Honolulu Hoop

Honolulu Hoop * * *
29 miles 2-4 days
Moderate Expense
N. Talkeetna Mountains hike
Some forest, brush; mostly tundra
3,250 foot gain
12 mile walk
Honolulu Creek paddle
PR 5(6)
Low volume –150 feet/mile
17 mile paddle

A scenic hike in the northern Talkeetna Mountains to run the steep, challenging and technical but beautiful Honolulu Creek (Class IV+). Hike involves forest, brush, and extensive tundra walking with views of Denali’s east side and the Talkeetnas. Best done in June when upper North Fork of Honolulu is runnable and alpine and subalpine vegetation not fully leafed out. A loop trip that begins and ends at Parks Highway Crossing of Honolulu Creek. A remote, difficult run in a brushy canyon.

Description A thirty mile weekend of serious wilderness packrafting. The 6-10 hour walk-in is mostly tundra, open forest, moose trail, and easy brush (B4 or below). Paddling begins with an hour and a half on the North Fork of Honolulu Creek (PR 3-4). Camp above the confluence of Goat Lake Creek and Honolulu Creek. Early start with good communication and paddling skills needed for the long day (8-14 hours) down the 12 miles of Honolulu Creek with some PR 5 paddling unavoidable. Start Parks Highway at Honolulu Creek Bridge, 63.0637 N 149.54335 W. Finish A Loop.

Introduction Honolulu Creek has been called the best Class IV kayak run in the State of Alaska. For packrafters who have mastered low water runs of Ship, Six Mile, and Canyon Creeks, this wilderness run of a steep creek can be very rewarding and exciting. Kayakers fly-in to Goat Lake south of Honolulu Pass and run the creek in a day, but walking in adds-up as a two-day trip: a day to walk in and a day to paddle out. The hiking is easy and enjoyable with little brush, most of which can be avoided by judicious use of game trails and meadow linkage.  It is important to travel light, as the technicalities of the creek require quick moves and portages may require steep gorge climbs followed by fight brush in alders and willows.

 Hiking Starting at the Honolulu Creek bridge walk north along the Parks Highway about a quarter mile or less, looking east 20 yards for the start of a low ridgeline across a steep erosion gully, itself hidden below overhanging alders. The ridge leads to the edge of an ancient alluvial bench 100-200 feet above the forested flats of Honolulu Creek. Follow the edge east for about an hour or so through open spruce-birch forest with some alder patches. En route cross over a few gullies and creeks and beneath the Fairbanks-Anchorage intertie power-line. Eventually (2.5 miles) this rim swings north, parallel to a tributary of Honoulu Creek that leads into the high country. As the rim swings north, intercept a moose trail that weaves in and out of rim-side alder patches (B4). Avoid heading directly up-stream, and instead stay in blueberry meadows among thick alder patches in an effort to gain the left ridgeline. Stay high to avoid alders (B3) on intermittent caribou trails, dropping down to follow the creek upstream of an old moraine. Tundra walking and scree climbing lead up the pass and beyond to the North Fork of Honolulu Creek. During spring run-off, this little creek is runnable from below the 3,400 feet elevation. A good place to put in is where two creeks come in on river left with little incised gorges.

Other hiking involves several likely portages along the whitewater run of Honolulu Creek. The first portage past the “Decapitator” (upstream of Goat Lake Creek junction) on river right is easy tundra walking on river left. Portages past the upper and lower “Sand Bag Falls” and “Right On!” are more rigorous and exposed (these are marked as red lines across Honolulu Creek on the map). Longer portages (black) follow moose/bear/caribou trails on river right, some of which can be very distinct but can also disappear in thick B4 alders or willows. Portages past other rapids (red lines perpendicular to stream on map) are short: the first two in open shrubs and tundra, and the last three are creekside.

Boating Honolulu Creek from just below Goat Lake Creek is a Class IV+ kayak run. It’s located a dozen miles from the road in an alder-choked valley with two sharp-rock gorges, one granite sieve-type gorge, and snow-melt whitewater dropping up to 180 feet/mile.  While its flow is in the 250-400 cfs range, its steepness, blind corners, and microeddies  make the potential for cut tubes, foot entrapment, and run-away boats a serious run for packrafters. Secondly, aside from its technical difficulty, sustained rigor, and hazards, Honolulu Creek is poorly documented by the whitewater community. Many hardcopy and online descriptions are confusing. 

Putting-in on the North Fork after the hike-in offers a quick, comfortable 2.5 mile ride (100 feet/mile) to an interesting drop (the “Defibrillator” rapid, PR 4, scout on river left). The creek is splashy, low volume, and fun, well above tree-line, with no real hazards. Below this snaking drop is an easy canyon (PR 3, 125 feet/mile) leading 1.5 miles down to the reach just upstream of the “Decapitator” (Class V) and the confluence of Honolulu with Goat Lake Creek. You will recognize bad rapids are approaching when a large, ten-foot high rock outcrop appears midstream.  This is a good place to get out and portage left past two rapids (the second of which is the kayak community’s Class V “Decapitator Drop”) neither of which looks particularly fun in a packraft. Put in below the Decapitator at the confluence with Goat Lake Creek. 

I consider the run to the road from Goat Lake Creek in nine distinct sections: The first section (blue on map) is a sustained PR 4 section (180 feet/mile) in a shallow gorge for 15 minutes to the first waterfall, “Upper Sand Bag Falls”. Watch for a creek river right about 15 minutes downstream of the confluence of Honolulu and Goat Lake Creek. Eddy right early on for an easy portage or river left late for a shorter, steeper one. If you miss the creek, you’ll see the alarming horizon line and narrow slot. “Upper Sand Bag Falls” looks doable in a packraft, but is best portaged, as a swim looks inevitable and the rock is sharp and the slot narrow.

