Box Canyon Creek, October 2013

Down near Seward on the Kenai Peninsula are a number of excellent USFS trails that are good for hiking, biking, and running. One famous trail is the Lost Lake Trail that heads north from near the Seward Fire Station. It's well known as a great mountain bike ride and trail-run race, too.

One day, maybe, the Lost Lake Trail will be well known as scenic access to one of the best high-end (i.e. steep, low volume, Class IV) packrafting creeks in SC AK: Box Canyon Creek.

This past Fall, Fairbanks-born multisport athlete Paul Schauer and kayak legend Trip Kinney dragged their kayaks into the top of Box Creek Canyon off the Lost Lake Trail and recorded this:


 

Paul Schauer's inspirational edit.

Paul and Trip likely made the first D on many of these amazing drops in mid-September, but Doug Demarest, who was a hard-shell boater on the sharp edge 10 years ago and a packrafter on the sharp edge now, hiked-in and ran most of it solo back then -- pretty impressive.

Anyway many thanks to Paul and Trip for their pioneering effort and documentation as it inspired Luc Mehl, Todd Tumolo, G. Ganey and me to head in a few weeks later and run it ourselves.

Not sure where I first saw the vid, but Tim Johnson and I watched it together and he said, "It looks perfect for packrafts." That's all I needed to hear and with Tim's words and Paul/Trip's vid I had Luc, Ganey, and Todd sold on an early October trip.

We made quick work of the hike in. Leaving the parking lot around noon, we followed the trail as it wandered through rain forest to the edge of Box Canyon, where a brief glimpse of a rocky creek looked un-promising --  rocky and shallow.

Later there was a  bit of anxiety about where best to drop in, how best to miss the 500 vertical feet of alder shlapping.

We climbed down to the mouth of the visible canyon.

Our choice, where the Lost Lake Trail ends its parallel run to the creek and heads away uphill through meadows, seemed the least brushy alternative but had a steep drop down to the creek bed. I am sure there are better approaches. We walked and waded for about a quarter to half a mile, before shear walls forced us in at about 2:30 PM.

The water was so shallow and any rock out of the water so sharp that I think we were all wondering why we were there. If it wasn't such a gnarly climb out, we probably would have bailed.

Luc at the put-in

Instead we scratched and paddled onward on a bunch of little drops that seemed bad for the boat but were nonetheless fun .... and then about an hour and a half later we came to this six foot slide followed by a ten foot boof:

Luc approaching the Veracruz-style double drop

I gave it ago first and made the entrance drop nicely but didn't even try to boof and landed on my head off the 10-footer. Subsequent group members made some comic efforts, too, but both Luc and Todd styled the boof, thanks to their Jan 2013 trip to Mexico.

fuzzy -- but you get the idea

I referred to this as the "Veracruz Boof" in honor of their Mexican boofing school.

"That was awesome!" I called out to Luc as he made a successful boof, "Class V for sure, right?"

"No. That's not class V. It's not burly or pushy or big enough water."

Stylish eddy out below his stylish boof

From here it picked up, but we felt like some more water would have been nice.

In Paul's video there's a wild little pencil lead-wide slot that we were sure would cut our boats. Instead it was fun. In fact, everything was fun, except the fear of a cut boat on the sharp, raw Kenai schist, and got fun fast as we neared what Luc called the "Four Horsemen".

As we climbed down and scouted we were excited. It looked like a mini-version of North Carolina's Horsepasture Creek that Luc and I had paddled with Timmy J. in Jan. 2012. There was a slide drop to its lip:

Then four more slides. Luc went first and I tried to snap some photos with my point and shoot. I had the only camera but it was a dark, October day, getting late, and I was cold and excited so the shots are blurry. I doctored them up a bit to help capture the mood and magic of the moment.

Luc ran the sequence first -- four slides in a row, each about ten feet tall and with sort of sticky holes at the bottom.

"I can't believe this run!" gushed Luc, "I have never been on a run that I can point to specific winter  boating I did before that prepped me. These slides are so like the Dixie runs we did and the boofs -- the Mexico trip so prepared me for those. January paddling is awesome!!"

We were just getting started on a quarter mile that drops maybe 200 feet or so in about 15 stacked back to back drops from 5-15 feet high. In this quarter mile there were the Four Horsemen with the entrance above -- then a chossy drop into a Class V we walked -- to a Class V that Paul and Trip walked and Luc tried but swam backwards and head-first, asking for my help as he went over and that I couldn't deliver -- to another drop we walked -- to one that shot Todd out of his boat (ask him the name of that one) and me into a roll -- to some more portage drops -- to fun drops -- to a swirly corner -- to the final Class V "California Nightmare" pothole that trapped Ganey upright for a minute or five before Todd pulled him out, wide-eyed but still upright, with a throw bag.

Looking down an un-run drop that Luc swam upside down and backward

At the end, as we walked down the creek to the Resurrection River valley and the roads back to the Seward Highway with darkness dropping hard, we were bubbly.

"This is exactly what I want to be doing in a packraft," claimed Ganey. "Exploratory boating on a new run with big drops."

I couldn't agree more. It was a solid crew on a run that as far as we knew had been run once a few weeks earlier by expert kayakers.

Gradient (ft/mile): elevation vs. distance plots

The Local Anchorage Creeks:

The Mat-Su Regulars (Little Su, Upper Willow, Kings Magic Mile)

The Talkeetna Fly-in Creeks (Disappointment, E Fork Iron Ck, Damnation):

The mid-Alatna Valley Creeks:

The Arrigetch Creeks:

I have been using Spruceboy's USGS maps over Google Earth to estimate gradient, then R to make some contour plots of local steep runs and some creeks in the Arrigetch-Alatna Area. Too satisying.

I should have gone paddling, but no, I made these graphs instead.

They are pretty informative and suggest that the Arrigetch offers up the closest to California style granite creeks we have in Alaska. What makes the Arrigetch unique is the paucity of glaciers combined with steep glacial carved terrain, much of it above tree line and so wood free.

It looks like the two local boofy-creeks, Lower Ingram and Upper Willow, aren't as overall steep as they feel, while the granite boulder garden creeks, Little Su and Kings, are steep. This holds for Disappointment and E Fork Iron, too, as Disappointment is not as overall steep as East Fork Iron Creek, surprisingly, but is bigger volume and more pool drop. So pool drop, ledgy creeks hide their steepness on these gradient plots, while boulder garden creeks tend to be steepest.

All the kayakers already know this, of course, and this is just like a little homework assignment to see that clearly.

The Aiyagomahala Creek (aka Hot Springs Creek or South Arrigetch Creek) is super steep at top where it's full of slabs and slides and waterfalls. Just above its hot springs it's a boulder garden, like Magic Mile. Upper Awlinyak, I have not yet seen, but I expect that it is a gorge full of granite blocks, like the the Deceptive Pass branch of Awlinyak. Arrigetch Creek is least known to me. It's hidden in the bushes and glimpses I get of it are broken gneiss, rather than boulders.

All the little Alatna Valley creeks offer up a bunch of variety. None seem too hard for beginners, except the inner gorge of Nahtuk, which I have seen and expect to be Class III+ if not IV. Unakserak and Kutuk look like class II, maybe some wood, and Pingaluk is Class III (walked that a couple years ago). Awesome game trails in the Pingaluk. So a basecamp in the Alatna valley offers everything from Class I on the Alatna to Class VI in the Arrigetch, all in a ten mile radius.

