jamie boofing for the money

The mothership waiting patiently at the takeout.

Insert Cliche Here ............

2010-05-10T13:30:00.000-07:00

Alright kids, here we go...

We've been in California for five days now and its been pretty eventful so far. After the mandatory savage flight to LA, we were met by Paige and her mum in their car (I'm using the term loosely here - it was an F250 with duals on the back) for the 8 hour drive up to Auburn which is our base for the next three months.
That evening we were acquainted? with our sweet new pad - The trouse (or trouser) is like an old trailer which has kind of been added to to make a weird semi permanent dwelling, the water doesn't work so we have a hose in the window for dishes/cups of tea etc but we do have electricity so it's kind of like living in a tent with walls and power..

The sweet spew bag on the V-Australia flight. Obviously fully sick is now our new catch phrase.

Casual unnecessarily large ute. Note the extra wide fenders to accommodate extra unnecessary set of wheels.

Part of team dirtbag out the front of the trouse.

Anyway it basically goes without saying that our first night in the trouse turned into a bender, lots of choice dudes turned up to celebrate some random mexican holiday and we all know the best liquid to come from mexico...
One of said dudes was Justin Patt - Auburn local and paddler. Amidst much festivity a plan was hatched to do the 49 to bridgeport run on the South Yuba river.
The next day arrived at about 2pm and we rallied to do our first river in Cali - pretty good for our first day!! The run was a sweet grade 4-5 mission down a sick pool drop river with so many sick moves - just what the doctor ordered.
Friday was an organisation day. Mum - our trusty minivan, has a terrible shudder which renders her marginal for long missions on freeways so we're trying to sort that out and get her operational again.
The highlight so far though has been our Saturday mission though. The boys here are all fired up about the season because there is a heap of snow which hasn't even started melting yet. This means there will be heaps of sick runs coming in in the next few weeks.

One of these runs is one of the most iconic and photogenic of them all.. The south branch of the middle fork of the Feather river (yes I know its a mouthful but apparantly naming tributaries is not the go over here..) This thing is the business - everyone has seen the photos of endless ledge drops capped off with a perfect rolling 50 footer and it didn't disappoint. We rallied up there with Justin and Taylor Cavin and met a couple of others on the way. Here are some photos of the day.Me on the first 20 of the day - split falls

Taylor stomping all hell out of the same

The Tony Hawk drop - sickness

Justin flying off Tony Hawk

Jared doing the same

Taylor launching on high pressure 20 - this drop is named because it's right above 99 problems - a 40 footer which lands on a shelf and you have to make an eddy right above it..

China slide - because it takes you to China!! This slide was right above a huge portage and most of us didn't run it, we had to portage down and then do a super scary ferry across the top of a 100 foot death drop - going upside down was not an option.

Apparently we were in there at quite a high flow (like no one in our crew had been in there that high - ish awkward?) which made all the waterfalls nice and soft but brought in some sketchy moves like the China ferry which aren't usually there.

Jared running the last move of the day...

The take out is at the top of another huge set of unrun beasts (80 feet +)

The south branch is a sick run and pretty much the dream intro to California we were hoping for, some cool rapids, so many amazing drops and a nice big girl at the end to get the heart pumping!
Now we've got to fix our car and hopefully catch up with the rest of the kiwi crew here. We're off to do our new local run - 49 to bridgeport so we'll get some photos to throw up soon. Churrrrr

Summer creeking

2010-02-07T11:25:00.000-08:00

Its Sunday afternoon. I've just finished work after the early shift and head straight home to check the guages. The weather sites had been saying there was going to be heavy rain for the Kaimais the night before (this is no cause for excitement believe me. They call heavy rain warnings for every front these days - post OPC debacle) so I wanted to check the flows. It has been a pretty dry spell for creeking so we were all pretty fevered about any rain.
Reports started filtering back from the recon team on site (the people paddling the Wairoa), saying it was pouring down there with all the little tribs emptying brown muddy water into the main river...
"Sounds good" we say to ourselves, and proceed to rally a crew who are keen for a cheeky Tuakopai bomb.
We decide to wait for confirmation from the scout team about whether it was on or not to drive over. Unfortunately, said scout team consisted of three notoriously excitable characters for whom communication via cell phone falls a long way behind such things as flooded rivers and journeys to Mcdonalds to wait and see what level the flooded rivers will reach....
Anyway, to cut a long dribble short, the entire Kaimais got savaged by a rain bomb which made all the creeks/rivers/ditches go mental. The Wairoa was a metre above the seal launch rock (for those who don't know this is about 5-6m above normal release flow). The Tuakopai was too high to get on and Messr's Bayly, Sutton and Martin were almost ready to give up and come home. The Okere falls crew stayed put because we heard it was too high to run anything. The boys had one last check of their guage stick and found the Tuakopai was dropping so they persevered and were rewarded with a sick high water run on dark.
Anyway this rain set the scene for the next day. We spent the evening scheming and getting thoroughly over excited about what to run, finally coming up with a list of options depending on levels.
Waking up early we found lots of the creeks had dropped out leaving us with only a few options. B, me and Wills rallied with team cascades (Timmy, Pete and Scotty) over to the Wairoa to see what the levels were looking like. The Ngamuwahine looked ok so the call was made to roll into the upper. This meant a long day so I had to rearrange priorities for my afternoon.. My boss is choice - she lets me have time off to go creeking.
We set the shuttle and got our walk on into the very top of the Kaimais. The run starts right up on the plateau just meandering through the forest leaving everyone to wonder what was in store. Then it sits up into some cool read and run grade four that we had fun bombing through..