Section two  (red and yellow on map) is a longer (2 miles), more intense PR 4-5 section, the hardest on Honolulu for a packraft, as the creek drops 170 feet/mile in a deepening gorge of sharp-schist with several probable portages, including “Upper and Lower Sand Bag Falls” (water in between runnable).  Many rapids will require scouting, and some portaging. Swimming is dangerous because of the sharp rocks, small eddies and surprisingly frequent undercuts and sieves. Most of the creek is set 75-100 feet into the gorge, itself topped with alders. Minimum party size ought to be three; but the creek may be too small for much larger parties. At its easiest, this section suggests the first canyon in Six Mile Creek; more often it feels like a high-volume version of the Kenai’s Canyon Creek. Many drops are constricted and powerful. Packrafters may elect to bail out and portage before the canyon ends. River right seems to have the best animal trails.

Section three (black on map) may best be portaged (half a mile) to easy water downstream of the first mapped river right stream and river left pond. Section four (green on map) is relaxing PR 2-3 in an open, broad valley that’s over all too quickly. It drops fast  (125 feet/mile) but easily. 

Section five (red on map) appears as a shallow, granite canyon (90 feet/mile) with two memorable 3-4 foot ledge drops (“Cave Drop Rocks” and “California Ledge”), each framed by big boulders (PR 5). Many PR 4 drops follow the reach below California Ledge which is the best, difficult section of the run for packrafts. While guidebooks and online material suggest this is the hardest section, from a packrafter’s perspective, it is not as difficult as section two in the first canyon below Goat Lake Creek confluence.

Section six (green) is a another, clean, relaxing PR 2-3 section dropping 90 feet/mile through boulders, starting in a gorge and passing through a cottonwood flat (interrupted by a possible PR 4 portage at a river right creek), then ending when the creek takes a sharp turn left into a narrowing canyon and signaled with a steep, fish-tail shaped cascading creek entering from river left.

Relaxation is interrupted in section seven (three red lines across creek), a short, sharp-schist gorge with three powerful drops (PR 5) that can be portaged bankside, the first on river left, the next river right, and the last on river left. The last two arrive back to back. All are runnable in a packraft.

 Johnson’s Alaska Whitewater describes section eight (red on map) as a “manky boulder garden” (2 miles, 90 feet/mile, PR 3-4). It goes on for nearly an hour with big waves and steep channels  among short splits in the creek. Wood becomes an increasing concern.

The final section, an almost relaxing (40 feet/mile, PR 2-3) three miles to the car, takes about and hour through a wide valley with cottonwood sweepers.

The best advice for judging an appropriate water level seems to be to look at the boulders at the Parks Highway bridge over Honolulu Creek.  Looking upstream from the bridge are some large rocks on river left (looker’s right -- see on the right center of photo below ), adjacent to the parking area. If they are fully dry, the run is too low; if there are holes it’s far too high. If you are unable to judge the flow as in the 300-400 cfs range, don’t go.

McCarthy's Forest

"McCarthy Forest" * * * *
25 miles

1 day 

Cheap trip from Anchorage
Resurrection Trail hike 
Trail walk 
1,200 foot gain 
13 mile walk 

Resurrection Creek paddle

PR 3(4)

Low volume -- 100 ft/mile

12 mile paddle

An easy walk up the Kenai Peninsula’s finest trail to paddle back down a warm, splashy, clearwater creek. Hike is fast, level and popular. Best done in early season or after rain as Resurrection Creek is shallow. An out-and-back trip that begins and ends at the Resurrection Pass Trailhead near Hope. A good outing for intermediates -- or more experienced boaters who want to introduce beginners to the next level beyond Twenty-Mile River (“Clark’s Classic”) or Girdwood to Eagle River (“Griffith’s Gold”). Passes through beautiful spruce forest on a good trail and beautiful creek.

Description

A twenty-five mile day of easy trail walking and backcountry packrafting. The hike-in takes about 1.5--2 hours to 7 Mile Bridge and 3--5 hours to the uppermost put-in above Fox Creek. The float to 7 Mile Bridge takes about 1.5--2 hours, depending on portages of beaver dams and log jams. From 7 Mile Bridge to the take-out requires another couple hours with additional time to scout/portage the Cascades. Plan on 8-12 hours for the entirety of McCarthy Forest. USGS 1:63,360 Seward D-8, C-8.  Start Resurrection Pass Trailhead at  Resurrection Creek Bridge: 60.87035^o N , 149.62791^o W  Finish An out-and-back.

Introduction

The Resurrection Trail system comes as close to a Lower 48 style backcountry experience as any in Alaska. For packrafters who have mastered Twenty Mile, Placer, and Eagle Rivers and those who enjoy upper Ship Creek and South Fork Eagle River (particularly “Sunshine” or “Ship of Temptation” and “Porcupine”) this 13 mile run of a steep, shallow, and low volume creek is very fun. The entire trip, Anchorage to Anchorage, is a full summer’s day, split evenly between walking, paddling and driving. Generally, if the Six Mile Creek NOAA Gauge is 10 feet or above, there should be sufficient water to do the uppermost section.

