It was a cold, rainy Wellington day, the Hutt gorge was up, but instead, 4 of us were keen to escape the Wellington “summer” and head up to beautiful Hawkes Bay in search of some summer sun and warm water.
On meeting, “Rainman” pulled out several charts claiming that there was a heavy rain warning for what seemed like the whole of NZ. I had also seen the aforementioned charts, but had convinced myself that most of the rain was going to be coastal and not in the headwaters of the Mohaka ? the mind is a powerful tool!
Lea, Richard, Kei and myself left Upper Hutt at 2pm on the Saturday afternoon and the plan was to stay in Napier overnight so that we could meet the Ruahine crew at 9:30am on the Sunday morning. It all sounded very civilised to me and was a good reintroduction to paddling ? no arriving at 1am in the pouring rain and having to pitch a tent.
Kei had organised a cabin for the night and after a bit of shuffling around when we arrived at the campsite, we ended up with a beautiful cabin. This was a great bonus as it was still raining!
The following morning, after breakfast on the veranda in the sun ? yes the sun - we headed to the meeting point. No one knew how many of Ruahine were coming and as it turned out, they had 11 (or it may have been 12) paddlers in total, along with four shuttle drivers, which was very convenient, as the shuttle is very, very , very long!
And then we went kayaking. The river was a good level, high enough to cover lots of the little rocks and create flow in the flat bits, but not so high that it was scary.
After a couple of kilometres of class 1 and 2 warm up, we arrived at “Long Rapid” - strangely enough it's the longest rapid on the river! A bit of a look showed us the line options and everyone seemed to go down successfully. These are the kind of rapids that I love - deep water channelling around rocks. It meant that we could really sink our blades in and make the moves. Combinations of cross river paddling to make the eddy, lining up for the ferry back to the other side, with rocks creating small eddies in the middle of the river to pause along the way and a final snakey route round some rocks with big buffer waves. All this and warm water!
After this were a number of little rapids interspersed with flat bits which provided a great opportunity to admire the scenery - I personally love the fact that to experience this, it can only be done from the water.
There were a couple of mini episodes along the way ? a couple of the Ruahine paddlers had a swim, but with a big group and warm water, the rescues were quick and easy and did not pose too many problems.
Right at the end of the section, the river meanders through large boulders - the guidebook says that they get increasingly larger until you reach “ghotel rock” - they all looked like the size of a hotel to me so I am not sure which particular rock he was talking about. Personally I prefer “hole rock” - this is a rock with a perfectly formed circular “window” in it. It is pretty and cool and also a reminder to keep your nose up as there may be holes lurking just below the surface.
At the end of the section, we turned up to find the cars waiting for us, splendid sunshine, fabulous food and amazing accounts of the trip.
It was a great weekend and if you have not paddled the Mohaka, I would strongly recommend it. The level we caught the river at was about 1.3m on the website. Having the shuttle drivers also meant that we could take it easy in the morning, and this greatly helped the smoothness of the day. Thanks must go to Kei, Lea and Richard for the great weekend and also to Richard for doing all the driving.
More photos from this trip can be seen on this page
by Sue Robertson
