Following Footsteps of River Runers - Inspired by ‘Wild Rivers’

“49 years ago John Mackay and two others set off to tube raft one of the most challenging rivers in NZ. They survived and the tale was published in the book John authored ‘Wild Rivers’. How much easier would the route be 5 decades later with state of the art equipment?

Join a team of 5 to follow the footsteps of these early river runners into the wilderness of the Kahurangi National Park via the Karamea River.”

— Deane

Photo credits: John Mackay & Megan Dimonzantos

The fully loaded tube raft of 1974 [photo Kohn Mackay]

In the mid-90s I remember coming across the book Wild Rivers and being intrigued by the history and ingenuity required but also being “too cool” for school with our fancy plastic creek boats. The book details some of the author John Mackay’s earliest forays into some of the most challenging rivers in NZ in rafts made on the side of the river based around 2 truck tire inner tubes.

I was cutting my teeth on some of the same rivers as a commercial raft guide, The Clarence, Buller, and especially the Karamea. This river was the spark and catalyst for many things in my river running past. It was my first ever rafting trip cajoled into it by an ex-girlfriend and instantly entranced. It was how I gained my wings for trip-leading Class 4-5 multi-day raft trips. It was where I met my wife at the little village that sat at the coast where this magical river ended its tumultuous journey from deep within Kahurangi National Park. The river has a long catchment (by NZ standards) and a history of uses and exploration. The headwaters are close to Tasman Bay and therefore the corridor offered travel by both Maori and early Europeans.

Roaring Lion Lake [photo Megan Dimonzantos]

Above rafting Roaring Lion Rapid in the 90’s

By the time John and the team decided it might be a jolly good adventure to tube raft it from the Wangapeka track in 1974 part of it had been claimed to be run by a couple of other parties in ex world war 2 Air Force life rafts or canvas canoes. The river had been well visited mostly by deer cullers but also in the rush to have a go at any semblance of gold prosperity.

The fully laden tube rafter on foot [photo John Mackay]

The river in places is severe due to huge earthquake slip rapids from limestone boulders which form some of the biggest sieve conditions. The largest of these slip rapids is downstream of 2 larger tributaries the Beautiful River and the Roaring Lion, this is the name that the rapid at the end of the backed-up lake is called, and aptly so.

In the heart of Roaring Lion [photo Megan Dimonzantos]

When we arrived at Roaring Lion Rapid we were on plan and had groveled through the 2.5-day hike from the Little Wanganui road end and slipped and slid through the upper river and the many boulder garden rapids rueing the lost opportunity to have more water but also feeling very fortunate to have packrafts and not be struggling with tube rafts. Of note is on John’s trip in the upper river they had left their fully laden packs on the walking track or huts and floated and humped their rafts downstream then walked back up for their packs.

Portaging the tube rafts required derigging [photo John Mackay]

The river was very low and this exposed the many places where the water just disappeared amongst the rocks and made sections completely un-runnable but conversely, the usual added sticky hydraulics of bigger flows turned into narrow slots for our little boats. Most parties deflate and walk the high line away from the risks of the entire almost kilometre-long section but I had already decided that we were going into it at river level to run what we could and do the old school river level portage lines.

Down into the Karamea Gorge [photo Megan Dimonzantos]

When John’s team got here they must have wondered if they would make it out and negotiating any of the Roaring Lion would have been nuts. By now they had run out of any food they had brought with them and were relying on smoked venison strips from the one animal one of the team had shot and eel, and more eel…

In Wild Rivers, John talks about the proliferation of eels in the rivers and the folklore of culling them with chainsaws by the track construction crew. In the 90’s whilst bringing folk to the Tasman Wilderness Area for rafting expeditions a sole commercial eel fisherman would hold them in nets tied to the drowned trees on the Earthquake Lakes until he had enough to fly out for the canned jellied eel market. We weren’t looking for eels, and didn’t see many either. I was stoked to bag the one shot of a tuna (Te Reo, Maori name) from the river with the dialogue from Muel “I wonder when they swim off to Tonga and die”, that’s what they do.

Dead trees in Roaring Lion Lake [photo Megan Dimonzantos]

It was an obvious decision to include a woman on the team to break up the sausage fest and I had formed an online chat with Megan Dimanzantos on her thirst for knowledge of packrafting as she added the genre to her impressive list of activities and accomplishments in many outdoor activities. Now the president of the Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC).

The Karamea was going to be a step up for Megan. On the upper river, Megan had got in the swing of the pinball game. The guts of Roaring Lion caught her out but a textbook throw bag rescue from Muel and Megan’s ability to re-gather her boat meant it was all sorted in no time. I was reassured of the team we’d put together.