 Hiking

The walk-in is straightforward. Leave the Resurrection Pass Trail parking area about five miles south of Hope, cross the Trailhead Bridge over to the west side of the creek and head south on a wide, relatively dry trail. Even when wet, this trail is not muddy. The trail first parallels within sight of the creek, then, after about a mile and a half, it climbs uphill and diverges as the creek passes through its lower canyon. Beyond this hill another mile or so (about 2.5 miles from the trailhead) the creek and trail come very close, within a few yards of each other. Use Put-in 1 for a quick run down to the Trailhead Bridge. Southward the trail passes through an old burn and climbs again away from the creek. About 4.5 miles from the trailhead, high above the creek you may hear the Cascades rapids. Look through the birch and hemlock on the canyon rim to see the constricted, boulder-strewn PR 4 drops, the most challenging and potentially dangerous stretch of Resurrection Creek. A short, indistinct trail leaves the main trail onto a birch-covered bluff and allows a bit of a scout (marked on the USGS map Seward D-8). Carry on another two miles or so to cross Resurrection Creek at “7 Mile Bridge”. Put-in 2 provides a two-hour paddle to the Trailhead Bridge. From 7 Mile Bridge continue up the trail past Caribou, Pass and Fox Creeks. Fox Creek is about 12 miles from the trailhead, a mile from Put-in 3. The put-in is recognizable as a high bluff over the creek about 20 yards from the trail. Perched atop the bluff, look left for the cottonwoods growing on the old, bluff slump and work your way down to the creek.

Boating

The general nature of Resurrection Creek is a very small to mid-sized, steep, wooded creek with canyons, boulders, clear, warm water and non-stop, fairly consistent action. The paddle down to the parking area divides naturally into three legs separated by the mapped put-in points. The uppermost stretch is steep (PR 3) and tiny with several wood portages. The middle stretch is bigger and more technical (PR 4) with rocks and ledges and some wood in its canyon. The final stretch (PR 3) is highest volume and boulder-filled but usually clear of wood.

The uppermost stretch (100 feet/mile),  is on a very small creek, 100 cfs at most, with very few to no eddies and many sharp bends.  A typical paddle to 7 Mile Bridge will encounter several portages in the form of beaver dams and log jams. In addition, new cottonwoods toppled by beavers and wind-thrown beetle-killed spruce can easily span the creek. As the upper creek has many blind twists and turns with midstream boulders, consider boating with an open spray deck at times, ready for a quick exit. Back-paddling and good maneuvering skills (especially back-ferry) are handy, but again, because the volume is so low, the run always feels in control. It’s also very beautiful. There are a half dozen mini-canyons with exciting PR 3 drops between constant PR 2 water in a vibrant spruce forest. Several creeks come in from both sides adding flow. At the time of writing there were two beaver dams above Fox Creek, and two log jams between Fox and White Creeks. Upstream of the put-in also looked log-prone. From White Creek to 7 Mile Bridge was a bit higher flow (maybe 150 cfs) with no portages.

About 15 to 20 minutes below the 7 Mile Bridge, watch for a large rock on river right, the biggest boulder on the run. It signals the coming of the Cascades Canyon (160 feet/mile), a series of five big drops in a shallow schist canyon, the second of which is usually spiked with wood and must be portaged. After the large signal rock, a canyon-spanning log high above the creek offers another signal of the Cascades Canyon. Eddy out right outside the canyon to scout and portage the Cascades rapids from the canyon rim. Generally, the first drop, an entrance rapid, comes quickly as a powerful PR 3+ followed by enough calm water to eddy out right (now inside the canyon), nosing between the wood choked drop’s bounding boulders and a rock outcrop on the right. Portage this second drop and scout the third and fourth. The powerful fourth drop sends you into a hidden fifth drop. The sequence of these last three drops is PR 4 to PR 5 depending on wood content and water volume. The two and a half mile stretch from Willow Creek  to the Lower Canyon is splashy and fun (75 feet/mile).

Sometime after passing the trail visible as a board-walk on river left, you may see old mining debris on river right as the creek again constricts for the half mile Lower Canyon (150 feet/mile). Solid PR 3 with holes and violent drops follow, including a manky section of big boulders and confused water where a swim could be long and bruising. The last mile and a half of rehabilitated/reclaimed section of creek (85 feet/mile) is marked by a sinuous series of drops over submerged boulders with piles of logs on the outside corners, put there to reduce erosion, but looking pretty scary! After the rehabilitated portion the creek is channelized for the final wave-train run to the take-out bridge.

NAD 27 Waypoints (mapped yellow dots)

Put-in 3	60.72239 N, 149.72401 W
beaver dam portage	60.73182 N, 149.71979 W
beaver dam portage	60.73600 N, 149.71927 W
log jam portage	60.74291 N, 149.71319 W
log jam portage	60.75204 N, 149.70258 W
Cascades Canyon scout/portage	60.80703 N, 149.64949 W
Parking Area	60.87035 N  149.62791 W

 

The West Coast

If it wasn’t for the West Coast I wouldn’t know what all the fuss was about New Zealand. Sure the people are nice, the mountains alright – but boy, there’re a lot of sheep. And it’s nice that NZ feels like America in the 60s. People take time to stop and talk. The highways are small and slow down for each little town. The towns themselves are filled with locally run businesses and the odd NZ chain, but there’s little of that god-awful homogeneity and globalization that’s spread across the US like crabgrass.

