Last year a good friend of ours was lucky enough to get a job that involved him being flown into remote parts of Paparoa National Park, giving him a great vantage point for scoping out rivers. For the past 9 months he had been going on about this creek, easy access, slides and it runs regularly. Even with this beta we always chose the 'bread n butter' flood runs opposed to scouting out/paddling this creek. One hungover morning, however, I tricked Barny into thinking it was after 9am and we motivated ourselves to walk into and down this creek to check it out... at around 7am! What we seen we liked, so figured next big rain we should get in there..... But the next big rain was too big (Civil Defence was evening on stand-by for the town of Greymouth) and we missed it. On the Wednesday, 14th of December we got some more rain and gave it another shot, this time accompanied by Skux and the Dream (ing of Whitewater) Team, Daan and Jess.
Putting in at the 'Log Bridge', you want more waterthan this but not the whole rock cover (we think).
(p. Barny Young)
We, unknowingly, put on a bit below optimal flow but it was good for the first trip down to work out how everything would go. The creek is quite narrow, and is primarily sandstone. Comprised of about 10 slides, a gorged rapid and a couple of portages due to trees, this short run turned out to be quite cool. At our flow it was relatively low-stress, but as the flow got higher things would get a lot harder. Anyway, here are a few photos of a new flood run on the coast.
There are various boofs and slides (p. Barny Young)
Daan on the first part of the 'Gorge' rapid(p. Barny Young)
The slides were mainly this angle, with sometaller ones. (p. Barny Young)
Being wrapped in the thick coastal forest justcontributes to this unique West Coast run.
(p. Barny Young)
Here is how to access this run: .... Go with a local. I have found out that access might be a little more questionable than first thought, so its a little locals spot X if you will....
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