After Roaring Lion, the river narrows and heads into the Gorge. The rapids are closer together and they get bigger as you go. We spent our final night in a hut beside the thunder of Grey's Maze with the final day to come and the biggest rapids. In 1974 the tube raft team was at the end of its tether at this point but they were travelling at the same speed as we were albeit by the sounds completely out of control. They ended up taking 13 days in total we took 6.

Jimmy on one of the bigger drops in the upper river [photo Megan Dimonzantos]

Scouting Scarecase rapid, one of the last major obstacles [photo Megan Dimonzantos]

We had no major issues and no gear failures. Everyone apart from Muel swam, probably mine in the biggest rapid of the gorge, Holy Shit after filming the crew and shrugging off someone covering a narrow slot drop from shore was the scariest.

The Wangapeka - Karamea loop is an exceptionally good advanced packrafting trip of 5-7 days. The river needs respect due to the high rainfall area but it's inundated with DoC huts to shelter and it's possible to do the whole loop with a hut every night and not carry much camping gear. There is a good guide to the river on packraftingtrips.nz

Aqua Bound blog, Behind the Re-enactment.

The Karamea river in the past had a notorious reputation for being one of the hardest rivers in NZ, subsequently almost every watershed in the country has been explored and the Karamea being at the end of the road as far north as you can drive on the West Coast of the South Island became less frequented. But in it’s hay day in the 90’s it was rafted and kayaked regularly enabled by a reliable helicopter operator in the little village which meant it was possible to bump a ride deep into the Kahurangi National Park.

The river has a long winding catchment in an area with high rainfall. The river rises, and falls quickly. In my commercial rafting days there was nothing more like to put the Willie’s up you than lying in a tent above the 1 kilometre long rapid of Roaring Lion with the sound of rain. Having been caught in Roaring Lion on the rise a few times it is a foreboding and intimidating place to be.

The idea to packraft the river came on the back of a “phase” I was having by leaving the bike behind and enjoying the freedom of packrafting white water without the awkwardness of bikerafting. And it truly felt like freedom, a sub 5kg high performance inflatable boat capable of competently running Class 4, I mean I knew it but hadn’t sunk my teeth into familiarising myself.

Good friend Jimmy was the spark, he initially suggested it and I scoffed. But given some take up time and more coaxing from old mate, I started to get inspired by a self supported journey hiking into the headwaters which I had not run before, over 2 days and then 4 days to paddle the river.

Around now, I remembered the account of some fullas that had done the same route in the 70’s with tyre tube rafts in a book I had read decades ago. I scanned my bookshelf, and there it was, “Wild Rivers” by John MacKay. The book is an account of multiple river journeys in the home made tyre tube rafts. Not cruisy rivers, hard core runs even by today’s standards. Along with chapters on the Karamea they had also run the Motu, Clarence, Buller and **.

The efforts to carry the parts to make the rafts into the river was impressive. Essentially the lads would each carry 2 tractor inner tubes a couple of paddle blades knocked out from a sheet of plywood and a heap of twine. Once at a suitable spot. Saplings would be harvested to become the paddle and to lash the tubes together with the string. The tubes were heavy and cumbersome to hike with but not as much as trying to navigate through rocky rapids on the Upper Karamea.

Having reread the Karamea story I was becoming inspired and thought the story would be of the Karamea’s fearsome reputation of modern day river runners until…

I had a conversation with Sir Hugh Carnard (for services to paddle sports) about our intentions to embark on the trip and the beta I had gathered from Wild Rivers that he revealed that John Mackay was still kicking, and not only he was planning on joining the upcoming PRANZ (Packrafting Association of NZ) annual meet up.

Now I was salivating at the idea of meeting John and capturing his thoughts and experiences in an interview as the basis for the story. I reached out and asked John if he would help with the project. In hindsight now I realise that John and I had some similar traits, one of those being a sucker for a good yarn.

I made a plan with the team to stage a reenactment on the back of the PRANZ meet up. We attempted to source tractor inner tubes, it wasn’t easy, like cars, tractors are predominantly tubeless these days, it took multiple calls and visits to tyre repair shops.

We managed to acquire 6 tubes. Jimmy, Muel rendezvoused in Murchison on the banks of the Buller river and I brought John up from the packrafting meet. Whilst inflating the tubes to build the rafts on of the tubes popped, no worries we’ll work with 2 rafts. BANG! Another explodes and I’m scratching my head as to how these tubes lasted for weeks on a rocky river., they must of been built stronger back then surely but as it reads they got plenty of punctures and ran out of materials to repair before the end of the trip.