Highway 6 runs north from Westport, a two-lane highway with single lane bridges that hugs the coast like a tightly knit sweater. Mountains rise from the craggy coastline steeply, the views reminding us of windward Oahu or Maui. The Tasman Sea’s waters break against sea stacks and islands like the Pacific breaks against Oregon and Northern California. But of course you’re driving on the wrong side of the road, turning on the wind shield wipers when you meant to signal to pull over to a cobble beach for a of bit tide-pooling. The road signs warn of penguin crossings and palm trees grow on the flats. It’s that old NZ tropics and ice again, but with a distinctly maritime flavor, and you know that Twain got it right.

The neatest part of the coast for me are the wind-sculpted forests, ablaze in early summer red bottle bush blossoms of the northern rata (a close relative of Hawaii’s ohia lehua native tree), and the silly-named but fantastic “Pancake Rocks” near Punakaiki and Paparoa National Park.

The pancake rocks are made of ancient marine sediments, likely laid down 30 million years ago in the Oligocene, when New Zealand was nearly drowned. These are no short stacks, but big sea stacks, soft sea cliffs with terns nesting on their sides and a broad array of native plants, like the limp-leafed, agave-looking flax (used by ancient Maori for making clothes among other things) and Joshua-tree-esque cabbage trees. There’s a wonderful walk that winds through a short piece of rainforest and wind swept flax flats to lookouts over blow-holes and sea-arches, sea stacks and walls of pancakes.

It’s popular without being crowded, well-interpreted without being touristy.

“This place is great – you just want to go out and climb on the rocks,” commented Jazz the rock climber.

“But the rock looks really crumbly,” observed Peggy.

Elsewhere along the coast we found cobbles polished by the ocean, and boulders carved by the waves into seats fit for the Museum of Modern Art. We walked sandy beaches with black oyster catchers. Like the highways, there was no trash on these beaches, no flotsam, no jetsam, not even polished glass.

“100% pure NZ,” said the tourist brochures, and beyond the sheep and the cattle and the deer behind ten foot fences, it was true – until we reached the far north of the west coast and the homemade signs, “Stop the Drop – No 1080!” started appearing.

It seems awkward, to say the least, that a place that prides itself on organic growth, clean water and air, a place with essentially NO litter – would drop a poison (1080 or Sodium fluoroacetate) with no known antidote almost indiscriminately from the air in an effort to kill rats, deer, rabbits, and possums.

A Family Trip to Arthur's Pass National Park

Hitchhiking at middle age in a foreign country has its rewards. Like any other rewarding activity, it certainly poses risks, but we count on the risk of murder by a serial killer, or simple robbery, as somewhat low.

The rewards are that we meet people and learn about locals as well as other travelers. And we save money and aren’t stuck with public transit routes. Peggy’s winning smile certainly counters my fearsome, bearded visage, and we rarely wait for more than half a dozen vehicles to pass before we’ve caught a ride.

It took two rides and most of the afternoon to get back to Christchurch’s Church Corner. The Thistle Guesthouse was full, so we checked into a “Holiday Caravan Park”. New Zealand has these great accommodations within most of its cities offering a range of housing from camping on soft grass to private en suite rooms with bathrooms and kitchenettes. And usually right on a bus line.

The places are clean and feel safe and this time of year are pretty full with both locals and travelers. NZ is full of travelers. In fact during our two or three weeks in NZ, we have met more people from elsewhere than we have met native Kiwis.

After most longish wilderness trips, coming back to civilization represents a significant positive part of the experience. After seeing nobody but your partner, it’s great to see and talk to others again. After walking and rafting at most 5 mph or so, it’s great to rip across the landscape at 100 km/hr. After eating one-pot, boil-only meals, it’s great to have a lamb souvlaki and a couple oranges. And it’s great to not have to carry your whole world everywhere you go, too.

We were excited to be back to town, back to familiar Church Corner, to eat and relax. We’d have a day to clean-up before Jazz arrived from Portland.

Jazz came in on a misty morning. It was hardly summer yet, even though it was the day before summer solstice.

Peggy found her while I waited outside in the car. Jazz jumped in, bubbly and happy to see us despite more than 20 hours travel. We had ideas of what we’d do with her, but weren’t sure what she’d want.

We went downtown in the rain to find maps of where to go next.

“What do you want to do Jazz?”

“I want to exercise and hang out with my parents.”

This was like music to my ears. I took it as the go-ahead to plan some more packraft trips.

We had only a week and a half or so before Peggy and I headed for Australia. The curse of the island coastline and mountain crests meant that driving here was a slow, time consuming prospect. Driving south to Fjordland and Mt Aspiring National Parks, where good trails and rivers abound, was out.

Instead we’d head west to Arthur’s Pass National Park and the West Coast, then north to Kahurangi National Park.

“Dad wants to raft. What I thought we could do is walk in with him, then walk while he rafts. The walking’s really good here and there’s nothing that can get you: no bears, snakes, or spiders,” Peggy explained.

“That sounds good. I don’t want to raft either.” Jazz replied.

“On our last trip, Dad carried all the stuff in the raft while I just hiked with a day pack.”

“Yea, it’s pretty fun. Mom gets her exercise and I get my rafting.”

Part of the purpose of this sabbatical is to find packrafting trips that beginners and intermediates might enjoy. The 100 mile trip from Arthur’s Pass to Erewhon Station that Peggy and I had just completed was just such a trip: the waters were good for intermediates and the hiking and pass climbs were good for intermediate off-trail hikers. But it was a week-long trip, a significant expenditure in time and effort to complete.

What I wanted next was a day or weekend trip suitable for beginners. Something like a popular packrafting trip in Alaska’s Denali National Park that makes a semicircle from the Park Road, up the Savage River and down the Sanctuary.