Packrafting is real boating

Ok. if you have a packraft, then please send this video to your friends

It's Luc Mehl's take on our SE trip and while it cuts out the bloops (for those see Timmy J's take on the same trip:
)

What it shows is the beauty of packrafts on steep creeks. That the two (packrafts+steep creeks) can be one. That a hardshell is not the only way, that packrafting big gradient is not just a stunt -- like Paul Schauer points out -- but a possibility, a probability in the remote waters left un-run.

For me, I need to learn what the packrafts can do locally before taking them remotely. Like a climber or a skier at the local crags or slopes before they hit an expedition. For Luc and Tim they are adventure, discovering the unknown and pushing the improbable.

I'd be lying if I said that Tim always knows how the packraft will perform. In fact, if Tim knew, he'd not be paddling one.

So anyway, let's get Luc's video to 2500 hits by the end of the week. Tim looks so good boofing and bracing. It's art in slo-mo and quilted Alpackas.

If you have an account on Mountain Buzz or Boater Talk, then post it.

If you subscribe to Playak then send it to Playak. If you have friends who boat, send it to them.

It doesn't matter if you'll only run Class II with a bike, a dog, or a lunch bag on your bow. This legitimizes packrafting as a whitewater-worthy craft.

The vids are too beautiful, too informative not to go big.

What is packrafting anyway? The Horsepasture River

Sven, of Packrafting in Europe, a former German hardsheller turned packrafter + Alpacka dealer, has been asking if the new boats on whitewater are really packrafting at all?

Good question. A 2011/2012 Llama is long, like a mini-IK, and a 2012 boat has an aluminum rim on the deck for attaching a spray-skirt kayak-style. Add in a way to brace your legs for Eskimo rolling, a teflon skid plate for shallow water and seal launches, move your seat forward, put in a beefy backrest, then add a foam pad for boofing and -- WOW -- is that still a packraft? That's my question.

But Sven's asking if it's still packrafting if you're parking and hucking, like Luc, Timmy and I did in the Southeast.

Packrafting is, in essence, -- all the way back to the Halkett boat, or even before, to a time when people carried skins to be stretched over sticks -- simply carrying a portable boat. Classical packrafting in the modern sense is walking across Alaska or biking through Utah -- or taking a train in Europe -- with a raft wrapped tightly and stowed until it's needed.

Packrafting could be considered mixing travel with a small inflatable, perhaps the smallest inflatable for the job. In that sense, even carrying an IK on a horse for Teton Wilderness runs might then be considered packrafting. But why make it an inflatable? Not all rafts are inflatables. So then any boat transportation plus boating equals packrafting, right? But this last argument is a bit of reducto ad absurdum.

The nub is this: if you're going to go run the Green Narrows, why not, as Obadiah Jenkins and his ilk persistently pester, "Get a kayak?"and by that they mean a hardshell kayak.

I asked Tim Johnson about his answer, and he says, "You really can't answer that."

This from a guy who has been paddling a kayak for 15 years or more and is now pushing the limits in a packraft. The limits of whitewater, that is.

There are the others, the Hig&Erins, the Skurkas, the guy who "walked the Amazon", Ed Stafford. They're also pushing the limits. Are they packrafting? Extreme packrafting, 'cause they carry their boats such extreme distances?

Forrest McCrthy says that packrafting should be, "Half boating, half walking." Well, is that half in distance or time? And back to "bike'n'rafting" -- is that packrafting? Or the day trip with a roadside put-in and car shuttle -- is that packrafting?

My personal journey has taken me from packraft as a simple boat made to be portable (no seat, no skirt) as a tool for river crossings, to instrument as landscape art, to flow machine (no pun intended, with flow in the sense of high skill/high challenge reward per Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). The boats I use have simply evolved to better suit my needs, to perform better in the 80% zone, the 80% of the time activity. Bring what you need for 80% of your activity.

For instance, 80% the time of our Anaikchak crossing last summer from Pt Heiden to the Chigniks was walking. My Super Scout was fine, although no dry suit was a bummer. Perhaps a super scout + dry suit weight would be about the same as a skirted Llama in rain gear. What I need is a light drysuit I can also walk brush in for a classical packrafting trip.

Even in the early days, when first discovering that floating a river in crossing is fun; to floating rivers in between long walks and discovering that the splashy white stuff is fun; to now, seeking out steep stuff; there is a natural progression for some personality types to gravitate (again no pun intended) to steeper gradient.

So now I am very much attracted to whitewater. And because we just don't know yet what's possible, I like whitewater in a packraft: another form of extreme packrafting that doesn't require I leave home for a year.

My purist goal is to walk in and run technical whitewater. But to get good at whitewater, I need to run roadside, maybe even pools to work on my rolls. That activity of blowing-up and putting-in to sport-boat roadside may not be so much pure packrafting, as Sven asks, as it is preparing myself to packraft remotely. But look. I used an adverb to describe packrafting. It doesn't have to be remote to be packrafting.

Yes, roadside runs at kayak water levels in a packraft satisfy. Sven may be too young to remember, but when telemark skiing first appeared on the scene (like portable boats, it'd been around a long time, but was just reaching a rapid point in evolution -- as packrafting is now) people actually went lift skiing to improve their abilities. Was lift skiing in telemark gear, telemarking? Today that question is silly, but then it was real, and, in fact, telemarking gear evolved into essentially downhill gear, much as the packraft of 2012 has morphed into a mini IK.

But sure, it's still a packraft and we are still packrafting and while a kayak would certainly make me a better whitewater paddler in a packraft (look at Timmy J and Paul Schauer), I am after all a late middle-aged guy who is happy in his boat and would rather not be pried out and levered into another. That's why it's the 20 something kayakers and not the 40 something kayakers who call packrafts, "Badass". They still have enough life in them to switch to another craft.

So if me or someone else does the 150 mile Wilderness Classic by blending a half dozen Class IV+ runs in a 10 pound boat (with foam, thigh straps and spray skirt) with 75 miles of walking are we packrafting?

Yes, you betcha, in a very modern sense.

And the seven hour car-to-car trip down the Horspasture River in western North Carolina was good training for it. We walked 30 minutes down, put in and scouted and blopped, dropped, blubbered, and slurped our way over a dozen or so ledges. Then climbed off the river at dusk and bushwacked upward 700 feet to catch a trail and a road back to the car.

This was a low water run, quite safe, although we did portage a handful of sieves. It required scouting and boofing and skills. It was a solid Class IV run, I'd say. It could be done without thigh straps or spray decks, but would be even sloppier than our sloppy boats.

It may be the best application for packrafts in the SE, although having only run 10 rivers and creeks down there, I am really not experienced enough to say. The fact that Luc and I carried our boats in packs for a walk-in and walk-out that were each over a mile long (Tim used his thigh straps to pack his boat), and that we wore our empty packs under our drysuits makes it packrafting, even by Sven's strict definition I'd hope, although we were paddling stuff as difficult as most of the road side runs we did, too.

So what is packrafting? I'd say it's anything you do with a packraft, including rolling it up, packing it away, and flying in a jet to a whitewater destination to make roadside runs.

Have fun!

SE USA Packrafting: Green Narrows

It's now clear why so many great boaters come from the SE: The Green River Narrows.

"The Green" is a steep, dam-release creek that apparently runs 300 days a year. It's about 30 minutes from the hip outdoor progressive town of NC, Asheville -- think Hood River but with a southern drawl and a banjo.

It was a bit of a drive from Elijay GA, Tim's adolescent home, to Bryson City where we met J.E.B. Hall, friend of Trip Kinney and an aweome boater in his own right. Jeb is like a fourth or fifth generation western NC native, who works as a fishing guide in AK during the summer and a rep for Pyranna Kayaks most of the rest of the year. A wonderful physical complement to Trip, his Southern accent would come out on the river.

We started on the Upper Green at 100%, the local measure of relative flow on the Green.