Scotty getting into the action - one of the early rapids

After a short while we got to the horizon line which signals the start of the money section - a sketchy slot into a 20 footer which we didn't run, then the biggest drop 'Handlebars'..

The lineup from downstream, handlebars is the biggy with the first drop above.

Scotty kicked things off by pioneering a new seal launch which saved us a shitty portage and set the scene for some good entertainment.
A name like handlebars inspires a lot of thought as to the possible consequences of a drop. And yes, it is perfectly named..
It's about a 35 foot-ish slide to not-quite-vert with a kicker halfway down which launches you out to hopefully clear the last part of it. If you don't quite clear it and your tail reconnects guess what.... Thats right, 35 feet, to violent kick, to land on your face. Dream scenario.

Me just about to take off. I had the benefit of watching nearly everyone else's lines and so managed to send it and clear the reconnect for a nice soft landing.

After handlebars had claimed its share of burning faces, it was down to the next eddy for a scout of the double drop - back to back 15's with a tricky entrance.

Timmy and me discussing the line for the first one (the line for the second one doesn't matter - you resurface and try and get a boof in before going off)

Double drop from below, we didn't get photos of anyone going off but there is some video which I'll try and get up.

After some stellar (and not so stellar) lines along with a couple of dented boats off double drop it was more fun grade four boulder gardens with only one portage out to the cars.

B lighting up a sweet little drop

Tim about half a second before his second brand new Ty Warp snapped clean in two..

We got to the cars and had a Korero about what to do. It was decided that three of us would carry on and do the normal Ngamu run and then out into the Mangakarengorengo for some nice clean big water, while the other three ran the shuttle.

Me and Wills cruising down the normal Ngamu run.

In true fashion I managed to take a roll in a nothing rapid after all the hard stuff on the day was over and had my thumbs/fingers remodelled by the ever obliging Kaimai rocks. This pretty much killed my buzz and I limped down the Mangas trying to stay out of trouble.

This is the very first move on the Mangas. Mean.

The boys, (Pete and Wills) had no such issues and were loving the big bouncy rapids.

The abyss from below

They both fired the abyss and had sweet lines, (a sweet line on the abyss consists of boofing into the guts and managing to stay upright for the rest of the rapid)

Mr Pete Lodge being blunt about things. - What a pun.

Sick day, sick crew, now it's back to laps on the Tuna until we get some more rain...

Here's a little vid, just shot off the boys' point and shoots.

OBP!!

2010-01-19T16:36:00.000-08:00

Why haven't I posted anything on here for months....? Combination of factors really - No fast internet access (thanks Telstra - you suck), Neilson has most of our missions covered on his blog, But most of all, all of our crew are back for summerand we've been having way too much fun to worry about such menial tasks as updating obscure blogs that no one reads anyway.

In saying that, here's a summary of our summer so far...

Random surf trips with no rhyme, reason or destination - the best kind.

Every Sunday we go to church. Except that the god we pray to tends to lean towards cyclones and cold fronts rather than forgiveness and retribution.Sanga, rollercoaster rapid - Wairoa river. Photo - Lu Urwin

Binge drinking takes up a large proportion of nights.

Party at Soph's - Ohope

Followed by all sorts of antics the next day...J dog - Superman whale grab

Josh is our resident film maker complete with all manner of electronics to play with.

Neilson/Fox - Trout pool falls, Kaituna

There have been some big missions... Team Okere made the pilgrimage to Taupo to fire the stout that lives there...

Sanga - Middle drop of Aratiatia

Followed by a mission the next week to the central plateau to take on the awesome tree trunk gorge.

Me dropping into the most amazing place I have ever been in a kayak

Then it was new years... Corogold!!! Katchafire, Tiki, Kora, Shapey, Sunshine sound system.....

G Brown. Nuff said.

Lake Taupo beckoned with some sweet times in Kinloch with the family.

Of course there were ulterior motives too.... Waihaha waterfall (And no it doesn't go - death slot in the lead in.)

