Stanley river.

The Stanley river runs from lake Stanley into the Waingaro river which runs into the Takaka river. We flu to about 1km downstream of the lake and then had 2 6 hour days spending the night at Waingaro forks hut on the way through. I didnt realise while organizing the trip that as far as we know the Stanley has only been paddled once before 15 years ago, this i found out while yarning with Phil our pilot 4 days before we flu. There are to many rapids to describe or single out, pretty much the order of pics is how we found it. The crew was made up of; Ally corbett white scud, Andrew Goodjear red java, Heather Rhodes blue huck, me in big yella. We portaged a few, some because of the isolation factor, the big portage of the trip was around a log jam at the tail of a long rapid, you could have paddled under one of the logs if you were on line after running the rest of the rapid, 2 days from home we took the walk,bout 1 hour later we were back on the water.

Anatoki river from Anatoki bend.

Gus and I walked in to the bend to see what we would find, we had been considering walking further but it had taken a good 4 hours walk to get 6km to the bend and would have had to do another 2.5km before we could get to the river with easish access. After fighting our way thru supplejack vines we popped out right on this lovely 2.5m curtain drop. the toil of the walk in was soon forgotten. 1 1/2 hours later we were at the bottom of the gorge and were treated to a falcon flying over head.

Upper Takaka River.

The upper Takaka is one of the main stays of the golden bay runs, it is mostly track or road side not that either are really that accessable from the gorge, it is best described as a roadside back country run as you may as well be in the middle of nowhere. This trip started from just up the asbestos track which gives about 2 1/2hrs on the river if you know where you are. There are portages and possible portages depending on flow and group.

1st 3 pics gus in the 1st half of the run, gus n matt about to run handrail, last pic shannon in the 3rd move of handrail. this rapid is partially vizable from the Kahurangi national park sign.

Oparara river

The Oparara is situated just north of Karamea on the west coast, though unlike most west coast runs this river runs through Kahurangi national park which is quite a different chunk of land to most of the coast.The Oparara has more in common with the golden bay runs. You start off with really scenic flat water with an amazing limestone arch over the river the moria gate, soon after this the river gorges up. It has

a lot of timber and portages in the 1st gorge, but goes through some amazing country, we saw 3 blueducks on this trip 1 we watched for 5mins or so, it was untagged and was totally unconcerned about us . Theres some fun drops too. Heres Gus getting amongst things.

Parapara river

The Parapara river is another golden bay gem 4 hours of pretty much continuous 4+ with a few portages, it is only 4km in length and drops an even 50m per km. Possibly the best part is that you take out about 5km from my favourate pub, the mussel inn, which is a must visit if your in the area. this trip Gus and i had less water than would hope for.

Wainui river 06

This little beauty doesnt run often it took a big rainfall to bring it up to runnable flow.
The Wainui is nestled on the edge of Abel Tasman national park, Golden bay. being a short sharp run that starts with a seal launch into the pool of a 60+ foot waterfall then straight into the drops.
the 1st 2 pics are of the 2nd drop a nice pair of ledges, these show how nice and junglely the area is.

Tamati T getting amongst.

This is the main drop on this run, which we have since named Labotomy. top pic, Matt p on line.
Tamati T, tried to hit an eddy at top of the drop got regected by a keeper rock, then demonstrated the wrong line,

This is the line which gave rise to the naming of this rapid,

After falling 4-5m onto his face Tamati was luckily conscious enough to grab the rope that landed on him, 20m down stream is a nasty sieve.
He ended up with 40 stiches in his forehead. Unfortunatly this trip basically finished his paddling career, taking months to fully recover.
Makes you wonder just how good is my helmet and safety backup?
We were luckily trackside and 20min from the cars, often this is not the case.