On the day after Solstice in sunny, warm weather, we drove our rental car west, sightseeing on the way, to Andrews Creek Shelter in the Waimakariri Valley.

There’re something like 1400 huts in NZ and untold miles of tracks (Kiwi for hiking trail). The huts range from things like the smelly, little tent-sized biv we used in the Lawrence Valley to 20+ person dormitories complete with gas cookers and cleaning people. As for the tracks, they, too, range from cleared paths with boardwalks on the bogs and bridges over the streams, to faint animal trails with the odd triangular marker and hellish river crossings.

Both the huts and the tracks are pretty much indispensable on the West Coast, where the westerly winds bring moisture to the mountain slopes, nourishing thick bush and legions of sandflies.

The sandflies are native gnats, like blackflies or white-sox, born of larvae in the rivers and streams. They don’t buzz round your head so much as round any exposed flesh, biting and bleeding you. Unlike Alaskan mosquitoes you can outwalk blackflies at about one mile per hour (it takes 3 mph to outrun mosquitoes). Bug dope works well, and unlike mosquitoes they don’t touch-and-go a bug-doped body part. But their bites swell and itch terribly. I’d put them on the short list for “world’s worst backcountry bugs.” They pretty much make those huts a necessity.

Patagonia and NZ backcountry have much in common, but while NZ lacks Chile’s bi-polar wind, Chile thankfully lacks bad bugs.

We set up the tent outside the Spartanly furnished Andrew Hut, and took refuge from the bugs, sweltering in the afternoon heat of the first day of summer, both literally and climatically.

“I wish we had some cards,” said Jazz.

As a family we’d camped on four continents, and usually we’d had cards or five dice for Yahtzie. Jazz plays well at cards and when the three of us play the gaming is often surprisingly non-transitive. In pairs, Jazz beats me quite regularly, while I beat Peggy, and Peggy beats Jazz. Sort of like rock-papers-scissors, I guess, when we all three play.

But instead we suffered the heat and counted the bugs, so numerous they sounded like rain drops hitting the tent.

After dinner we went to bed before it was fully dark. Outside the tent I heard something rustle, stealing from us, I reckoned.

In my dream state I visualized a raccoon, then upon waking, I thought “possum”, but when Peggy unzipped the tent door we saw it was a Kea! A parrot was thieving our plastic tooth-brush and toiletries box, dragging it away like a temple monkey might steal your lunch or a Yosemite bear might drag away your pack into the woods.

Peggy dashed out of the tent chasing the bird, a box half as big as itself in its oversized beak, her yelling and shooshing the cheeky bird until she’d recovered the box.

In the morning we packed for a long day, fifteen miles I estimated (wrongly), on a trail that the Park map called “one of the easier tramps in the park” (A tramp seems to be trek where you camp in huts). They suggested the loop as a two-day trip: the first day passing over 2,500 foot Casey Saddle to the Casey Hut and the second day paralleling the Poulter River (“easy flats for 4-5 hours”), then returning to Andrew Shelter via 3,500 foot Binser Saddle (three and a half hours).

Jazz had not really been on her feet since last summer when she was running and walking in Anchorage with Peggy. This fall at Lewis and Clark she had been busy getting all As and a B, as well as socializing with her college friends -- not much walking except between classes, dorms, and the cafeteria.

The fact that the day turned out to be 20 miles, not 15, combined with tight shoes and little previous foot time – well, my bad.

Instead of six miles and three hours to Casey Hut that it looked like to me, it felt more like eight or ten miles and took us five hours. The trail was not flat as I’d interpreted from the rather poorly detailed 1: 80,000 scale map (which did warn its users: “tramps in the park require users to carry 1:50,000 topographic map”), but rather rolling and wiggly.

Jazz to her credit (she's the natural athlete in the family, after all) made good time and we all chatted on as we passed through mountain beech, open gravel bar flats, a board-walked bog, a bit of rain forest, and an open woodland before descending to the Poulter River valley.

At one point the trail made its way through a wet marshy area where Didymo, an exotic and invasive green algae, seemed to choke the otherwise clear running stream. We made sure to hop over and not collect any blobs of the aquatic weed on our shoes or trekking poles.

When we got to Casey Hut, a couple who’d camped next to us at Andrew Shelter was there, having mountain biked up the Poulter Valley.

“Yea, it’s 20 ks in, and really rocky,” said the woman in an Aussie accent.

“That's after 15 ks on the road from Andrew Shelter,” added the man in a Mediterranean accent.

They looked beat, slathering insect repellent to fight the sandflies, sweaty and sticky in dust from the day's heat.

I looked at Peggy. “I don’t want to go back the way we came, do you, Jazz?” Peggy’d read my look.

We’d already come what must’ve been ten miles and twelve more – even if essentially flat -- sounded tough.

Jazz’ feet weren’t blistered yet. She said, “Let’s just walk down the river to the road. We don’t have any headlamps.”

Unfortunately, we’d not thought to leave the car key at the car and instead wondered who’d get there first. None of us wanted to walk the nine miles back on the road.

I hustled down the trail to blow up my packraft. Jazz caught up.

“Dad. The mountain bikers said that they’d come back and get you. They’ll get down before any of us and I’m afraid we’ll run out of light hiking back over the other pass. I just want to walk down to the road.” Jazz has always been a sensible thinker.

“OK. I’ll take the car key and hurry down the river. I’ll meet you at the road. Do you have enough food?”

We said good-bye and I left the trail and walked to the river.

I blew up my boat, dressed in rain gear, and shoved off.