Complete with the sickest jetski ride up to it!!

The notorious Okere falls crew complete with toys, moustaches and creepy pick up lines.

Keep an eye on Whitewater-koa for footy of the big stuff.

East coast??

2009-10-11T22:53:00.000-07:00

Things I learned from our last mission:

1 - Mothers are bad for you. Not the people. The energy drinks. I already knew this but time had blurred the memories of what happens when you drink three of them in three hours.

2 - Take a topo map. Then your walk in will only take the specified 2-3 hours instead of five and a half.

3 - The east coast is the business. When the next cyclone comes, go there.

In the midst of a post race day hangover, with no motivation to do anything except sleep, I found myself being turned back five minutes up the Taupo road because it was "snowed under mate!" Getting back home I found the Taihape and Waikaremoana roads were also closed because of a freakish spring storm and the road south was shut because some nutter was running around with a gun.

This left the interesting situation of being essentially stranded at home. Not too much of a problem when you have a fire to sit next to and a deep pantry but it was a slight issue because we were supposed to be doing the motu the next day... (turned out it was ish high - 1200 cu at the bottom...) Anyway after much frantic communication with the other half of the team (DnB Bayly - in Ohope), "Where's the rain!?, What are the Kaimai's doing?, shall we hit the Mangawhio?", we remembered a sneaky little third option - "bro the Ruakituri is going straight up".

So with the entire east coast getting hammered we made a plan to meet at an obscure tiny little place called Te Reinga which boasts an impressive five houses, six horses and a big beast of a waterfall. With the Ruakituri looking a little high (like Africa big) we decided to do little creek just south of Te Reinga which the Matt Danes had sent me some info on the day before. It started off super promising with lots of cool hydroslide action and a couple of big drops which needed more water. But then it suffered from some dodgy strainers and went a bit flat. But all was not lost, after the creek joined the Ruakituri we had the sickest surf session in our creek boats all the way to the takeout!

Then the next part of the plan emerged. A quick Korero (discussion, for those of you not bilingual like me), and we decided to stay somewhere in the vicinity of Wairoa and have another look at the Ruakituri the next day. A few quick phone calls and we were en route to Colin and Marg Baynes' house for the night. Some awesome hospitality from them saw us reluctant to leave the next day but we had places to walk and shit to run.

The upper upper Ruaktiuri was pioneered by Ben, Zac and Elby last year and had sparked a lot of interest since then due to one particular photo of a multi tiered slide which looked amazing. So ten thirty on Wednesday found us in about the most remote area of the country looking at a rather large hill which we had to wander over (rose tinted sunnies anyone?). We were guessing the walk would take about 2-3 hours and hopefully wouldn't be too bad. Little did we know...

Five and a half hours later we stood at the side of the put in slide (yes it was the multi tiered one) having been stuck in mud, lost, bush bashed, lost again and stung by nettles. All thoughts of our walk were immediately forgotten as we prepared to put on and run some Papa goodness.

What followed was two hours of choiceness.

I've been waiting to use a new word I made up for a while now so prepare for a rant. If the plural of hoof is hooves and the verb of groove is grooving... Guess where I'm going with this. Thats right, I feel it's time we expanded our vocabulary as kayakers so the plural of boof must be booves and the verb must be booving???
Anyway, thats what we did down the Ruakituri - got our boove on - Slides, big water rapids, west coast boulder gardens and clean drops made for one of the most unique rivers I've seen. And the best part - portages = 0

Check it. Note - we didn't video most of the best rapids because, well, we were just having to much fun. And true to form, it was getting dark. Same old.

After this is was an all out rush back to vegas over three hours of winding, gravel, horse infested road - hence the 1.5 litres of energy drink. We arrived home at two in the morning just in time for Daryl to drive to Hamilton and start work at four. He's a committed man.

What a cow? not a cow!

2009-09-30T14:22:00.000-07:00

"You guys can't paddle that, you're idiots! don't you read the newspapers?" This is how our latest creeking foray into the Kaimais started.
For the last wee while rumours have been rife around here about a new creek that was sounding like it could be our answer to the Styx on the west coast. Almost natural flowing, nice and steep and super easy access.

But the story doesn't start with that. Last Friday, after I did a late night mission to Te Awamutu to catch the Mangawhio (and then missed it again), I got back to the falls only to hear that Brad, Ryan Lucas and Petey had gone to the Kaimais to run this new creek - the Whatakau. At about seven o'clock rumours started trickling in that something had gone wrong...
Slowly all the pieces came together and we heard the pretty sobering news that young fulla was in Tauranga hospital with a broken back after running a big slide. This news, while pretty bad, only served to get the gossip really flowing, "It's a first D", "It got ran the other day", "It's even steeper downstream"....

