Patrick decided last minute that I should take his place on a trip on the Perth river happening the next day. I drove from Murchison to Greymouth only to find the helicopter pilot canceled and we weren't going to be kayaking the Perth. Some of the crew were keen to do something else so they arranged a helicopter trip up the Hokitika River.
Nigel had a pin on topo maps of where he was dropped last time. The heli pilot had a different idea about where we should start. He's been dropping guided packraft trips a little further up, the pilot says "Its all easy from here down." We also got some beta from the packraft guide, which more or less held true through the trip.
The first approximately 500m involved a lot of walking. The first rapid we could have kayaked but chose not to because we wanted to warm up on some easier rapids. The second rapid was a bit messy, Nigel ran this one the rest of us portaged.
Eventually we got to the gorge entrance, this was blocked by a massive rapid with two parts. The first was an epic g5 consisting of a pour-over/drop into a moving pool followed by a larger drop with a rolling lip and massive hole at the bottom. None of us were running this today but it did leave inspiration for the future. The second part was mostly sieves, which we portaged, but the the walls steepen and we found a feature we couldn't portage.
There were two possible lines, left went with the main flow more and the right was a little chute. Nigel went first and kayaked the left line, it all went well apart from a boil catching him at the end, he rolled back up fine. We all chose to do the right line as the ferry across looked a bit hairy. After a lot of umming and arring we sent it and it all we well.
From here it was all smooth until the place where half the crew have kayaked from before. Then there was just one large portage we all knew about. The beta for this was to run the first drop the immediately eddie out, however, there wasn't enough water for the first drop to run. We had to get out earlier and portage it all. we managed to get through it alright it just would have been a lot easier and quicker if we were able to run the first drop.
Everything from here down was fun g3/3+. The day ended a lot later than expected but it was still a great first heli run and intro to Westcoast.
Thumbnail Photo: Robin
Music:
Wolves Cry - Bryan Martin
Open the Gate - Zach Bryan
Otherside - Red Hot Chili Peppers