9-23-07

Well I’ve been here for long enough to feel like I’m living like most NZ college students do. Listening to most of my friends complain about all their school work I was unable to find anyone to boat with this past weekend. So I had more of a typical weekend hanging out with friends, enjoying some of the sunny weather, going to the movies, and then going snowboarding in the rain. Pretty uneventful, but I was able to go up to Mount Hut again and ride for free. So that was great, but it was foggy and cloudy and no opportunity to take pictures. Now I’m back to school work and attempting to get some projects underway so the end of the semester won’t be very stressful. That’s all for now, so until next weekend.

9-17-07

Just finished my first week of school back from break and I already was looking forward to the weekend. So I met a new Canadian friend and headed over to the west coast again to go kayaking. It had been raining a little bit so we got to fly into a new run called the Arahura and it was amazing. Five of us were dropped off in the middle of the mountains again after flying above a rocky and steep creek. The run started off a little intense as I was feeling a touch rusty after not boating for a few weeks. So I was more focused on following some of the local boys were with until we came to the first really big drop. It was a tricky entrance to avoid being pushed into a sieve, a place where water gets stuffed under rocks, and then boofing a 15ft drop with a shallow landing. It was a great rapid and we all styled it. Although my new friend Mike got caught up just down stream, swam, and was pushed through the next rapid below. We all quickly tried to get in our boats and chase after him and I soon found myself going through the next section backwards over a large poor-over. Got stuck in a little bit of a sticky hole with no way to escape. I tried to fight for a while, but tumbled end over end, slammed into a rock wall, then back into the wall of water to toss me around even more. I tried to grab rocks under the water to pull myself out past the recirculating water that feed back into the hole, but nothing worked. Thankfully this gave enough time for the other guys to come down and a set a throw bag up for me. I ended up swimming and roped to shore as my boat floated into an eddy below. I was a little exhausted, but ran down to collect my gear and asses my friends situation. He wasn’t hurt, but he split his boat open to make for a difficult repair. We tried our best but he boated with too much water inside, split it open a second time, and had to abandon his boat and hike out. Thankfully, there are hiking trails near most of the creeks we boat, so he had to run about 5 miles of an 8 mile run out to the car.

The rest of us then boated down a beautiful deep canyon with a few more huge drops that most of us walked. I was feeling slightly timid after getting a little beat down, so I was playing it safe and more or less survival paddling out. I had a great time although I wasn’t able to get all the photos I wanted as we couldn’t stop much in the middle of drops. So I guess I’ll have to go back and also show some friends when they come out to boat. And since Mike no longer had a boat to paddle the rest of the weekend we decided to head back to Christchurch. So I got to relax, enjoy some warmer weather, and watched a few movies before school began all over again.

Oh and I forgot to mention the third picture posted is of a wild alpine parrot. They’re the only parrots that live above tree line and can handle the snow and were pretty amusing to watch.

Arahura