Naturally we had to check it out. With the weather coming to the party and filling it up a little, Big dog Bayly and I decided to go and see what the fuss was about and what the bottom section held. After the usual logistical organisational hiccups (get lost in Tauranga trying to find a topo map, stop at bakery, etc etc),we finally got to the top of the creek where we met a little resistance in the form of a farmer who was convinced he would be the last person we ever saw, "Look if it was able to be done we all would have done it", "I've done some kayaking myself ya know".

Anywho, we decided we might just back ourselves on this occasion and off we went. The put in is just below a massive, savage, unrunnable beast of a slide and we kicked off straight into some cool little slides and drops. A little way down we decided that the "Almost natural flows bro!" call may have been a bit optimistic.

B about to get on

Contemplating a terrible slippery portage. The other option looked like fall off - to piton. More water and she'd be sweet.

Everything would have been mean with another couple of cumecs to pad it out. Anyway eventually we came to Ryan's slide (don't think there'll be any challenges to that name) and both decided we were quite fond of our backs so we got our portage on with the help of a pipe which runs down the side of the rocks.

Ryan's slide. The top two thirds look inviting but the bottom has a few rocks. More water? who knows.

After that it was the inevitable, kayak eating, elbow pad needing, Kaimai boulder gardens which Definitely needed more water. Just as we were starting to hate on said boulder gardens, we came to another horizon line into a gorge which precipitated another scout. The entrance rapid loooked a little rowdy with rocks inc, and then we got a look at the exit drop. Money. A perfect twenty footer with the roll in - to boof - to stomp type deal that most kayakers slobber over. My boat decided to run it without me as I was portaging the first one so B got to send 'er first to retrieve it and get it back up to me.

Sending it.

Mean

This drop definitely made the day - more boulder gardens another portage around another unrunnable beast and she was all over.

Another Kaimai creek ticked off, not quite in the same league as the Tuakopai etc but definitely worth a go with some more water, and, funnily enough we didn't die. Go figure.

Burton open

2009-08-26T16:01:00.001-07:00

So things have been pretty slack on the paddling front lately,just general laps on the Tuna and the occasional smokey run to keep things interesting, however, we did have a sick week in Wanaka a while back for the circus that is the Burton open.
Basically it was an all expenses paid trip to wanaka to help out at the open and then party in the town at night.
In cases like this pictures are usually way better at doing the talking but I forgot to pack my camera because I was super hungover from my birthday party the night before. Hence the blatant stealing of a video off youtube for your entertainment.
All the big kids were there and gave a whole new meaning to hucking - Mr S White is a freak and set the bar with not only previously unheard of double corks in the pipe but he had to do them back to back. And switch. Enjoy.

Maraetotara Stream

2009-07-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

Given that I'm from the Hawke's Bay, it's only natural that I would love it if there was a sweet creek run preferably within an hours drive of my house, with big drops, clean rapids and an easy shuttle. Sounds a bit far fetched I know, but I haven't given up just yet.
With a masssive storm thrashing the east coast I was watching the weather charts somewhat whimsically from up in Rotorua umming and aahing about whether to head back home to find some water. With awkward work hours and no one else to rally with I had basically given up hope. That is until Mr S. Davidson turned up at the Tuna on holiday from uni and jokingly I said to him "Bro shall we head to the bay tonight?"
No hesitation,
"Yeah bro lets do it"
So the foundations were laid for a long distance overnight mission to the bay to try and catch the water.
We cruised down home on Wednesday night and checked the flow guages praying it was still holding up. With about 12 cu she was looking good to go. So at the ludicrous hour of 5am (I'd forgotten that time of day existed) we were out of bed and on our way out to Waimarama beach.
Credit at this point must collectively go to Matt Danes and Joshy Neilson for finding and publicising this creek respectively. By some freakish coincidence it's one of the only watersheds in Hawkes Bay that has a flow guage which makes it easy to check etc.
With the flow peaking at 30 cu two days earlier and then bouncing up and down a bit (we put on with about 5cu at the top) we turned up at the farmers door (waking him up in the process) and got the low down on where to put on (below the floodgates/man made death sieves).

We knew there were some drops in there somewhere and for the first few hundred metres this was all that kept me going as we were constantly getting out to portage willow choked messes of rapids. We finally got to a mini gorge with more native style trees and the entrance drop was a sweet 1o footer. The next hour was basically more of the same - mini gorges with cool entrance drops and then some form of strainer/manky/sieve - some of which were runnable and some not so much.
I was getting slightly despondent at the amount of portaging we were doing and then we came around the corner to find the money section. A ten footer into a fifteen footer then a cool little double drop then a slide. The flow was a little low for them to be super clean but they still made it all worthwhile. After this was all little cascade/ledge things which again would be sweet with double the flow. Then in the true spirit of unplanned, spur of the moment missions we slogged through an hour of flatwater only to get forced off the river by more devil tree strainer pile ups. "Sounds average" I hear you think, and you would be correct except that we paddled past about three ideal takeouts kidding ourselves there were more drops 'just around the corner'
Anywho here's some pictures and a little vid of our adventure.