Apparently the Upper Green has two "Class III" rapids, the first a 15 foot slide that somehow I flipped midway down, barking my knuckles and pulling a short rib in a determined effort to roll at its base and regain some measure of dignity.

I could see the disappointment, nah, concern on Jeb's face. I felt like putting the clown nose I carried in my pfd pocket as a badge of shame. We were like a quarter of the way down the beginner run and I had already blown it in the name of packrafts, performing as all too many 'round the world expect.

But in this case it was the boater (me) and not the boat (sweet 2011 Alpacka Llama).

Fortunately, Luc and Timmy would show this downstream where it counted.

About the same time we put on, a solo, short-boat canoeist put in, but seemed to take out just below the same rapids we found another pair of canoeists scouting.

"This is typical of the Green's ledges. Just run down the middle and stay in the flow," called Jeb as he dropped down the second "III", something that felt very IV-ish to me.

Soon enough I was looking over the first drop of the Narrows, "Bride of Frankenstein" and while it looked straightforward enough, performance anxiety choked me up. Still, it was no problem and actually did feel class III, if rated Class IV.

Below it was Frankenstein and Tim took one look at the pile of f*cksticks jamming the sieve between two boulders and decided to walk. Luc ran the drop just above the sieves and made it past easily, but the fact that it was a dirty little set of drops that looked unappealing in the way that it didn't look challenging (looked like Class III) or rewarding, just dangerous, underscored the typical whitewater rating scale where somehow difficulty and danger are merged. Frankenstein is rated a V.

Downstream the river choked up with rocks jumbled in gradient and Jeb gave some instructions that basically sounded like "follow me".

By now we'd been passed by a couple of sets of kayakers. They were friendly and exuded little attitude/arrogance seen elsewhere. This could have been because we were with a local hardman/guide. Or it could be that the SE boaters in particular, and Eastern boaters in general, are more tolerant of a variety of craft. On this run we'd see short canoes and hand paddlers, and knew that inflatables had been down before, even hand-paddled through Gorilla, the biggest rapid on the run.

I got some of my groove back in Pincushion's rock garden and the drops below, down to the memorably named "Boof or Consequences." Here again I got out and walked, not because it looked dangerous, but because it looked tricky: a narrow steep slot to a sharp turn next to a rock wall. But Luke styled it. Tim and I began to wonder if Luc wasn't planing to try and run everything.

The next drop was one of the V+ rapids, "Go left or Die", I mistakenly though I heard it called. It's actually Go Left and Die. Needless to say I followed a woman down the sneak slot 'n' slide to the right (the Squeeze), also rated a Class IV but simple fun and more like a novel Class III in my opinion. But heh, what do I know?

"Yea, that is easy," said Tim, "a packraft just blubbers down." Indeed, there are many rapids that would be hard, even dangerous in a kayak that re just plain fun and safe(ish) in a packraft.

Luc paddled into the Go Left rapid without a good look at it, but with the usual expert beta offered up by Jeb, who was now getting cold, due to waiting around for us to look at and video stuff and his thin layer of clothes.

"Yea, I do it in 40, 45 minutes," he'd told me on the phone. Today it'd be 4 hours.

So we were waiting in the pool below the Class V+ rapid, one of the Green's "Big 3" as Luc slid down the entrance log, plunged off the eight (?) foot drop and pretty much got munched immediately in its river right hole and with me thinking the rapid is called "Go Left or Die", fearing the bad thing.

But Luc fought his way out and survived, got back in his boat and after scouting the next Class V rapid -- Zwick's (sounded like Swix, as in wax, when Jeb named it) -- ran Zwick's and the Class IV Reverse 7 footer above it cleanly, eddying out above the next Class V (again, it's an easy drop that just happened to kill someone and pin somebody else) called Chief.

Timmy also ran these clean but I boofed directly into the pocket at the base of the second drop in Zwick;s and got held for an uncomfortably long time and lost my boat, which washed down a couple rapids, to finally park itself in the Garage cave at the top of Gorilla.

It was there, below Zwick's, that I got to paddle the 2011 hull design with the 2012 cockpit (no spray skirt -- that was on Timmy) when I roped Timmy's boat back to cross to the portage trail. That stock cockpit was so easy to get into and out of compared to my heavily velcroed special production boat. And I had been noticing all week that their boats were just as dry if not drier than mine.

We all portaged Chief, Pencil Sharpener, the Notch, Gorilla's main event called the Flume, and then the two rapids below. Pencil Sharpener, the Notch, and the Flume together make up the Class V+ Gorilla, which looked doable to me in a packraft.

Personally I didn't find either Go Left and Die appealing, nor Sunshine, the other V+, safe-looking, but carnage videos, Trip's stories, and the raw beauty of Gorilla drew me, and if I'd had a third day, yes, I would have given it a try. And after ten days of paddling down there, I think with the right boof I could land it, although the Speed Trap wave/hole below would likely stop me and flip me.

Anyway, we put in just above the last two slides between Gorilla and made those (Power Slide and Rapid Transit, two IVs). I took a beefy left hand run following Jeb on the Rapid Transit and felt my mojo return.

"Just run it blind and follow me," he'd said and we did and it was super wild and exhilarating.

Next was the third V+, Sunshine with its lead-in Groove Tube, another rapid with a disconcerting swim below it, so we portaged and put in below Sunshine and its deadly center rock. I got tripped up by a little side hole/wave, and then was dissuaded from going to Linville by Jeb's description of Linville Gorge as hard as the Green but with much less friendly mid-stream boulders. That and my lousy day on the Green so far.

Below Sunshine the river lets up and is just fun Class IV and III slots, plops, and drops all perfect for packrafts until the long III leading into Toilet Bowl's IV hole where I flipped but made a very satisfying combat roll and preventing an uncontrolled entrance into the Class V Hammerfactor.

Luc ran Hammerfactor clean. Tim had to brace and came closer to swimming than at any other time I'd seen him on this trip. And I tried to roll in the pool below Hammerfactor but couldn't get it and swam.

The rest of the run was fun but uneventful, and I felt like I didn't really "do" the Green Narrows. Tim had done better than I, of course, although we both walked the same rapids, and Luc had run a couple we walked and tried Go Left, but he'd lost his momentum after I swam Zwick's. Except for Toliet Bowl/Hammerfactor he never recovered it, really, that day.

So the next day Gordy showed up and lead us to eat breakfast at a hip breakfast joint in Asheville ("Pretty Girl?") and run shuttle.

We put in for just the Narrows and got a bunch of "those boats are badass" from the 20-somethings and snickers and sneers from the older guys who couldn't wait "to see those boats in some holes".

This time everything went so much better. I had no performance anxiety. We paddled at our own pace and got good video and had fun. Until Zwick's.

At Zwick's I tried to boof right and did but got tripped up on landing (too sideways without enough brace). There was a crew of kayakers hovering all around us and I missed one too many rolls and pulled out too late, getting swept into the lethal Chief right before everybody's helpless eyes with their hands full of paddles, throw ropes and in Gordy's case a long stick (he'd hiked down to watch) and me upside down in my boat deaf to their cries to bail.

You see I thought I had time to roll and did if I'd nailed the first, or even the second. But I bailed after the third and shouldn't have been surprised when surfacing to find myself getting washed into the first drop of Chief.

The night before I had spent twenty minutes reading stories and watching video and looking at pictures of low water Chief, and as I headed toward the second drop I turned headfirst to fend off its pin rock and went over the drop and struck my chest on it. That was better than going feet first and getting my legs stuck, I reckoned.

A hot kayaker, rightfully miffed that I hadn't got out sooner, bumped my boat down to me and I swam to shore with boat and paddle. One more drop and I would have slid through the Notch to be swallowed and punched by the Gorilla.

