Canyoning in Paradise part 1

Stijn Van de Ven
30 mrt
6 minuten om te lezen

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 landed on a 15 meter wide beach in a cove that's not much bigger, with a small unmanned hut about 30 meters from the beach.

There's a small toilet cabin, and another slightly bigger beach on the other side of it, with an old fire place and some logs around it

On the first two days, we opened 2 canyons which were okay, but nothing too exciting, which made us change our course for a bit. From now on, we'd start going for the canyons with a bigger catchment area, even though they might not have the same verticality as the ones we'd already explored, and this sure turned out to be a good decision.

The closest one has a catchment of about 14km, but is not too vertical. This means there's a good chance of it containing quite some water, but also that there might not be too many waterfalls

Going for this canyon meant having to boat a bit longer, so Erik, Pepijn and me went on the first ride, so we could scout for a bit. If it turned out to not be as good as we hoped for, there'd be another creek with a large catchment another 8km further up the lake.

Max on his way down of the last pitch of the second canyon we opened during this trip.

Pepijn, Erik and me were the first to be dropped off by Captain Max, and thus had to scout it before the others were there as well.

We only had to hike for 5 minutes to see the last waterfall, and already knew this could be quite good, since it had 20-30 meter walls rising on both sides, and little light coming out between these walls.

We decided to go up another couple of waterfalls on the left side, and then head back to the beach where the rest of the team would arrive.

The undergrowth was so thick we couldn't see further than a couple meters, and we had to backtrack a couple of times to find better vantage points. After a while of this, we found one door from where we could see one waterfall which looked okay, but the thing that made us most happy was the fact that the canyon was enclosed, as far as we could see.

Back at the beach we still had to wait for the team for a bit, and it's quite safe to say I almost went insane during these 10 minutes.

I felt like a ninja driving the boat with my hood on to protect me from the sandfly's. Turns out I didn't look like one

I haven't told you guys yet, because I didn't want to taint the picture of this Paradise in your guys heads, but these sandflies are a thorn in any kiwi's sight, and when we told some locals where we were going, even they said "ah that's sandfly country, good luck" as if we were entering the lions den itself.

The worst part about them? Their World War 2 era Japanese fighting mentality. They don't seem to give a flying f#*@ about anything.

Mosquitos can be quite bothersome, but as soon as the wind picks up, or you light a bonfire, they leave you alone.

Lisa is wearing an anti sandfly net around het head. We sure went and bought them for the whole team as soon as we got back to civilization

Sandfly's don't, they keep coming even though they're dropping dead by the bunch of them.

Even when you marinate your entire body in cancer inducing Deet, they'll still bite you, to than die and fall to the ground in order to make way for another one of Satan's itchy helpers to commit seppuku on your arm.

Sandflies were homing in on me from each and every side, viciously attacking my bare legs, face, and since I had recently gotten a haircut, the side of my head and earlobes. By the time the rest arrived, my face was a swollen volcanic hell scape, and some of my friends even started to feel bad for me.

It was at this moment I learned about the anti-allergy pills the whole team had apparently been taking for some time now, which I started taking as soon as we got back to the hut as well.

After being devoured for some time, we left for the start of the approach, which is usually in no way comparable to any of the approaches I've done in Europe, since there's usually paths leading to the canyons back home. In New Zealand any canyoning adventure seems to start with a couple of hours of bush bashing, which means finding your way up a steep mountain through thick forests, with no real navigation except for some altitude lines and a hopefully good sense of direction (thank god we have Erwan, Pepijn, Erik and basically everyone besides me on this team).

Our hike up got steep and overgrown fast. It didn't take long before we were half hiking half climbing trough a dead and vertical swamp, accidentally pulling out trees by their roots and avoiding to drop them on my friend's heads below me

This fun lasted for about an hour and a half, which were followed by another hour of trying to find our way back down to the actual canyon, which turned out do be the crux of the approach, since we were about 40 meters away from the canyon horizontally, and about 150 vertically.

We tried to follow the spur of the hill on the the part where the creek flattens out, but since the undergrowth was so dense we only moved a couple hundred meters an hour, and we had about a click to go. Whilst moving along the altitude lines we kept looking down the sides of the spur to find possible descents when we decided to follow the altitude lines on the map instead, and keep looking down the sides of the hill for an entry. After 15 minutes of this we found a gorge leading us almost all the way down to the canyon, which came with the same level of downclimbing we found on the way up a couple of hours before, before rappelling the last 20 meters into the canyon.

As soon as we dropped down into the gorge, we saw some beautiful slab walls closing us in on the true left with two small side flows coming down along them, which created a picturesque start of the canyoning part of the trip.

Even though the canyon didn't look too steep on the map, we found a total of 10 waterfalls with a good flow, of which 6 or 7 were over 20 meters high, the most nice one having a little pool about 1 meter from it's top which you had to climb over, and then descent down on its left for the rest of it's 30 meters, partly beside the flow, and partly right through it, for it to end in a possible 8 meter slide.

Erik on the highest pitch of Kororia creek, the third canyon we opened on this trip

The next waterfall might be my personal favorite since it's a beautiful 15m jump into a deep pool with high walls beside it. 15 meters is not too high of a jump in a canyon, but since it had been about 5 months since my last time doing any jumps in canyons at all, and I was the first person to do this ever do it, it was quite a rush for me.

When I get to the bottom of the canyon, Pepijn, Kevin and Max are already pulling the boat from the beach, and I'm just in time for the first ride back to the hut over a scenic lake with rainforest all around me.

Today was good day.

Canyoning in Paradise part 1

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