Now for the inevitable question.... Would I go do it again?? The top section is a catch 22 - the bigger drops would all profit from more water. But, then there would be heaps of savage strainers which may or may not come into play. The good section and everything down from there would be super sick with more water. All in all, if it comes up and I'm in the bay I'll definitely be back in there.

Vegas

2009-06-16T21:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finally bitten the bullet and moved to Rotorua to save the hassle of driving here every weekend. We've got a sweet pad with a lake view and an excellent potential trampoline site which I intend to fill as soon as I have enough money to live on.
It was pretty much an ideal start to residing here, I arrived on the Thursday, then on Friday a dirty big front came through and landed on the Kaimais. So naturally Saturday saw about ten of us putting on the Tuakopai/pae. It was pretty low so we were trying to beat the water which resulted in no one getting any photos but it was an amazing run which I cant wait to get with more water. Then it was a quick run down the Mangakarengorengo/Wairoa, by this stage the crew had swelled to about 15 and my lasting mental image of the day is of a riot of colours all bombing down different lines on the last rapid of the Manga's at once. It was pretty choice.

So that was two weekends ago and since then we've pretty much had bluebird days which basically = the Kaituna at threes - not super exciting when you're too cold to roll/play anywhere. This lead to a cunning plan to get a cheeky smokey gorge run in. Brendan (as always) was one of the instigators of said plan so it was basically a given that we'd be paddling out in the dark. Same old. Anyway it was good fun with the log rapid claiming another victim. Our current scheme is that hopefully gnarly is good to go at 4/5's so we don't have to do the portage. We'll see...

Anyway, I digress. Seeing as we are well into the throes of winter, I thought I'd try and go for the optimistic approach and cheer people up with a movie of happy fun summer times.
Although in saying that it could also have the opposite effect and make you even more depressed. If you're in NZ that is. If you're overseas then you will have forgotten what winter is like anyway, so it doesn't really apply.
Therefore, watch at your peril (or leisure - you choose).

Queen's birthday weekend

2009-06-03T02:26:00.000-07:00

Lake Waikaremoana lies in the heart of the Urewera national park. It is one of the most remote areas in the north island and is a long gravel winding road from whatever direction you drive from. For this reason it seems to have escaped the attention of kayakers and so there isn't a whole lot of info on creeks/drops etc in there.
The lake is a mean spot, being super remote and surrounded by bush it has a cool atmosphere and amazing scenery.
So with my family deciding to go there for queens birthday weekend, I thought it would be rude not to take a kayak to scout and hopefully run some new stuff. Brendan came over on Saturday night (having taken seven hours to arrive due to scouting every drop he saw on the way) and after an epic game of 500 on Saturday night (I know, exciting stuff huh!) we made a plan to scout as much as we could on Sunday.

I had seen a big slide on the way in and so we went to scout this first in the hope that it had come up overnight with the rain, but unluckily it was still too low. However after looking at the map we saw there was a drop on the Waikaretaheke which we decided to have a look at. It turned out to be a sweet little grade four rapid and was a fun start to the day.

B at the bottom of the drop on the Waikaretaheke

Me eyeing up the next move

Getting the boof on.

After this we boosted back to the visitors centre at Aniwaniwa where there were some big drops on the map close to the road. One of them was too big/shallow/manky to run but the others (Aniwaniwa and Bridal veil falls) looked like they had marginal lines.
So with these drops in tje back of our minds we carried on around the lake to the creek we hoped would bring us the goods. On his way in, B had noticed a steep section on the Hopruhine river which definitely looked promising. We hoped there was some more sweet drops below the section we could see from the road.

The view from the road of the Hopruhine.

Alas it was not to be. Just around the corner from where you can see in the picture, there was one more sweet drop and then the river fell out of the sky through a boulder garden with boulders the size of houses. It was a sievey, cavey, loggy, manky section with insane gradient which does not, and will most likely never go.
Super gutted we tried to mission up to the bottom of the gorge to try and run the exit drops but they were a mess and not worth the effort.

So it was a bit disappointing not to be able to run the choice section but now we started having the thoughts which go through your mind when you really want to go kayaking. They went something like this..
Me: "Bro do you reckon those drops at the visitors centre go?"
B: "Mmmm, yeah I reckon we'd probably make it down them"
Me: "Shall we have a think about them tonight and decide tomorrow?"
B: "Yeah lets go do that in the morning"
So pretty much we talked ourselves into running the first drop the next day and away we went.
Monday morning dawned with about 8cm of snow on the ground and a vicious southerly cranking but for some reason we still thought it was a good idea?
Anyway this is how it went. The drop was called Bridal veil falls. Check out the video below.