The boating was good, easy, and the water extraordinarily blue to look at and clear to look through. I made good time running some easy splashy sections and ducking beneath an electric fence along the Park boundary.

Meanwhile, Peggy and Jazz were slogging out the miles, first on a good trail through forest, but then on a hard-packed double-track that started to pound Jazz feet.

Peggy’s fitness from our trips in Patagonia and the week before in the Alps had conditioned her, so eventually she carried Jazz’ pack, too. As I would hear later, they lost the trail a time or two and Peggy got shocked crossing the electric fence!

Elsewhere, lazy cattle stopped and waited, worrying the girls, but of course the animals always ran. Jazz used her keen powers of observation to route-find and spot the rabbits. They traded the map back and forth as they made their way.

I made it down the river by 6 PM, having put in at 4 PM. I quickly caught a ride from a young sheep station worker heading home for the holidays. Henry had a pickup full of pig hunting dogs, a .22 up front for hares and rabbits, and a .12 gauge in back for what the dogs found.

He drifted around the gravel corners and accelerated down the straight-aways, clearly in a hurry to get home for the holidays. I’d felt less apprehensive running the Class II rapids on the Poulter than I did with this teen at the wheel.

I guess hitchhiking does have its risks, and this was the most common: bad driving.

Close to the Andrew Shelter we passed the mountain bikers who would now would not need to come get me.

We shared stories briefly about their ride and my boat. They were surprised I got back before they did. I hopped in our rental Toyota wagon, then sped back to the Poulter to get my girls.

Arriving around 8 PM, I drove down the double track as far as I dared, then glassed upstream for hikers. I could see upstream a good couple miles. Seeing no one and fearing the worst – i.e blisters, tears, and maybe a lost trail - I loaded my pack with headlamps, food, and a jacket and hustled to find them.

Five minutes later I saw Peggy about a mile away and Jazz just a short distance behind.

Within 20 minutes we were together, Jazz limping and Peggy shaking her head.

“We trashed her feet. She hasn’t done anything like this in months. Twenty miles on your first hike is too many.”

I felt the sting of a parent who’s subjected his daughter to too much – at least I wasn’t there to directly do it, otherwise I’d have it added to the life list the family kept of other poor judgements of mine involving Jazz.

“I thought about just sitting up at the car and reading my book,” I teased, handing the girls a can of Sour Cream Pringles.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t,” Peggy said. “You need to be a good Dad.”

“Yea, Dad,” Jazz teased, “one who doesn’t hurt his daughter’s feet.”

Down the Lawrence and Butler to Erewhon

Samuel Butler, a 19th century novelist and aristocrat, had spent time as a young man in New Zealand. Indeed Butler Saddle had been named after him as he'd worked a sheep station in the valley of the Lawrence and Clyde Rivers.

In his most famous novel, published anonymously as Over the Range, he wrote satire on Victorian England, a ficticious place called "Erewhon", sort of like "nowhere" backwards. Our destination, the mega-sized sheep, cattle, horse, and deer farm called "Erwehon Station", was named from that novel.

Erwehon Station in many ways represents well that inter-digitation of NZ's domestic and wild. It's where the mountains meet the lowlands, where wind and weather still rule but humans work hard to profit.

Nearby Erwehon Station we would learn is a popular tourist destination, Mount Sunday, the site of the film version of Edoras, capital of Rohan in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

It rained and blew all night and Peggy preferred the smelly dry of Lawrence Biv to the familiar tent in the wet.

But by morning it was sunny and blue. She dressed in shorts as we dried our gear. Mistake.

The spaniards were thick and filled all spaces between the many boulders. It took us an hour to pick our way a half km to the gravel bar.

Once there we made good time. In the sun, even the red lichen coated cobbles were fast and nor the green cushion plants foul. They were apparently full -- I mean by the hundreds, if not thousands -- of little, stink bugs, 3 mm or so long.

We saw black-fronted terns and little black ring breasted plovers – wrybills, a bird with a sideways curving bill – as we made our way down. There were daisies of all sizes, white and yellow. And eventually we left the spaniards behind and met up again with matagouri, pokey now in the dry with its stiff inch long thorns. We avoided it whenever possible.

Like the Avoca we found a station jeep trail and that meant Peggy would walk with day pack and I would packraft down the Lawrence. It was splashy and fun and very fast, sometimes shallow. I quickly pulled ahead of Peggy, but met up with her again when I portaged a short canyon between land slides and plugged with a twenty-foot stiff wire fence on the downriver side. That would pop my boat and ruin my day. Peggy helped me portage.

The river was fast enough that I took the time to set up the video camera and shoot me floating by, waiting for Peggy to catch up.

After 10 km or so, I could see that the river was channelizing and swinging hard onto the side Peggy had been walking.

It was time to take her aboard.

She didn’t much want to get on as she’d had a bad day. First putting on shorts in the spaniards; falling in the spaniards; losing the road in the gravel bars and cobble hobbling most of the day, and now, as she stepped into the boat, it scootered out from under her and she fell sideways into the water.

“I don’t want to get in. It’s going to be terrible, I know it. The day’s been going really bad, especially after yesterday when everything went well.”

“What can happen? You have on your dry suit and PFD. We’ve done this before. Come on. If it goes badly you can walk on the other side, but you can’t walk on this side.

From there the river picked up speed and soon tripled in volume. We flew downstream, backpaddling and ferrying to slow us and keep us out of the bigger waves, some over 4-5 feet tall.