I had asked Jimmy to cut out paddle blades in a similar shape to the ones in John’s photos, I hadn’t stipulated thickness, doh! He turned up with cut outs from a sheet of 25mm ply each blade weighed a few kilograms, way too heavy just what we needed to make sure it was extra challenging.

We had chosen one of the classic Buller rapids to attempt to paddle. Osullies rapid is named after the O’Sullivans bridge which is at the intersection of state highway 6 to the West Coast and state highway 65 over Lewis Pass to Christchurch. Osullies is a test piece for aspiring paddlers in the upper Buller gorge. 400m long not difficult and the first class 3 rapids for many including my kids.

It starts off with a ramp beside a stout hole and then a boulder garden style middle section that culminates in a narrowing of the channel and a wave train into a a big swirling boily pool. It’s right beside the road with good access which we had chosen to enable easy filming by affiliate Dylan Gerschwitz.

We decided the 3 of us would do laps until we had a feel for the old school rafts and Dylan had enough footage. The trepidation of launching was the similar feeling to the first time I’d run a class 3 rapid, heart beating in my chest and feeling like I was at the river's mercy. Maybe if we’d used 7mm ply for the paddle blades we could have actually gained some momentum but the control was negligible. It was like trying to navigate a small oil rig down a rapid w brick for a paddle blade.

Having said that we’re all still here and even though Jimmy got close we didn’t even fall off the contraptions. John sat on the bank and probably giggled the whole way through at our hair brained scheme to recreate his exploits from five decades ago. Especially after having come from the PRANZ meet where I lent him an Alpacka self bailing Gnarwhal and getting to experience the inflatable technology of today.

It was an amazing experience to meet John and absorb some of his heritage and legacy for river running. Subsequently that’s how the name came about as we literally “followed the footsteps of river runners”.

At no time during the expedition did I think “gee I wish I had an inner tube raft here” maybe because we struck very low water and in the book John talks to in the upper river leaving their packs at the huts and rafting down and then walking back to get their packs. This was possible on the upper river followed by the track and newly built Forest Service huts and why we spent days less than them on this section, where as below Roaring Lion the river is bigger in all respects and they did the same distances/times as we did which is astonishing, I guess hunger is a driving factor we didn’t have to contend with.

Four of five of us used Aqua Bound 4 piece whisky paddles and had no breakages, ultra lightweight for hiking and solid and dependable on the rocky river conditions.

It was an honor to work with John Mackay on this project and be able to learn and capture the reenactment scene. He’s a legend and I wanted to give him the last word:

“I’m still not sure whether Deane understands that I’m not keen like him – keen to push myself hard (but safely of course!). The truth is that I didn’t like those old backpacks – no shoulder pads, no waist straps, a hard frame grating the small of your back. My vision was to float lazily and comfortably through the wilderness.

We did have half a day of that sort of bliss on the Karamea but the rest of the twelve days? TBH I did know the expedition was going to be hard yakker (but by then I had a publisher contract and this was to be the final chapter – a first descent through beautiful back-country). It’s just that I had no idea how hard. I would have given up early on but my mate Piers is made of sterner stuff. Even he was exhausted by the time we were committed to the trackless Main Gorge and the weather, which had been perfect until then, began to pack it in.

Half a century passed and I thought history had passed me by. The mad exponential dam-building rush has largely given way to concerns about the quality of river water (We used to safely drink the water from the rivers as we paddled).

Kayaks have evolved from canvas to plastics and someone invented creek boats. Younger generations of kayakers have developed mind-blowing skills and now helicopter into the Southern Alps to drop through the steep West Coast canyons that I’d dismissed as inaccessible and unrunnable.

So I was flattered when a young woman contacted me one day and said she’d read my book. We had coffee and she urged me to come to one of the annual Packraft Meetups. Eventually, I did. Hugh Canard told me that there was a guy called Deane Parker who was planning to do some sort of re-enactment of our Karamea trip. When I contacted him he was surprised I was still alive. But pleased that he could rope me into his vid.

So it’s kinda come a full cycle. The hard-shell kayakers have gone off into different stratospheres but these amazing light sophisticated packrafts have re-ignited recreation on the rivers we used to paddle half a century ago. And then, beyond mountain passes, there are other rivers and Fiordland lakes that no one has ever paddled on. So a new generation can experience the thrill of exploration that we had in the past.” - John MacKay