Not exactly ideal - flat land a 45 footer into green sideways and upside down - it was probably a first D just because no one else has been silly enough to try it but it was still funny. We were both sweet and we'd fed the addiction for another weekend. The other drops might go with more water but they're still marginal.
There's still some more stuff in there to be looked at with more time and water, no doubt we'll be back at some stage to check it out.

Hawkes Bay Represent!

2009-05-28T01:19:00.000-07:00

co·er·cion (noun)
co·er·cion[ kō úr'n ]
1. forcing of somebody to do something.
2. force used to compel somebody.

I like this word.

It covers all sorts of scenarios; It is a classic technique of students used to persuade others to drink on weeknights, to spend money on toys instead of essential items (like food) and to guilt trip people into thinking they are carrying kayaks up a terrible razorback ridge with no water in sight because you have to do it "to pass my course bro".
However on this occasion, my intentions had no ulterior motive other than to run some shit.

On Saturday night while having a peaceful night in with the family (due to funds being absolutely non-existent), while watching the weather, I heard the words which make the ears of any self respecting kayaker prick up. "Heavy rain warnings for the Hawkes Bay ranges, expect 150mm inland and up to 80mm down lower". In the Hawkes Bay, this is pretty much unheard of so all of a sudden, said kayaker was paying intense interest to weather websites, flow websites, rainfall websites and every other website vaguely related to these topics.

Sounds a bit fanatical I know, but there was a good reason for it. For three years I had been slowly gathering info on the creek which I basically grew up next to. Usually a trickle, I had heard it took about 150mm to flood. Hence the intense scrutiny of rain guages etc.
On the map the creek looked like it had good gradient and was quite a tight gorge. In the words of Ping Lawrence - the local farmer "No, you dont want to kayak that, its full of big boulders" The ears pricked up even more.

So with frantic recruitment (facebook is marvellous), I convinced Ryan Hunt to make the drive from Rotorua to Hastings - not a drive usually associated with kayaking (unless its going the other way), hence the coercion part. I had to sell it to him but full credit to the man - he was committed, leaving Taupo at six in the morning and arriving at mine with another recruit Matt, who he picked up on the way down, to come and hopefully get on the first descent of the Omahaki stream.

We got to the put in after doing the standard shuttle drama and she was looking good to go. We got on and ran some fun, (if quite shallow) grade three stuff which was ticking along nicely. About twenty minutes in Ryan realised he had left the key to his car on the front seat of my car - everything had been going far too smoothly.

The put in to the unknown and unrun - mean!

The gradient started to pick up a bit as we entered what I knew was the steeper section. Just how steep I was unsure because, despite all my intentions to do so I hadn't quite got around to scouting the gorge in the summer....

Ryan on one of the first little drops

However it all worked out sweet and we discovered a fun run with some technical grade four rapids and grade three boogie in between. The rapids themselves were reminiscent of the Rangitikei at low flow but not as long. The cool thing about it was that although it was probably a little low and boney in places, it looked like it would be a mean, non stop freight train at high flows with nothing bad to cap the runnable levels.

Me crankin' on it

The end of a tricky little off-edge-S turn-boofy kinda thing

After the gradient sat down again, it was a run down to the main Ngaruroro river which was charging, and a fun big water muck aorund to the take out. Massive thanks to the Beamishes for lending us a car to go and run our shuttle with - it would've been a long walk otherwise....

Matt coming through one of the last rapids.

It wasn't huge, it wasn't super steep, it didnt have any mean waterfalls, but its the creek that runs through my place and it goes. And in the Hawkes Bay, that is definitely saying something!

Now I just have to sit and wait for 250mm of rain in the ranges......

California dreaming

2009-04-30T18:03:00.000-07:00

I'm not jealous of everyone who's going to California this/next week to go creeking at all.

Why would I be when I've got cold wet Rotorua to stay home for.

Lies.

Of course I'm jealous, I've even had sadistic thoughts of hoping people get savage beatdowns to remind them that back to back summers and clean granite 20 footers aren't all they're cracked up to be.

More lies.

I'd happily take beatdown every day to be getting on a plane for LA tomorrow bound for 30 degree days and endless slides.

