8-20-07

This weekend I didn’t get to go any where exciting. This next is our last week before our 2 week break, that marks the end of the first term, and so everyone has tests and school work to do. Since I don’t have a car and everyone was studying instead of boating I just stayed home to relax and worked on some school work as well. Although on Sunday I went to down town again for lunch with my roommates just for something to do. And once this week is over I’ve got 2 weeks of vacation to look forward to. I met a friend at school named Dave, who actually paddles and goes to college in Fort Collins, and we decided to buy tickets to Australia. We were planning to visit Fiji for one week, but it was actually cheaper to get 2 sets of tickets and fly across Australia for 2 weeks. So we leave Friday evening for Sydney, where some friends of my grandparents live, they will pick us up and let us stay with them that night, and then Saturday morning we are back to the airport. We will fly way up north to Cairns, which is right next to the Great Barrier Reef. We will probably stay here for a few days and hopefully get to go scuba diving. Then we will work our way back down the coast by bus, train, or plane going through Brisbane and down to Sydney. So that’s the plan and I’d I’ll be able to show you all our trip once I get back September 10th.

More Down Town Christchurch

8-12-07

Another normal week at school followed by another weekend on the coast. When we first arrived we went to a rural bar outside of town to find a helicopter pilot named Bruce Dando. We thought we might be able to fly in at some point so we wanted to see what this guy was up to. The bar was really cool to check out as it was like walking back into time when we talked with a few of the locals. Didn’t stay too long and we were off to camp at the takeout for a run called the Lower Styx. It rained hard all that night so we thought we should check out another creek that we hoped would come up. Of course it had not rained enough so we turned around to hike into the Lower Styx. It was high and brown, but these kids thought it would be fun to check out any way. We got to the top after being soaked by the rain and decided it was a little too high to run some of the first few drops. So we hiked back through a couple side creeks and put on. This was a larger volume of water than what I was use to, but made it down without any problems. Although we spent most of the day hiking with a stupid heavy kayak I still had a fun day. We then camped out again in a free campground on Saturday night and I got to use my new bivy bag for the first time. We woke up to the sun shinning and quickly ran into town to meet another boater and then back to the Styx again. This time the water had come down to a nice medium flow and we suited up to wait for my first helicopter ride. We crammed two people and the pilot at a time into the smallest helicopter I’ve ever seen and flew up river to the start of the Upper Styx. It was a great feeling to be dropped off in the middle of the mountains and to paddle down another unfamiliar creek. It was a great run with a lot of good class IV boogy water, fun boofs, and eddy hoping. It was a little continuous until we came up to one portage in the middle of the upper run. Paddled down the rest and soon came to the start of the Lower Styx. This was the most exciting part of the day with big class IV+ boulder gardens and a lot of great boofs. The rest of the run mellowed out as we came down river back to the cars. Then on the way home I got to experience driving on the left hand side of the road for the first time. It was the same as driving at home, but I now had to judge how wide the car was from the opposite side. Made it home safely and was happy to get home after doing some more boating.

Upper & Lower Styx

8-5-07

Just finished my third week of school and I’m already getting sick of studying again. At least now I can finish all my work during the week so I can be free on the weekend. And this weekend I got to go kayaking again early on Saturday in the freezing cold. We paddled a run that had a lot of flat water, but a beautiful short canyon gorge. It was a descent class four run, but since it was so short we actually hiked back up the creek to paddle a few drops again. It wasn’t really the best trip in the cold, but I was grateful to just be outside and on the water. Then we packed back into our cars, picked up some dinner in a small rural town, and headed to Mount Hutt again for the evening. A friend of ours rented a lodge close to the base of the ski resort for his twenty first birthday. It was nothing fancy, but we had a great time celebrating and played a ton of foosball. We woke early to check out some other possible rivers to run, but once again there was not enough rain water to boat anything close. So we headed back to Christchurch and exchanged our creek boats for playboats. Checked the surf levels and drove straight to the beach.

This was the second time I’ve ever been in the ocean in a kayak and it was definitely different than my first experience. We arrived and quickly geared up to avoid the pain of putting on wet cold kayaking gear. I ran to the beach and crammed into a tiny and uncomfortable playboat. We struggled to make it past all the initial waves that sent us back to land, but then tried surfing the bigger waves coming. I think they were about 6 feet high the further out we got and they kicked my ass. They were no smooth curling waves, but crashing white piles of destruction. Well, they were fun to surf, but when you got worked it was tough to hang on. We didn’t surf for too long and headed back home for a good dinner with my roommates. So that was the excitement for this last week and it felt good to get out of the city again.

Rangitat River & Ocean Surfing