The daywalk to end all daywalks: Waiohine Pack Float

This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.

Waiohine Pack Float — 31 January by Craig Bellhouse

Seekers of great adventure: Tony, Jackie, Eamonn, Craig, Lesley, Stuart, Katja and Mike.

We arrived at the Mt Holdsworth road end at about midnight on Friday and found a place to sleep under some trees. About 6.45am I awoke to the strangest feeling I was being kicked on the shoulder. Yep, sure enough I was. Tony was saying it was time to go. I ate a hasty breakfast and shoved my stuff into the van. Boots on and and I joined the others who were almost ready to go. We were gone just after 7am. A quick trip up the newly rebuilt Gentle Annie track saw us at Powell Hut before 10am.

We stopped for a break at Powell Hut. While there, a man walked past us carrying a 3 metre long wooden pole over his shoulder. We thought this was a bit odd, and had a game to guess what the pole was for as we followed him to the top of Mt Holdsworth. We caught up with him at the top and Tony asked him what the pole was for. He gave us a quick demo: The pole has a sharp spike in one end which is stuck into the ground a fair bit downhill. The man then jumps out, and when the pole is vertical he loosens his grip and slides down. Repeat until the bottom of the hill is reached. Apparently he coats his hands with butter for some lubrication.

We headed down the hill to Mid Waiohine Hut and got there shortly after noon. A quick walk down to the river and we stopped for a swim and a lunch break in the sun. There was some disagreement here as to the best attire for packfloating down the river. We had one taker for the wetsuit option, several takers for the layers of polyprop option and I chose to go shirtless because I couldn’t see the point of having wet clothes on such a hot day.

We started down the gorge at about 1pm. Most of the walk out was rock hopping down the sides of the river, but we had to cross every so often. Most of the crossings were above waist deep, but the water was slow moving. There were also a lot of deep pools that were impassable unless you jumped right in and swam across. Many of these were >100m long, and few of them had any current to push you through.

At this point I was thinking that this had to be one of the best trips I have been on. A pretty easy walk so far, a great day in the hot sun, and a load of swimming in a fantastic river. Does it get any better?

This would change however, as by about 4pm the high sides of the gorge meant that not much sun was getting down to us. Some of us started to get a bit cold, and others very very cold. We were in the shade for at least an hour, still getting in and out of the (by now, quite chilly) water.

One of the group was showing signs of mild hypothermia. Pale, white skin and blue lips. Also, he couldn't swim very well and was showing a distinct reluctance to get back in the water. He was getting some pretty bad leg cramp, so I had to stop taking photos and help him to swim out. Swimming sidestroke with boots and packs on is not easy!

Fortunately the river turned eastward eventually and the sun was able to penetrate to the depths of the gorge again. We stopped to lie down on some rocks that were still hot from the sun to warm back up. By now the gorge was widening so there were less sections that we had to swim and more rock hopping down the sides of the river. We all slipped over and smashed knees and shins against rock multiple times. The rock always won.

Still a great trip though!

We finally got to the Totara Flats swingbridge at about 7.30pm, and not a moment too soon! A quick feed of the remaining muesli bars and a change of clothes and we were off by 8pm.

We headed for Holdsworth road-end. I took off at a bit of a run because I had forgotten to bring my torch with me and figured I had about 1.5 hours of daylight to get to where the track leaves the bush and rejoins the Gentle Annie track to Holdsworth roadend. I thought I might be able to walk down this staircase without lights seeing it was such a clear night.

I made it about halfway there before running completely out of energy (and muesili bars). I stopped dead here and waited for the others to catch up so I could raid food and hopefully a light. Complete darkness joined us and I was trying to walk with one person in front and one behind with torches to light the way. This sucked, and I kept stumbling over tree roots. After about 20 mins of this I remembered my cellphone has a small torch and got that out. One of the guys reckoned he could see fine with that, so traded I it for his headtorch.

By the time we got to the junction with the Holdsworth track, about 10pm, we had slowed down considerably. To put it bluntly, we were wasted. Many of us also had sore feet from walking over rough terrain in runners. I think it took about another 2 hours to get back to the road end. Most of this was spent hobbling along giving out about sore feet and generally bitching and moaning.

Not so sure about it being a great trip anymore. Starting to wonder if I’ll actually make it back today...

Back to the road-end about midnight. What a relief to get the boots off and massage some life back into munted feet. Think about what your feet look like after an hour in the bath. Try 12 hours, and you've got an idea what mine looked like. I had wrinkles the size of the Waiohine Gorge all over them!

16+ hours on the go. What a day, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Except I might take a more food, a torch, and some of those inflatable arm rings kids wear when they are learning to swim. Just in case...

(Photos of the quest can be seen here: http://picasaweb.google.com/craigbellhouse/20090131WaiohinePackFloat)