But anyway, enough of the ranting, last weekend there was a massive crew in Vegas and after the mandatory party on Friday night, we succumbed to the peer pressure from B and rallied to do a run of the entire Kaituna. As always, there was a token hungover person (Berno), and it just so happened that he was also the only one who hadn't paddled trout pool, awesome gorge, gnarly gorge or smokey gorge - ideal.
So we put on and did the normal run, and then awesome, and then all of a sudden people had stopped talking and joking (and breathing fo some of us) because now we were in the last eddy before you drop into Gnarly gorge. For those out there who aren't kayakers (and for those who are), the best way to describe this gorge is like the biggest set of stairs in a house with the highest walls you've ever seen in your life - it literally just drops away in a non stop twisting, turning white rollercoaster. At one point I was back paddling flat out to stop from crashing into Jamie and Berno who were checking out the bottom of the river side by side.
The lines all turned out to be super cool and easier than I thought they would be but its still definitely the most committing place I've ever been into. After gnarly we busted down through smokey and were met with hot chips by Soph and Hess, Chur!!! It was a mean day and a cool feeling to paddle all the sections of the tuna in one go.

On Sunday we drove down to the central plateau to hit up the upper Waihohonu which is a walk in trip that is spring fed and flows off the side of Mt Ngaruhoe. This means it flows all year and you get some sweet, super tight, super low volume creeking for the easiest 1 hour walk in ever.
The river keeps dropping into these crazy little mini canyons which mostly have a big(ish) entrance drop and then tight little rollercoaster sections to exit. It's all pretty easy to scout but hard to portage and the gorges all look real scary because you cant see around the corner, (then it turns out to be flat) so there were a few nervous faces at some of the entrances to the gorges.
About halfway is the crux of the run, it has several names, none of which are super inspiring - touching dicks with the devil, the drain plug and the death sieve being the worst of these. As these names imply there is a terrible sieve on one side, and a slot on the other side and the catch is that you want to run as close to the sieve as possible. But not too close. Then its a slide over a rock into a 20 footer. It's one of those situations where the portage is worse than the rapid though so we all ran it.
The rest of the run was sweet except for butters and soph logging some out of boat time and Butters folding his brand new Mystic. Guts.
Then it was back to Taupo for a roast and a spa courtesy of Anna - she's amazing, and a general shit talking session about the last two days.
I didn't manage to get any photos of these days so you'll just have to take my word for it but on Monday we went to a little park and huck out of Turangi to cap it all off.

Soph styling Poutu falls

Jamie lining her up

Berno off the lip.

Freestyle nats

2009-04-14T22:33:00.000-07:00

A while back we had the freestyle nationals at Fulljames just out of taupo. While it wasn't a huge turn out, what improved it vastly was the fact that it was the Auckland canoe clubs annual trip to Fulljames too. Basically this meant they were having a massive party on the Saturday night which we were shamelessly going to take advantage of.
The comp was sweet, sunny as, a cool bunch of people and the added bonus of watching the hapless aucc paddlers swim down the rapid at regular intervals.
It goes without saying that we had a massive night on the Saturday and then after a few more sessions on the wave on Sunday we called it quits. We even managed a cheeky Huka run on the way home to cap it all off perfectly.

(all photos c/o Brendan Bayley/Soph Hoskins)

Josh winding up

B throwing down

One of the crazy ass Jetskiers who hadn't quite mastered the concept of "I'll have a turn, then you have a turn" prefering to blue angel that shit and nearly land on top of each other.

The crew in the lead in to Huka

Soph busting her first time off the drop

If that's not a happy face I don't know what is.

Fast times in Tauranga

2009-04-07T15:05:00.000-07:00

It was the week after Bullerfest (a massive kayaking party disguised as a competition) and I still hadn't made it home yet. I was doing some instruction on the Mohaka and thanks to the wonders of technology (apparantly Iphones get reception there) we heard it was dumping down on the Kaimai ranges in Tauranga. The Kaiamai's are home to some mean creeking runs like the Tuakopai so I was super keen to get amongst it. After rolling into Okere falls on Friday night and getting in touch with Mr Barnabus Young and Greg Thomas, it was all go for some sweet creeking on Saturday.

Greg had all sorts of options on offer but the one which seemed like a goer was the upper Ngamuwahine. Only run a few times by some of the locals, word was that it had a super steep section and some cool drops. So after meeting up with some more of the crew at the take out we headed right around the other side of the ranges to get to the put in for what was hopefully going to be a mean day.

The old nerves were jangling a bit as we put on, mostly due to the fact that Greg and Blair kept reminiscing about the last time they ran it "Oh bro remember when I got concussed on that drop and then swam the next rapid...."

Anyway, the run had a fun little grade 4 lead in with some cool moves and then we came around the corner to see the river disappear over a horizon line.

And then another horizon line.

In fact from what I could see, the next eddy was a long way and lots of stacked drops down.

The first couple of drops we portaged due to the rocks which lived at the bottom of them but then it was straight into handlebars, a 30 foot slide with a kicker 2/3rds of the way down which had sent people 'over the bars' so to speak.

from there it was a couple more drops, then a rest, then into another sweet double drop which saw some interesting lines.

