“The Waingaro River via the Killdevil trail is the best advanced overnight packrafting trip in the Top of the South Island”
Packrafting for me has mostly involved strapping a bike to the bow. When two old school mates suggested hiking into one of the favourite rivers in my universe I jumped at the opportunity to ditch the cumbersome bike, beat the feet and finally take on a challenging section of white water in these crazy little inflatable boats.
I’ve got some history with the Waingaro, I along with Nathan Fa’avae flew in by helicopter in 1998 after hearing reports of the first few descents. We flew upstream of the forks and completed the first descent of the Upper Waingaro.
The Waingaro Forks hut is a historic timber slab hut, renovated recently to an original standard.
Nathan and I don’t paddle together often, and we seldomly saw each other over the past decade. Nathan is very focused on his career in professional adventure racing and to date he’s won 6 world adventure racing championships. I became a farmer.
My family and I moved to Golden Bay for a few years and lived a stone's throw from the Waingaro. I managed to get a few trips on it, during this time I bought what I thought was a high performance IK thinking it would be the best tool for the steep creeks of the Bay. It was ok, but it weighed 18kg. My last trip prior to the recent one, a team of us hiked up the steep and exposed Killdevil track and dropped into the river below the forks. Once on the river I was impatient, we had a lot of river to cover that afternoon and I made a bad decision and paddled a steep drop, went upside down, floundered with a high brace in turbulent water and felt my shoulder go. I was in front with no cover, with my shoulder still out I collected my boat and paddle and made it into an eddy. I was livid, grabbed my arm and yanked down and felt it pop back in, I have to note I’d never dislocated a shoulder before.
Jimmy boofing over a glassy drop, note the horrible sieve to his right
I was carrying a PLB and held it in my hand when we regrouped. We had a double IK on the trip. The guilt of taking a rescue helicopter away from life threatening duties weighed too heavy and I decided I’d be able to paddle out by being the stern paddler in the double and just ruddering with one arm. I made it out but it was a long painful day, in hindsight I wish I'd pulled the pin.
I spat the dumby with running rivers after that injury. So not only would this latest trip be the first time in 10 years since I’d paddled the Waingaro it was also the first time I’d paddled a class 4 run since that fateful day.
Nath and Rod, we go right back to Nayland College in Stoke Nelson. so many epic adventures over the years and this blog is to keep this one for prosperity.
The trip went off without a hitch, I used a full size 80L backpack and managed to put that inside the cargo fly. My Aqua-bound svelte carbon whisky was as usual, totally bomber. The boat, a self -bailing Alpacka raft Gnarwhal performed solidly and we only had a few insignificant swims from a couple of team members.
I have paddled extensively with both Nathan and Rod but not for years. It was impressive how quickly we adapted back to our non verbal communication of river signals and gesticulating to safely and efficiently move down a frothing river. Reaffirming to me how important a solid team is for river running and something looked over way too much.
Over 20km of near continuous grade 3 and 4 rapids makes for a busy day
A few days later I’m still in awe at how classic the river is as an ‘advanced’ overnight hike in, packrafting trip. Pristine water quality, many rare Whio (blue duck), back to back steep but manageable grade 3-4 rapids and a 100 year old gold mining trail to access a quaint 4 bunk hut to break it up for a wilderness overnighter.
All this made for a fantastic introduction to hike in packrafting trips and it’s got me super motivated to find more adventurous routes. Mostly important was hanging in the company of a few best mates and laughing off the worries of the world for at least 36 hours.
A few years back I did a heli rafting trip from this beach, this is immediately below the main gorge, I was stoked to get here and know that the hardest section was behind us.