Peggy did fantastic, keeping us bow downstream and backpaddling so we rode over the waves without crashing into them. Meanwhile I used a nalgene bottle to bail what inevitably spilled into the boat.

For 30 minutes we cruised like this, exciting paddling, but scary. If the boat were to deflate, we’d be pretty far out in the middle of a fast and powerful current. The whitewater, while easy, was sustained. In that half hour we made 10 km to the backyard or Erewhon Station.

We made camp in the woods of exotic radiata pine, an import from California. In the morning we walked about five miles to a creek where we bathed and Peggy found a geocache in view of Mt Sunday and its parade of tourists.

Now we knew why they were there – New Zealand has made a tourist trade of taking people to locations for the Lord of the Rings Movie and this one was closest to Christchurch.

We caught a ride easily from here.

This had been the trip I’d come for: sharing gear, using the packraft as a tool to cross wild landscapes as a couple. We’d made about 100 miles in six nights and most of seven days. We’d floated on six rivers and crossed two, high mountan passes, seen rare birds and exotic wildlife.

For me, we’d come close to recapturing the feeling of a trip made 22 years ago, when we’d used a single packraft for a three week traverse in the Brooks Range.

A good feeling to know we can still find adventure in our late 40s.

What We'd Come for: Over Butler Saddle

It rained all night, with thunder and lightening frighteningly close.

We left Evans Hut on the flooding Cattle Stream and headed up-river in the wind and rain. The Rakaia was raging after two days rain following two days sun. The sun had melted snow and glacial ice and now the rain was flushing it off.

We hoped to wade the rockin’ Rakaia, but moving upstream we found it channelized, steep and scary. Indeed, there were no eddies and a raft crossing was not possible until we’d reached the stream coming down from Butler Saddle, our route into the Lawrence Valley.

Color coding signaled the quality of gravel bar walking: green meant go, on firm and level cushion plants. Yellow meant slow, on mossy rocks, a bit hard. Red meant stop, on cobbles coated in red lichen.

I used the wind pump to inflate the raft, packed everything and ferried over meter high waves to the other side. Depositing ths load on the far bank, I walked upstream and returned for Peggy.

“It looks fun.”

It was fun, and with two of us paddling we rode over quickly and easily, between a heft Class III drop above and a two mile long crashing roller coaster below.

The rain stopped briefly and we ate lunch, rolled up the raft, and packed up. Puling off my dry suit I ripped the neck gasket then pulling off my rain jacket beneath that I ripped its shoulder seems. It would be a while before I could repair those.

The opaque, glacial side stream rushed steeply down its boulder choked bed. The flow was thick and white. We had to cross, but it wouldn’t be easy.


Finally we found a wide spot, but the round boulders and swollen current made wading possible for only half the 25 yard distance. The rest of the way was boulder hopping on wet rock in the rain.

“This is stupid! I don’t wanna do this!” she called out after I had made some long leaps in sequence.

I dropped my pack and jumped back to the crux gap, jumped that, took her pack and re-crossed. Then back to her I stood knee-deep and helped her make the moves.

“I don’t want to do any more crossings like that!” she admonished.

We moved up the clear water tributary, with her in the lead. She seemed to delight in working her way up the creek and its short drops and cascades, following animal trails when the water was too steep.

“How do these animals get over these boulders?”

We went higher and came to an avalanche cone that choked the creek bed. The creek came out of a large snow cave at its base.

“That looks bad! We might fall in a hole.”

“Nah, it’ll be firm, like ice.”

“Which side should we follow?”

“The left looks good,” she said and led off.

The snow went fast and easy. It was odd that the avalanche debris included so many rosette plants, a growth we usually think of as tropical.

“I guess that’s just New Zealand – a mix of jungle and ice. That guy Smiley said that the weather changes so fast it’s like three seasons in a day.”

Leaving the gully we followed animal trails into the brush. At first we thought they were deer trails. But then they steepened up substantially and threaded a very narrow arête between two gorges.

“What are those?”

My head was down and I was grabbing woody plants and hoisting upwards when I looked up to see what Peggy was referring to. Across the main gorge were half a dozen, shaggy brown goat like animals, low in stature and beefy in build.

“Not sure. Either chamois or thar. I think they’re thar, a Himalayan mountain goat.”

“How do you know?”

“I googled them when I was researching this route after reading some guys blog about his traverse of the South island.”

Soon we found their beds and their droppings along a thin slice of solid terrain in otherwise empty space. We were climbing steep vegetation again, but this time it was woody and had sporadic trails.

As the arête narrowed to a Thermarest width, dropping precipitously, if bushy, down either side, it looked like the trails ended. Still Peggy moved confidently behind me. The thar on the other side – more than a dozen we could now see – watched us curiously.

The trails ran out. It looked wrong but we kept to the steep ridge line, grabbing handfuls of podocarp brush to pull ourselves upward.

The rain increased.

“Let’s traverse over there!” I pointed to a grassy shelf below the final scree field leading to the pass. But this would be the worst bit – steep, wet, cliffy below, and raining hard.

Halfway into the exposed traverse, something pokey got Peggy. “Ouch, damn it! I don’t know whty let you bring me here!!” That was it. It had finally got to her.

Ahead a few yards I was into even more pokey things, “spaniards”, a weird native relative of the carrot with needle sharp leaves, like a yucca or an agave and located on cliff sides.

We got off the traverse, through the pokey grass with its army of spaniards, and onto the scree. It stopped raining and we put on another layer.