Barny looking back up at handlebars and the drops above it

Matt coming over the exit drop of handlebars

DJ somehwere in the middle of the big slide

Me running the bottom of the double drop

After the double drop, the gradient sat back down again and there was some more sweet grade 4 down to the take out. Then some of us ran the normal Ngamuwahine run and out into the Mangakarengorengo for some sweet bigger water, while the others went and did the shuttle.

All in all she was a mean day - bring on the winter storms!

(All photos c/o Barny Young)

Central Plateau

2009-04-07T14:30:00.000-07:00

The central plateau has some sweet rivers and even better it has some sweet waterfalls. We did a mission down there to go and ride some of these bad boys. Matariki falls on the Whakapapa river was the big one that B and Tyler had been eyeing up so we went to check it out.

(all photos c/o Tyler Fox)

It turned out that the river was pretty low and no one was keen to take on the falls at that flow. So now we were stuck above a 40 - 50 footer that we couldn't run and a big walk back out.

So we took option C.

Yeaahh!!!

After chucking the boats off and then ourselves we went to run another little drop on the Whakapapa road so Josh could test his new wire cam system.

The backdrop for the day

Unfortunately Josh's batteries were flat so the wire cam didn't work, but it was still a fun drop to play on.

Josh filming with me running it.

Place of the drifter

2009-04-07T03:01:00.000-07:00

In the centre (ish) of the north island, there is a place, which to quote Sam Sutton is, "the epicentre of the world". I'm unsure about the world bit but I would have to concede it is possibly the epicentre of north island kayaking. I recently found out that Okere means 'place of the drifter' in Maori. This is probably the most apt name for a kayaking community anywhere in the world as kaykers are notorious for travelling the world chasing summer. Okere falls is located on the edge of lake Rotoiti, 15 minutes out of Rotorua and is home to a cool bunch of kayakers, a sweet sweet local store, and most importantly, the Kaituna river.

With warm water, a short shuttle, a mean playhole, cool waterfalls, and some tight, long and committing gorges, the Kaituna is a kayakers paradise. Here are some photos to do the talking.

Butters busting a loop in the hole.

The picturesque Okere falls

looking out over the lake

Jamie in the guts of smokey gorge (photo- Tyler Fox)

Me in the goodness that is smokey gorge (photo- Tyler Fox)

Smokey falls (photo - Tyler fox)

Basically the Kaituna has four sections. The top section is the most well known with heaps of cool rapids in a very short (1.5km) gorge. This makes it super popular and easy to run. Below the normal run is awesome gorge which is spectacular as it is only two metres wide in places with 50 metre high walls, the run is basically a hydroslide for kayaks with not many places to stop once you're in. Below awesome gorge is gnarly gorge. There is a good reason it is called gnarly gorge - it is steeper, higher and more committing the awesome and I heard a quote which pretty much summed it up the other day "bro if there were no trees in gnarly, there wouldn't be any rapids". Sound like fun? Below gnarly gorge is smokey gorge. Brendan Bayley and Tyler Fox are the curators of this gorge with the most runs, quickest run and darkest run (head torches anyone?) and will promote it at every opportunity (hence the darkest run). This gorge is mind blowing! the river widens out and almost turns bouldery and then its basically a three hour waterslide with no pools and a few bigger rapids in there to keep you on your toes. Then it has a 45 minute, dead flat paddle out to feed your k1 fetish.

The Tuna is a mean place to hang, hence me spending half of my summer there. Massive chur to Lu, Tyler, and the girls for letting me crash at their places all summer like the bum I am.

Summer

2009-04-07T02:07:00.000-07:00

Summer has definately been a mixed bag. On the one hand I got diagnosed with Hodgkins disease right at the start of the sunny season. This meant chemo every second week, being hungover for five days straight, no drinking, and getting sunburnt in five minutes flat. "Sounds average" I hear you say - and you would be partly right. BUT - there was an upside... Turns out that I was now one of those people who you pay your taxes for; thats right, Auntie Helen (and now uncle John) were going to give me money every week because I couldn't work for summer... So for nine days out of every fortnight, my car got loaded up and with my sickness benefit in hand, feeling good as gold, I'd go trundling off on an adventure.

The glass is definately half full...

The mighty Rolla on a mission on the central plateau

Chasing water.

2009-04-07T01:34:00.000-07:00

What up.

So basically I made a blog so I can feed my ego and to hopefully keep everyone (if there even is anyone) up to date on the happenings in my life that I think are pretty choice. Chasing water seems to be a theme which covers nearly everything I do

and hopefully over time there will be missions from kayaking, wakeboarding, surfing, snowboarding and kiteboarding which will give people something to look at and maybe even inspire someone to get out there and get amongst it.

Work less.

Play more.

Peace.

Photo - Tyler Fox