As the sun rises another day in paradise slowly starts with scrambled eggs, a cup of coffee, and an easy boat ride to the most Northern creek on the lake so far. A creek which showed some potential on the map, but nothing too crazy. Since it's 45 minutes one way, and the boat only takes 4 people plus gear, Pepijn, Erwan and me have more than enough time to scout the approach for today's mission, while Max heads back to pick up the others. It starts with some easy scrambling b

At first glance, Lake Hauroko seems to be a paradise. About 10 kilometers before we arrive at the lake, we enter a dark and dense rainforest, filled with fallen trees and ferns up to 10 meters tall, when it suddenly opens up to a small beach with a boat ramp and a jetty, from where we'll launch and first test our brand new boat to reach Caroline hut on the other side of the lake. When Lisa and I arrive there, it looks like a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean. The boat is la

Whilst Lisa, Erik, Kevin and I were scouting Dingleburn and Ahuriri, Max and Kevin went to scout Lake Manapouri. But as they say in the military, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The enemy being, in this instance, a closed road, which made it impossible to reach the lake canyons they wanted to scout without kayaking over 20 km one way. While that’s doable, it’s not really viable when carrying gear and food for a week. Since they had already been driving for over

Its 6:59 on day three of our greenstone expedition. That means it's only a couple of seconds before every alarm in the hut's dorm will go off at the same time, just shortly before 6 or 7 headlights will turn on at full brightness, so that everyone who's not planning on an early start will be woken anyway. After that it's cooking water, brushing your teeth, pouring said water into freeze-dried breakfast bags, not stirring said bags properly, and shoving at least one spoonful o

Finally, we get to kick of the expedition with 4 days and 4 first descents in the Greenstone valley, on the other side of lake Wakatipu, in Otago. After a long day of prepping (I'll write another blog at another time about this subject), we go to bed tired and excited, to leave for the valley in the morning. On our first day we have about 5 clicks of hiking with all our canyoning and camping gear, before we get to Squirm creek, which we named after the teams favorite snack (s

Monday 9/3/26 A part of the team has been training in and around Queenstown for a couple of days, and a few of us have already met Max, and went for an afternoon of riverboarding at his workplace, which none of us had done before. After a completetely new and refreshin whitewater experience, the team is finally as complete as it will be (we still miss you Jaap) for the first time. Max guiding Kawarau river This means it's time to dive into of of the last stages of preparation

Op 18 januari vertrekken we rond acht uur ’s ochtends uit Queenstown. Op het programma staat een low-flow canyon. Onbekend canyon voor iedereen. Al dagen zijn we op zoek naar een mooie first descent, iets nieuws, iets eigens. Een week eerder waagden we al een poging in de Caples Valley. We inspecteerden verschillende creeks, maar helaas zat er niets tussen. Die dag sjouwden we onze boormachines en haken 22 kilometer en een flink aantal hoogtemeters mee voor niets. Dat hoort e

Een nieuw avontuur in Nieuw-Zeeland Geschreven door Stijn van der Ven English version below Soms weet je het meteen. Nog voordat iemand zijn verhaal heeft afgemaakt. Zo’n moment had ik in 2024, ergens in Frankrijk, tijdens mijn volgende canyoningcursus. Uiteraard gegeven door Pepijn — want als je een canyon tegenkomt, is de kans groot dat Pepijn er al eens doorheen is geweest. Dit keer kwam hij nét terug uit Nieuw-Zeeland, waar hij een winter lang had gecanyoned. Voordat de c