The climb up went on and on, past fabulous views and weird alpine plants, the likes of which we’d never seen before. Like the narrow strip of coastline, wild New Zealand also lies atop its mountains where no exotic plants, sheep, or cattle – just thar and chamois – live.


Around 7 PM, our normal time to make camp, we reached the summit of Butler Saddle. We wer both apprehensive to see the other side as neither wanted to camp high, trapped by darkness and verticality.

But to our happy amazement we found snowfields leading downward for over an hour. A vertical distance that had taken four hours up we descended in two.

“Can we make the hut?”

“I don’t know. It’s after nine and looks like a couple miles.”


But I had misread the map and within forty minutes Peggy spotted the miniature hut, called a “biv” and no bigger than a tent, really, nestled in the tussocks.

“Wow, I can’t believe it,” she said, “that’s twice today I saw something before you did.”

It had been a full day of big-river crossings, high passes, wild brush, canyons, cliffs, snowfields, and gorges. In one day we had more adventure than all eight days we’d spent on the Paiane Circuit in Patagonia.

And Peggy was elated. Until she smelled the biv.

Up the Rakaia Valley

The owner of 50,000 acre Mt Algidus station, an English businessman by way of Scottish scotch and Aussie wine, invited us to sleep in his fishing hut by the Titan Stream, and good thing. It rained all night. “Smiley”, who wasn’t at all, had been skeptical when we’d told him our plans upon first meeting him. He’d driven up when we were looking to cache food in his wool shed.

As he pulled up, I had quickly introduced ourselves to him, his wife, and his station manager, Malcolm. And I’d come prepared.

“Do you drink beer, Malcolm?”

“I drink anything,” he replied.

“Here, take this six pack then. I don’t like beer much,” I bribed him.

I really had wanted to leave the food at their station house. But Smiley’d have none of that. He didn’t think we’d ever cross the river, raft or not.

Smiley'd had a bad experience crossing the Wilberforce River in the station’s ute, an old Toyota 4x4 flatbed.

“Thirty-one people have died in that river,” he claimed. “There’s even a book written about Mt Algidus Station: The River Rules Your Life.”

“We’ve come all the way from Alaska to do this trip,” I blurted breathlessly, “where we do this sort of thing all the time. We just came from Patagonia and I have written a book on it.” I spit all this out an attempt to convince him, but it just spilled off Smiley, who, Peggy observed, was a bit like the actor Anthony Hopkins, like water off a duck’s back.

He eyed us suspiciously then. Now that we’d made it, he hefted the raft, and offered us a lift across the station jeep trail to the hut. We accepted and learned that he had over 3500 sheep and a thousand cattle. He said there was no money in wool and that he sold the lambs at six months, “Directly to the butcher.”

We got an early start and walked over 20 miles, all in the rain. Most of it was on station two-track, flat jeep trails used to monitor sheep, cattle and deer. The deer were kept behind tall fences, the cattle were scarce, and the sheep ubiquitous. We saw a fence full of angora goats, with their black kids, white-capped adults, and mottled jumping juveniles.

The cold, incessant rain kept us moving. We’d stop only after 2-4 hours of walking at a time, when our energy stores ran low. We shoved Cadbury chocolate, biscuits, and flavored tuna in our pie holes.

Our route followed the north bank of the Rakaia, an enormous braided river that seemed to drain most of the east-central Southern Alps. No bridges crossed it, but there was another station, Manuka Point, that filled the Rakia’s wide U-shaped valley.

Grassy flats filled the spaces between cobbles low down but as we trudged higher, the track passed through the tall matagouri scrub. This native plant has small leaves and dense branches, a result of co-evolution with the now extinct moa. Moas included a dozen or so species of herbivorous birds, one growing to nine feet tall. They went extinct one thousand years or so ago, when the Polynesians arrived and found the naïve giant, flightless birds tasty and easy to kill.

Eventually we moved higher above the matagouri into a landscape of boulders and rocks on a flat bottomed valley, where gusts of wind blew down valley. Jungle-like forest grew upwards on the steep hill sides until tree line where rock, snow, and ultimately a few glaciers took over. Waterfalls striped every mountain.


The milky white Rakia bounced between its steep bounding mountains, splitting into braids that then coalesced. We’d like to have crossed, where the walking looked easier, but the water was too fast, deep, and cold to wade, and we were too cold and wet to stop and blow up the boat. Instead we climbed into the steep thick brush and bushwacked.

“I must really love you to suffer like this for you,” she said as we climbed up the soaking wet hill. But she smiled and climbed quickly in her sky blue rain coat and new trekking poles.

Peggy led upwards in wind and rain, following a deer trail through ferns, rosette swords, divaricating shrubs, and others with 4-square leaves. It all struck us as very Hawaiian looking – yet with glaciers just above.

“This is great bushwacking,” she called out over the wind and roar of the Rakaia. “It’s not slippery, not pokey, not sharp. It’s solid and firm and gives a good grip.”

A good thing, too, as we were on a steep, vegetated cliff face directly over rapids a 100 feet below. It wasn’t so dense as to force us to clamber but thick enough that we wouldn’t rag doll down should we slip.

Nearing six thirty we needed a hut, but couldn’t see one.

“Maybe it’s washed away, or burned down. Let’s just go camp between those trees.”

As we pulled up, there we saw a stove pipe and white building side tucked in a copse of mountain beech.

“There! The hut!”

“Now you can dry your map.” Peggy was happier for me than for her as I had been searching for huts all day without knowing where they might be. The map had no protection so had been stowed in my pocket where it got soaked.

It was nice to get out of the rain.