Feeling good to be alive, I filmed Luc as he waited for a gang of hardshellers to sail off of Gorilla's Flume. They eddied out and chatted him up before he pulled out to run the series of slides below. It was neat as they hollered and hooted as he made the boofs and drops.

From there down we had a great run to the take-out and while I got flipped again at Hammerfactor, I managed to combat roll out of it, so it was OK.

Yep, we packrafted the Green and I'd do it again, maybe even give Gorilla a try. Tim almost ran it but preferred Sunshine's straightforward boof (although he didn't try that either). It just looks doable to me.

Yes, we'll have to go back, maybe with boats outfitted with the whitewater package that Timmy J is designing for Alpacka. Not sure when....

That night we spent some time on the town with Gordy and Adam Griffith, a local scientist and kayaker we met on the Chattooga. We soakied up the gaming, music, and food scene in Asheville. The food at a Caribbean style place called Salsa was really tasty. Gordy got a huge lav pot of boiling pork fit for Fred Flintstone. Later that night we heard the band in the video below live. Good times.

The next day didn't rain enough so we headed back to Georgia paddling a bit of the middle Cullasaja River on the way.





Luc posted some photos and words at things to luc at and there are a handful of videos that Tim, Luc, and I have put together.

Tasmanian Steep Creek

Borneo boating was a bust.

It was too expensive and bureaucraticly challenging to get to Sabah's Maliau Basin with boats, so Roman and I hung out in Tawau for a week, nursing our dollars until leaving for Tasmania, Australia.

Tasmania is the closet thing to a New Zealand watered wildland, with native Australian animals, plants and birds. It's wild and thick, with few trails and a pretty little Hobart nestled in hills over tidewater, like Seattle in the sixties or Portland in the seventies. Parrots and lorikeets swoop through well-watered eucalypts, while strange marsupials you've never heard of come out at at twilight: quolls (marsupial "cats") and pademelons (foot high kangaroos) chief among them.

Cody Roman and I had come to meet Bill Hatcher to run the Franklin (which I ran in 2002 and feature in my book, Packrafting!). But first we had to warm up. So we ran the Picton in an afternoon and then a couple days later set shuttle for the remote and steep Anne River (400 feet/mile for about a kilometer or so).

The Anne is situated in the remote Southwest National Park and starts high in Australian Alpine country, near Mt. Anne and the Arthur Mountains, a stunning, once-glacial landscape of weird plants and craggy peaks. There in a campground we saw a raccoon-sized Spotted Quoll and its potential prey the wee Tasmanian Pademelon.

We hiked in a scenic trail for about 30 minutes to the put-in on a metal bridge and proceeded to boat-bushwhack a kilometer in 2 hours to where the creek steepens up and clears out into wild drops spilling through boulder gardens of sharp rock. Good thing the weather was good or we would have been in trouble. It's hard to exaggerate the Tasmanian brush -- worst in the world I reckon: makes Appalachian laurels, California manzanita, Alaskan and BC alder, Chilean quila, and whatever it is they call their scrub in NZ a look like stuff for pre-school kids who are too young to know what alcohol is, while the stuff down here is Tassie is for hard-core alcoholics on crack.

Anyway, retreat upstream or down except in boats was not an option. It took us ten hours to go ten kilometers down the wicked steep drops. Can't say it was the best boating I ever did -- can't say I'd so it again. Too much more water would be suicide for us. Any less would be a hike through world class stumble f*cking brush.

The lower Anne, its last four kilometers or so was dreadful and the Huon at 0.75 m on the Judbury Gauge was a tedious 25 km paddle through stunning eucalypt forests with 5 great drops in its gorge. We got out with our last scraps of food in the dark after 36 hgours of intensity and non-stop ending I haven't seen since the last Wilderness Classic I'd entered.

So, I think we're ready for the Franklin -- once our arms recover from yesterday's 12 hours of paddling.

Upper Yough, Western Maryland

If only I'd discovered boating in my teens -- I'd likely not be writing this now, nor live in Alaska, nor have the kids I have. I'd be a river rat.

The reason is that in my teens I lived in Northern Virginia, where it gets into triple digit temps and near 100% humidity in the summer. Stupid me. Back then I was climbing slimy rocks and camping in the humid Appalachian forests when I could have been paddling the cooling Potomac and other creeks and rivers west of there.

It seems quite likely that exciting water sports would have not only satisfied my yen for physical adventure, but also cooled my body enough to stay around here (I am currently visiting my Mom in Northern Virginia). Boating may well have been enough to keep me on the East Coast, instead of moving to Alaska.

For the first time I have brought my packraft to paddle Virginia and Maryland, particularly after watching hardshellers dropping Great Falls of the Potomac on YouTube.

This week I have packrafted below Great Falls (won't be dropping them on this trip, but the Virginia line looks in the realm of the packrafting-possible) on Thursday with Alan Dixon (co-founder of Backpackinglight.com) and Saturday with Cody Roman (who's been on a road trip out here). On Friday, Adam Cramer, an attorney with the Outdoor Alliance, led me down western Maryland's Upper Youghiogheny, from Sang Run Road to Friendsville.

Now I boated in the East last year. That was a remote, seldom run creek in Great Smoky Mountains National Park called Hazel Creek, a three day solo trip of hiking and packrafting.

But this Upper "Yock" trip was very different from anything else I have yet done. First it was a dam released flow. Second the steep creek was crammed with boaters. And third it was pretty much the wildest run of adrenaline I have had east of the West Virginia border.

There must have been a hundred boaters or more. Mostly hardshell creek boats, but some play boats, a canoe or two, some long, oddly shaped downriver boats, some black cats, and a handful of short commercial rafts.

At the put-in the middle aged hardshellers gave me the normal stink-eye I have come to expect at paddling centers around the world, while the younger boaters ask, "WOW, is that a packraft?" (Yep, it's a packraft) "Cool! I've never seen one for real...just in videos."

During the run I got the "Can you roll that?" (Sometimes) and "That thing really spins and turns on a dime," (Yea but they don't move fast and can't boof far).

By the end of the day, even the gray-beards and bald-heads had quit their taunting and were asking, "So did you learn to paddle a kayak first?" (Nope).

It was neat that how many people had heard of the packraft and associated it with Alaska. In fact I met a Vermonter named Danny who had paddled with Ganey who posts YouTube videos of packrafting (but has recently turned to hard shelling). I met a pony tailed guy who was moving north and knew a kid from PA, a friend of Nathan Shoutis, who had run Bird Creek with me last summer. Small world of paddlers, I guess.....

The dam releases at 1 PM, we put in at 2 and by the time we'd reached the "National Falls" midway down the steep mile of beefy, boulder drops at 4 PM it was running over 700 cfs.

There were heaps of -- for me -- stacked drops. From above "Bastard" and for the next hour or so, whenever looking downstream I was shocked that we were heading onward. I could usually see a few other boaters ahead, and nobody, I mean nobody was getting out to scout.

If it had been me and Thai, or Paul, or even Brad on some empty river we would have been getting out and looking at every drop and walking most of them. But not on this run. I only got out to dump my boat and steal a glance at what was coming.

Sure it was pretty smooth boulder-garden rock-hopping and boat scouting, but mostly it's familiarity. It's all been plumbed and probed and piloted. Adam would just say, "Follow me," and then a half dozen or more times he'd wave me into an eddy and describe what moves to make for what was coming next on juicy drops named "Bastard," "Charlies", "Triple Drop", and "Tommy's Hole".

