Day 16: Monday 19/4/04
– Wanaka
Accommodation: Wanaka
217
Mount Aspiring Road
Wanaka
Phone 03 443
7360 Fax 03 443 7354
Days Activity: River Trip on the
Sight Seeing
News
for the Day By : Tiki
MATT
SWAM, MATT SWAM, MATT SWAM (WE THOUGHT HE WAS THE COACH) HAHA
We
had an early start this morning with a bit less complaining then usual because
we were all exited about the river trip.
The drive to the Kawarau river
had some amazing scenery through some really nice mountains. We met Sarge, Mike
Dawson, Mike Hoffman, Aaron Osbourne, Brydon March and Abby (to Jonno’s
delight) at the river to start the “Roaring Meg” run. We walked down the steep hill which Sarge told us had been used in one of the Lord of the rings
movies where they’d built a big arch over the river. It was an amazing trip through the gorge with
some exiting rapids, the favourites were the whirlpool, man eater where Ros was very skilful to get out of the nice hole after taking
a bad line, and rollercoaster, a series of huge waves that flipped a few
paddlers over backwards and shot most way up into the air. The most challenging
parts of the river were the continuous boils that were great for doing tail
stands in. When we finished the run we
had lunch then drove upstream to look at “Nevis Bluff”, some decided, looking
from the top of the cliff which was about 100m high that they could handle it,
but when they walked down to look at it from river level most changed their
minds. The two Mikes decided to brave
this grade 5+ water and after a long look with Roy the first crazy person to
paddle these rapids they got in and we all stood and looked on terrified for
them from the cliff above. To our relief
they all survived. Matt was disappointed
that he didn’t join then in doing the trip down
When
we’d finished at “Nevis Bluff” we drove upstream again to run the “Dog Leg”, it
is a grade 3+ rapid and everyone enjoyed it.
The best part was the ‘Do little do nothing wave’ as well as the amazing
scenery. Supposedly Matt’s deck popped
and he had no option but to swim, no one is to sure whether this is the truth
or not, so we will have to analyse the video that the skilful photographers
obtained from the cliff above after escaping a mother pig and her piglets. They only just jumped the fence in time and
had to scramble through wild rose bushes on the way back because the pig was
following them. There were a few good rapids within the “Dog Leg” run, all the rapids were very intense. Everyone had fun at the end of the trip
getting sucked into whirlpools. It was
dark by then so we had to get out and go home to have a yummy dinner of pizza
and then most went straight to bed.