This Upper Yock run reminded me of a brown NZ run with smaller rocks and way more people. Friendly people who all seemed into the idea of a packraft as whitewater craft by the end of the four miles of whitewater. And I had paddled the best day of boating since the Hokitika, best in the sense that I pushed my experience level in juicy (500-700 cfs) combined with steep (150-170 ft/mile for the middle miles) and technical. Following a Class V kayaker who's made literally 50-100 runs of this mid-Atlantic gem helped push my envelope.

Nowhere on the Yock did I drop the single hardest rapid I have yet run, but there was a half mile in there that felt like it was my longest stretch of continuous hard paddling without getting out of my boat to scout, a stretch ending right below National Falls. I was grateful to hear that below it was still big but no AS BIG as the Bastard-National stretch.

Overall, the Bastard to National was harder than Six Mile's Third Canyon at 9.8 feet, harder (technically but not psychologically) than the must make moves on the Upper Hokitika, but not as out-there as I've felt in Canyon Creek in the pre-thigh strap days.

If I'd made this run in June, instead of walking the Magic Mile, I would have given that Mile a lot more of a go. At the level that we saw the Kings that day, we could have done it, given what I have learned after the Upper Yock. While the Upper Yock is not so steep, it had twice the flow and quite similar architecture in the technical bits and holes.

On the Yock and following Adam I boofed and I carved and rode up on pillows and made lots of moves through holes that I normally avoid but here simply couldn't. Boofing into eddies to the sides and below of 3-4 foot drops was new for me -- as was dodging kayakers.

In addition, I felt like for the sake of all us whitewater packrafters out there, I had to deliver a clean run of all the big, named drops. But doing so left me with a kink in my neck!

Adam said he normally just "bombs down" the run. By doing so we stayed ahead of the crowd which released a lot of the pressure I would have felt with a bunch of people all around the goof in the clown craft/pool toy. Thankfully I was able to drop National with all the people and video cameras running there above the carnage pit of a hole that eats people and swallows them and spits them out fifty feet downstream.

Forrest McCarthy had set Adam and me up for this "blind date" of boating, and I was grateful that Adam was helpful but not hovering, encouraging but not sand-bagging. In short, he was the best guide I could hope for, a great conversationalist on the drive and a great partner on the water.

Next year, if I have a solid roll, stronger boof strokes, and a couple 15-20 footers under my bow and stern, maybe Adam'll take me down the Virginia Line at Great Falls.

Now that's something to aspire to!

New Zealand West Coast Compilation

While listening to the local college radio station, I used Shazzam on my iPhone to ferret out a 2-person band called "Phantogram" while waiting for a stoplight in midtown Anchorage.

All excited about that new Alpacka "Witchcraft" boat (Alpacka might send one up for us to test-out!), but it's snowing now and can't get out in my own boats even....so the best I could do was reminisce about the West Coast of NZ and put together this:

Upper Hokitika: Satisfaction

Kayaker scorn for packrafts crosses international borders and communication media. You pick it up on forums like “Mountain Buzz” where comments from posters hiding behind names like “super_narnar” or “badass*boofmaster” range from “What’s wrong with a kayak?” to “They look like a sh*tty IK to me.”

But in NZ, at Murchison and Hokitika, the scorn was shocking. I’d thought Kiwis to be open-minded and progressive. And many are. Curiously, it’s often the young kayakers and the original paddling explorers -- the latter who’d traveled the world and run rivers before it was cool, those who’d read John Mackay’s “Wild Rivers” classic about building rafts using packed-in inner-tubes and wood to make first descents of NZ’s biggest rivers 40 years ago – who get it, and respected it. They might not want to paddle a packraft, perhaps, but they find them full of potential in a country where tracks parallel every backcountry river and “burn” (Scottish for creek) and the huts lighten the load making room for boats.

The worst reactions came from the hard-core, gnar-gnar paddling, thirty-somethings and the middle-age kayakers who’d been at it awhile. From them: frowns and open scorn and maybe even a tinge of disgust. I’ve come to expect what many packrafters call “kayaker attitude”, a certain blend of arrogance and disrespect that turns many of us off to kayakers, something early, telemarking “pinheads” must have felt for alpine skiers back in the day. Which is too bad, as we packrafters can learn a lot from kayakers – and indeed have. I am thinking here of Paul Schauer, Thai Verzone, and Tim Johnson in particular, kayakers who get in packrafts and wear grins on Class IV, sharing with the rest of us their skills and knowledge of rivers and creeks. In contrast, there are the middle-aged kayakers who get in the butt-boats wearing an expression like the family dog wears during its annual bath, a sort of “what-am-I-doing-here” and “when-can-I-get-out” look.

Having paddled over a month in thigh straps I can attest that a lot of that sad-dog look is due to the sloppy-loafer feel of a packraft compared to the tight-glove fit of a hard-shell. But when it comes to the arrogant, self-righteous, fascist group, with their know-it-all theoretical insight based on zero experience in packrafts -- well, I find it particularly satisfying to prove their confident predictions dead wrong.

The Arahura River had been a creek run for me – my choice of style. It had a hike-in and a camp-out with both of us in butt-boats. The Upper Hokitika would be a steep creek (over 260 feet/mile for a mile and a half), kayak run for Tim. It would require helicopter access (about US $100 each) as its half-dozen sheer gorges interspersed by slip-fed (slips are active landslides) boulder drops preclude any trails or even routes through the steep-sided canyon. One could hike in over mountains upstream – and one day I hope to -- but the technicality of the run makes carrying even a small overnight load in a packraft by an intermediate Class IV boater like me just too challenging. And, I admit, the novelty of a helo run in a packraft did appeal.

Unfortunately I had to put up with four arrogant kayakers while waiting for the helicopter to show up and four more at two of the portages above must-run rapids in the Hoki’s bowels. And then there was the email comment from one of Tim’s friends who said basically that the Hoki "was no place for a packraft and if you were to take one in, be sure to pack some overnight gear." So I brought along a stick of pepperoni, a wool hoody, head net, and bug dope in case I got stuck and had to hike out. Tim brought his hard-shell since he didn’t fancy hitting his tail-bone again.

“What have you guys been doin?” asked Mr. Cool. It’s the standard way to gauge a boater here on the West Coast, where some of the hardest and most dangerous rivers in the world carve steeply off the Southern Alps through sheer-walled canyons and sieved-out slip drops.

Tim told him, the Arahura.

“Oh yea, mate, the Upper Hokitika’s nothing like the Arahura,” said blonde Mr. Cool in his shades and body armor wetsuit top. His tone wrapped “what the f*ck are you clowns doing here?” around the implicit warning.

As he bundled the paddles for the flight in, he couldn’t hold back his scorn any longer and blurted, “Who’s got the split paddle!”

I didn’t bother answering him. What did it matter: he already knew it all.

Poor, sweet, modest, Class V paddling Tim. He had his hardshell. And he had the experience and skills to run this test-piece. But here he was, suffering contact scorn for being around the likes of me. Maybe it’s my sort of frowny face, big nose, nasal voice, unkempt hair. Maybe it’s wearing long pants over my 1996-vintage dry-suit and adventure racing shoes, my plastic rafter’s helmet -- in addition to my paddle and boat.

The helo arrived and the bad-boys sprinted to it.

“Wow, what’s wrong with those guys? They act like their going to a funeral.”

Quite likely they expected me to die and wanted to get as far away as fast as possible from the epic they knew was sure to happen. They wanted no part of my swims, my junk show, my carnage, my unplanned bivouac in the button-down brush above sheer, polished gorges.

By the time we landed in the little two-passenger 'copter, all six other kayaks, making up three pair-wise groups, were far downstream. Looking below at the first drop I could see them scouting, portaging, racing to keep ahead of us.

We paddled off, admiring a Blue Duck, a long thin waterfall, a shady glen.

“Let ‘em go. We’re better off doing our own thing,” said Tim.

He was right. First off we didn’t need them. Our skills and our judgment were sufficient. Second, it seemed that they were in a hurry, trying to get down as fast as possible. And from my adventure racing days I knew that the best races are your own, where nobody else’s pace matters. Besides, Tim and I weren’t racing: we were just trying to make it down with safe satisfaction.

The first drop was really a double drop. The top one tall, the lower one on a corner.

“You should pull into the eddy below the first drop and then drive sideways over the second so you don’t get caught in the pocket hole.”

I disregarded Tim’s instructions. It looked doable and fun to link them both. It looked like there was room to make the 'snicker-snack', paddle-jab-pivot, and I nearly did, but misjudging the power of the current sent me off-line by a foot and shoved me into the pocket hole, upside down.

Holding onto boat and paddle I waited to surface, but instead found myself inside blue gloom and doom, shoved beneath a boulder. Realizing my predicament I pushed backwards out of the cave and clawed for the surface, dropping my paddle in the process, but managing to clamber on top of the rock that moments before had trapped me.

Above Tim was hidden and unable to help because of a huge overhanging boulder.

“I’m OK! My paddle! Get my paddle!”

The paddle floated away, slid off the next drop, cruised toward shore, then somehow hung up at the brink of another drop.

Tim ran and retrieved it while I caught up on some recently missed oxygen.

Tim wrapped the rope around a log and tossed me down an end with a carabiner that I clipped to myself for back-up. Then he belayed while I scrambled, using the rope as a hand-line to get over the bulge.

“You were right about that corner. I got shoved under a rock. Pretty f*in scary. I’m going to walk a while.”

I boulder-hopped down to where the Funeral Party had recently scouted. I put back in, running a number of fun mid-boat to boat-length drops for an hour or so, walking past the collapsed 'Viagra Falls', a massive mess of sievy boulders.

About an hour and a half after our put-in we caught the Funeral Party portaging the entrance falls to the First Gorge, a mini one and a taste of what was to come.

Seeing my boat, two kayakers from the early group of four, whom we hadn’t yet met, smiled and laughed, perhaps appreciating how easy it was to portage the steep boulders beside crashing falls with a packraft. Taking Tim's boat across a channel, I realized that kayakers are really burly people. They paddle their boats in places they simply mustn’t swim and carry them in places where they mustn’t fall. They are true bad-asses.

But the bad-asses hurriedly seal launched into the gorge pool below and paddled away, leaving without so much as a wave hello or good-bye. Again I was reminded of teams in an adventure race, wanting to drop the clowns in back who so obviously didn’t belong.

“I’ve never really met kayakers like that before,” said Tim.

Twenty minutes later, we caught them again, portaging into the Second Gorge with its series of must-do and partially blind rapids. This section of the Upper Hokitika had recently changed making the guidebooks suggestion of a ferry to river right and portage past an enormous boulder obsolete. Now it was drop into an 'L-Bow' turn and watch for the hole at the end, paddling between overhung boulders and a sheer gorge wall.

The Funeral Crew fully ignored us here, especially Mr. Cool who was worked his still-cam for the keenest photo possible while the others studied the line from every possible angle, which summed to exactly two: very high and directly above.

The Funeral Six studied the rapid with such seriousness, ignoring me as if I was certain to die, that their mood was contagious and I was soon sick with dread. I looked up and wondered how long it would take for me to bushwack along the rim and back to the river. I wondered, too, if I threw up if I’d feel any better.

No words of encouragement, none of warning. Nothing. Like I was a ghost. Five of them treated us as if we were nothing more than soft boulders in their way.

There was one guy, a Kiwi in a white helmet who was actually nice and talked to me. "That giant boulder down there," he pointed to a green, house-sized rock siting on another rock, "was rotated 25 degrees, changing this whole section."

After the Funeral Crew had paddled through, one taking the next rapid below backwards, Tim said, “I’m glad they’re gone. Their mood’s even bringing me down!”

That was bad. Tim’s an eternally upbeat guy.

I was surprised that none had offered us any safety, that once again they hurried off to leave us. They hadn’t even given us the chance to say, “Heh, look. You don’t need to wait for us. We can take care of ourselves.”

“I dunno what’s up with these guys. They don’t seem to have any river ethics. Most kayakers aren’t like this”

“It’s me and the packraft.”

Anyway, we made it down 'L-Bow' and the next three must-do rapids satisfyingly and it was adventure boating at its best. This Second Gorge's three must-do rapids are stacked back to back, and it was a must to do them with Tim. He told me the “L-Bow” turn entrance would actually be easier in a packraft. He ran it and signaled me to follow, warning me off the sucking sieve to the left after passing the house-sized boulder that teetered overhead. Next we scouted for a way to avoid the main flow forcing us into an undercut.

I pointed out a ferry that looked packraftable and Tim ran it, hopped out of his boat on a huge, flat boulder with only inches of cuurent flowing over it, and hooked his foot in his boat's cockpit as he set safety for me.

To the right was the meat feeding the undercut beast; to the left a blind drop; in the middle a wood sieve pinned against a boulder sieve. Must-make moves in a sheer walled room of horrors.

The next blind drop went fine into a circulating pit that Tim let me circle in my boat a few times before fishing me out.

Then three big drops led into a long pool set below the narrowest section of the Second Gorge -- gorgeous!

Almost immediately after leaving the Second Gorge we found two waterfalls that both of us portaged, but Tim said they were both runnable, one upstream and one downstream of another hotel-sized rock, this one we portaged over. It was neat adventure boating here, too.

Below these came a big slidy drop leading into the Third Gorge. This third one began with some ugly sieves, then a must-do blind corner in its middle. The Third Gorge opened up to some easy rapids leading into the highlight of the Upper Hokitika, the Gates of Argonath.

All of this ran pretty much back to back. We’d put-in at 11 AM, caught the Funeral Crew around quarter to one at the First Gorge and again 20 minutes later at the Second Gorge. They were long gone by the time we got through the Second Gorge at quarter to three. We’d spent a lot of time fretting over the must-do lines, two of which made me nauseated with fear – what I call “dread”. Dread returned in the Third Canyon at its must-do blind corner which we finally paddled at 4:30 and reached the fabled Gates of Argonath five minutes later, with its vertical boulder choked narrows and waterfall framing the three foot width of this Fourth Gorge. Half an hour later we’d dropped the last Class IV in the final Fifth Gorge above the intermediate Lower Hokitika run and its Kakariki Canyon.

The intermediate run has a sheer but gentle gorge with amazing water carved sides. We coasted in its gentle current, talking.

“It’s been alright without the Funeral Crew around. I wonder what got a bee in their bonnet? Must have been the packraft.”

“Yea, and those town pants over your dry suit, plus your split paddle. What you need is to pull out a round red clown nose, put it on, and lighten them all up.”

That seems like a good idea. I’m going to get a bozo nose to keep handy in my LJ pocket, ready at a moment’s notice to diffuse the “this-guy-in-his-boat’s-a-clown” attitude I seem to encounter too often -- even here on my own blog and in the Alpacka Forum!

“I think the video you make of this run should be called ‘Proof of Concept’. You just packrafted a West Coast test-piece.”

“I don’t really feel like I ran it. I swam three times and portaged a bunch of stuff.”

“Maybe so, but you swam in Class II and made all the must-do moves. I’d say you did it.”

Yea maybe so, Tim, but I’d already decided that the video of the Upper Hoki wouldn’t be about packrafts. It’d be a tribute to Tim Johnson, a big "Thank-You" to Tim for watching out for me and paddling the classic West Coast creek, not to test himself, but to help me find my way.

We reached the Whitcombe by 6 PM and the take-out below the tourist swing bridge by 7. Under the rental car’s windshield wiper was a note: “Call if you get out before dark.”

I guess more than one kayaker had a heart after all.

Here's Tim's video version:

Arahura -- Proof of Concept

Helicopters are routinely used to access the steep creeks and rivers of the West Coast. I hoped to discover if the classic runs -- like the Arahura, Hokitika, and Perth -- were manageable in what I consider classic Kiwi-style butt boating: hike up to a hut; sleep; walk farther up to the put-in for the helos; float out.

The New Zealand trip has emerged as a collage of mountains and huts, rivers and tracks, people and bush. From sub-tropical tree ferns and warm, amber creeks to talus hopping songbirds and glacial blue rivers. From a 32 person dorm on a water-taxi served lake filled with people from around the world to a remote tin shack stuffed with girlie magazines and three grinning packrafters.

My skills have improved, my body has leaned, the kit and techniques for making the most of this civilized mountain-forest-river landscape have been sharpened.

All my camping gear and food fits in a 15 L dry bag strapped inside my boat, nothings on the bow.

The center-entry boat with five inches of Velcro closure and air bladders on the belly band has thigh straps and a seat moved forward of the top-off valve with a thick, six-inches of backrest. The seat and backrest Velcro in for easy removal and faster drying.

Overnights in huts provide the best night’s sleep, as the mattresses are thick and comfy. No need to carry a tent or a pad, my partners and I park at the trailhead late in the afternoon and hike-in two hours to the first hut, below which is usually a bunch of boogy water and maybe a gorge with plenty of water and Class III rapids.

In the morning after coffee, we leave the dry bag of camping gear (food eaten) and hike up 2-4 hours with lunch, boats, dry-suits, helmets, throw bags, paddles, clothes –- we then boat down with fully unloaded boats, pick up the dry bag and float out to the car-park, usually with enough daylight to dry our gear in the hot sun and afternoon breeze, two meteorological conditions that keep the flesh-hungry sandflies at bay.

It’s a really good system for seeing New Zealand by foot and packraft.

Back in the Fall, while planning for this trip, the Arahura River sat near the top of my West Coast wish-list, above the Perth, Hokatika, Whitcombe, and Styx, but below the Landsborough. The Lansborough seemed doable, but the Arahura felt unattainable -- that is, before Tim Johnson arrived.

Tim flew in on Sunday. We met at high noon in Cathedral Square, downtown Christchurch among the buskers and their spectators. It was the last day of the 10 day International Busker’s Festival, an extravaganza of gags and acrobatics, street gymnastics, juggling, and jokes. Many of the Buskers stayed at the YMCA where I was drinking cappuccinos, making videos, and writing blog entries waiting for Tim to arrive.

Monday we planned to drive over and hike in to run the Taipo. But when we got there the gauge was out of the water, so dry had it been the last couple weeks.

“Let’s go look at the Styx,” I suggested, and we drove on to Hokitika eating some fish and chips and looking at the shops in town. But the Styx looked too low, also, and the Arahura was just a 10 km gravel drive away.

“Why not?” was Tim’s response. He’d been down it six years before.

By 7 PM we were camped in the Lower Arahura Hut, a dirty old thing currently being replaced with a new one by a three-man Kiwi crew who’d flown in with all their materials.

“Who’s got the boat?” they asked.

“We both do.”

“Oh, packrafts, hay,” said the oldest one. “A couple blokes were spinning yarns about them when I was working in Alaska a few years back.”

In the morning we busted out 3 miles to the usual helicopter put-in for this West Coast classic of multiple drops, boulder gardens and infamous rock sieves. The water flowed clean and low under the swing-bridge.

Within five minutes we’d come to the first big drop, scouted and run it. The next slot Tim hit his tail bone hard -- he has not moved his seat forward and the thigh straps pull him off his seat -- and the drop after that he banged his elbow, hard. All this within 20 or 30 minutes of the put-in. It would be another hour before he was not so gun-shy as to portage a bunch of super drops that I plopped in the sunshine.

We scouted just about every foot in this upper “Third Canyon”, knowing that “Curtain Call” and “Dent Falls” lay lurking behind one of the almost continuous horizon lines set between massive boulders. At least this situation kept the camera dry and the video coming. I was determined to run everything – until the whole river went beneath a single flat boulder. And then came “Curtain Call” where the whole river slipped smoothly and seamlessly into a pool of backwash.

“Oh man, Curtain Call’s super dangerous right now.” Earlier Tim had promised we could run laps on this photogenic drop. “Look at that current coming right back over. It’s like a low-head dam right now.”

I recognized the smooth plunge from a day at Bird Creek when Brad M and Jeff C and I could not get past a similar water structure. We both portaged this.

Soon after we came to “Dent Falls” -- or what was left of it. Its boulders had collapsed leaving a massive sieve twenty feet high, with the 700 cfs running behind and between narrow slots no boat – or body even -- could fit through.

A Blue Duck flew in and landed, foraging in and out of the narrow slots of the bank-side sieves, slipping into and out of the whitewater with ease. Eventually the river’s gradient slackened and the boulders shrank enough that we could boat scout, boulder hopping from eddy to eddy, creeping down the drops one tongue at a time.

Tim’s paddling technique and confidence was amazing. It is a real gift he shows for water, and I was flattered he was here to paddle this in a packraft with me. Twice he posted safety below drops that flipped me and as soon as my head surfaced the throw line was on me. Don’t come to the Aruhara without someone so skilled.

His paddling style reveals his kayaking roots: aggressive strokes; multiple boofs over holes, drops, and rocks; long pauses above big drops circling and eyeing and picking his line; and a tendency to forget he had no stern but with the reflexes and strength to brace unfailingly. While he walked more drops than I, he never fell out of his boat.

Running the river required four boating techniques: the first was easy floating through pools or boogy water (Class II) – this was quite rare in the first six hours – sort of like easy cramponing up a firm, moderate slope.

The second technique was boat scouting by eddy-hopping through boulder gardens, a classic Kiwi style of boating, and quite emotionally draining. Apprehension of big drops or sieves with no way out, quickly followed by the adrenaline of drop-able falls works your body through the hormones sent from the mind. I was reminded of simul-climbing on alpine ice.

The third technique was liked belaying pitches: getting out and scouting a rapid, picking a line, setting safety and then making the moves and re-grouping below. Sometimes you “fall” on these and your “belayer” “catches” you with the throw line. It was good to have a helmet, elbow pads, and above all a competent partner.

Finally, there was the walk-around. We did portage every guidebook-named rapid except “Alzheimer's”, and a couple others un-named but dangerous. After six hours and five kilometers I was wupped and happy to see the river let up.

The best rapid was at the end of the “Second Gorge”, below our portage of the deadly “Billiards”, in the rapid called “Alzheimer's”. This had a an s-turn slalom between holes, followed by a big ferry left, a slot into a pool needing a quick 90-degree right turn and a drop off a six foot waterfall. Stunningly satisfying to run.

We picked up our gear at the swing-bridge near the hut , checking up on the workmen’s progress and amazed that they’d framed the hole thing in the eight hours since we’d left: two hours to walk the 5 km up and six hours to boat it back down. From the hut down it was just boogy water and a couple Class III drops that felt like little more than a roller coaster ride. And the “cesspit”

The final canyon, “Cesspit”, is an ugly name for an amazing horseshoe-shaped waterfall into a deep polished schist gorge. A twenty foot wide falls plunges into a fifty foot gorge that is narrower than it is tall, made of polished, vertically grained schist. Below the main entry drop churned more rapids in a gorge I had no interest in running.

In all honesty, I was satisfied, ready to fly home with the best packraft creeking experience I could imagine. How could it get any better?

Mokihinui Mission

Forrest had lined me up with Allen O’Bannon, the New Zealand Branch Director of NOLS. He’s led the notorious Drysdale River NOLS course in Western Australia's Kimberly, where it’s so hot it cooks your brains and the crocodiles wait to eat the students on the last day. He’s taught NOLS courses in Alaska, Chile, Wyoming, and Africa. He’s worked on “The Ice” and traveled the world.

He is familiar with water as a canoeist, kayaker, and big rafter. Allen’s hearty, easy laugh recounted many a story of friends we had in common, but it took packrafting to bring us together.

We emailed back and forth about possibilities, settling on a few days around Murchison for Allen to get oriented with the new-fangled, thigh-strapped rafts and for me to get oriented to the New Zealand waters. We’d follow this with a hike in to the West Coast’s Mokihinui by way of a run down its south fork. We tossed around ideas, the most interesting one being a hike over the “Thousand Acre Plateau” by way of a trail out of the Matiri River Valley to Poor Pete’s Hut, then dropping down the Larikin Creek.

Allen made some phone calls to all kinds of characters, including a guy who’s collecting all 1000 huts on the South Island. The man-of-a-thousand-huts suggested a trail from the west over the Glasgow Range followed by a bushwack along Mountain Creek. The loop aspect had a certain appeal.

Allen also visited with Murchison kayaking legend Mick Hopkinson.

“Mick says they’re working on an old trail up to Lyell Saddle. They’ve cut all the logs to there and made it darn near wheelchair accessible most of the way. He also says that nobody’s run the South Fork. It’d be a first descent.”

Good news there.

After running the sweet little Glenroy canyon, Allen and I met Rob in Murchison, a bearded, muscle-bound, twenty-something, hunter-fisher, climber-boater, NOLS instructor, then ran the shuttle and made camp in Lyell. In the morning we packed up and fairly ran to Lyell Saddle on a trail suitable for mountain biking.

Gold miners had left their mark in the Lyell Valley with the track, a cemetery, old cart and wagon wheels , shovels, bottles, and even a moss covered shoe. The trail led to the ridge where we cruised along the tops among stunted trees covered in bryophyte mats. In places gym-sized mattresses of sphagnum moss, twenty feet and more across, billowed across the trail. Weird Dacrophyllum trees, looking like something out of a Dr. Seuse book, poked out of the bush adding to the overall weirdness.

The Mokihinui is a river with a price on its head. The power company Meridian may soon have the govt’s go-ahead dam the Mokihinui Gorge, drowning what is an exceptional big-water, pool-drop run. It’s a northwest coastal river, the next big one south of the Karamea and has both limestone and granite in its headwaters. Its central valley, above the forks, is broad and flat, the bottom of a drained earthquake lake from 1929. It’s also a so-called “Ecological Area” designation, so putting in the dam is creating a stink.

That’s why the trail has been re-cut with plans for an extension: to mollify the out-cry for drowning what’s arguably one of the better Class III/IV paddles on the West Coast.

Rob, a keen naturalist and observer pointed out New Zealand Falcons and parakeets, noisy Tuis, Bellbirds, White-eyes, Rifleman, and the startlingly tame New Zealand Robin on the trail and as we rested on our last break before descending into the South Fork.

“Doesn’t matta what why we go,” drawled Rob, a South African by birth with a Canadian dad and British mom who’s grown up in New Zealand, “’cause we got gravity workin’ for us.”

Unfortunately he was drawn by gravity to the slimiest, stick-infested, slot of a creek he could find and he darned well wanted to stick with it.

“Dear me,” muttered Allen in a few spots on slippery logs over shallow pools.

While we’d made the saddle in 5 hours, a good 18 km, the next “gravity assisted” 7 hours gave us only 3 km, this including the last 2 hours in the South Fork where it was deep enough to float the raft with our packs.

My feet were beat from the slimy rocks and water of the NZ bush-boy’s route, so the literal “pack rafting” (as distinct from “packrafting”, which is an actual form of boating, aka “butt-boating”) was welcome. Where the water was deep enough to packraft, we pulled over, set up the tents, and cooked over a small fire. The sand-flies were manageable, the forest beautiful, and a rare Blue Duck, an endangered New Zealand whitewater duck (like the Harlequin in Alaska and the Torrent Duck in Paragonia), sat just downstream. It was my first and I was excited.

They are slate gray colored, with a mallard-like body, a purplish breast, white bill, and red eye. Not as handsome as a Harlequin or as svelte as a Patagonian Torrent Duck, but still a neat bird. Rob said that he’d seen fifty on one trip!

In the morning we paddled off downstream, from about a mile or two below Slate Creek. Rob pointed out a pair of Blue Ducks .

Above Mountain Creek we paddled very shallow water through narrow slots and chutes, the kind of stuff only a packraft can manage and good fun in spots, like a 20 foot water slide.

Still, and as usual, the kayakers, Allen and Rob, looked mostly like a house pet getting a bath. They wore that forlorn look of a dog standing in the bathtub, soaked and wondering, “When is this going to be over so I can get back to what I really like to do?”

But I loved it. Lots of wiggling down narrow slots and careening off boulders. Classic PR 3 stuff. Still it was exhausting, spinning and digging and humping the boats over the shallows, pushing with the arms while still in the boat.

If I’d managed to pack lighter, it would have been better.

By the time we got below Mountain Creek the soft limestone of the “Thousand Acre Plateau” dropped down and crossed the creek bed. The water disappeared. For every tributary that entered, a similar flow seemed to drop into a limestone pit. Soft and slippery on foot, the rock abraded to the boat bottom. Still we managed a couple long slides into pools.

“These are like California slides with the water turned off,” quipped Rob.

Below the limestone beds, boulders again made up most of the creek but the water did not return until Larikin Creek. We paddled deep, still pools, each with a single enormous brown trout as long as my arm. One pool had an enormous eel, too. Below each pool we’d walk along sieved out “gravel bars” made of basketball-sized boulders. The creek had disappeared.

At Goat Creek Hut the water seeped back above the bed. Downstream we beat against the afternoon headwinds across lazy loops of the South Fork as it flowed through ghost forests, drowned in the last earthquake and now piercing the river like a devil’s maze of fence posts.

We pulled out at the Mokihinui Forks hut by 7 PM, 9 hours of paddling and wiggling and portaging past sieves, big and small, having made the first descent of the Upper South Fork of the Mokihinui (and the Upper Upper). But honestly it’s not worth repeating.

Better to just hike in the trail from the end of the Seddonville Road, the normal take-out for the Mokihinui, maybe 5-7 hours to the Mokihinui Forks Hut and then raft down the half dozen big-water Class III-IV rapids back to your car. The Mokinihui Gorge is a classic packrafting river of pool drop architecture, and beautiful glass-green waters. It’s clean and safe, and fun. I never felt apprehensive or even nervous really, except on the third big rapid.

We scouted three from shore and the rest were boat-scoutable. It’s on this river that I finally learned how to paddle the big boulder studded NZ flows by eddy hopping to boat scout your way down, a watershed moment for me, really.

It was fun to watch Rob and Allen start off sneaking every big rapid in the morning then plunging down the meaty bits by the afternoon as they discovered for themselves what the little boats were capable of.

When we got back to Murchison Mick asked us about the Upper S. Fork run.

“Not worth repeating,” we said, wrinkling our noses and shaking our heads.

“Yea,” he smiled knowingly, “you gotta kiss a lotta toads before you find a prince.”