Friday 14 August 1998 - Pool Attendant’s's Course



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Fergus Bramley, Nick Clendon and Nigel Parry of the VUCC A Team take out the Hutt Gorge Race trophy (photo by Marilou Del). Well done to VUCC, again (sigh). Nick keeps his vice-like grip on the shield. Cheeky Nigel suffered for his glory.

Welcome to the December 2013 newsletter of the Hutt Valley Canoe Club.

Club Weekend at Mangaweka THIS WEEKEND!

Summer is here, and it’s time again for our club weekend at Mangaweka (Dec 7th-8th), THIS WEEKEND. I have included a few gratuitous snaps below from a previous year. Sue Robertson has (helpfully) been running a beginners course and we hope to see as many of these novices as possible on the Rangitikei, along with familiar faces to catch up with. Camping is at Mangaweka Domain by the Rangitikei River, and is apparently dog-friendly. Some are camping on the Friday night, and we plan to first meet at 10.30 am on Saturday morning at the camp, for scenic grade 2 paddling. Contact Sue in advance if you need to hire equipment: susie.m.robertson@

Christmas Dinner

Our Christmas dindins is coming up soon, on Fri Dec 13th at Bella Italia, Petone.

Please RSVP to Alan Bell: bellac@xtra.co.nz

Hutt Gorge Race - held on 9th Nov 2013

Thanks, everyone, for making the race an enjoyable event yet again! For once, we had the right flow and the right weather, but, the wrong logs, again, unfortunately. This meant an unexpected compulsory portage at Toilet Bowl where some spindly logs straddled much of the flow in the narrows part. It was not worth risking allowing the teams to paddle through it. I look forward to a race with no portage, some day. [The logs were gone again after the very next heavy rain!]

It was good to see so many paddlers turn up (and from other parts like the Manawatu & Wairarapa), including those coming to socialise and catch up, and not a few dogs (!) - it could've been mistaken for a kennel club event!

Special thanks go to the team of Alice, Brett and Sue, who did the right thing and stopped to help rescue another team! Legend! My longer list of thanks go to: Jo McWilliam, for agitating for the race; Kathie Stobbs, as Race Director; Eaon Fitzwater and Bernard Cruickshank and Brian McGhie, for providing safety and, as it turned out, crucial assistance with the tricky portage; Phil MacDonald and Brian (and others?), for essential barbecue duties; anyone else who helped to time or shuttle or brought birthday cake etc.

It was good to see Nigel get his rewards after his painful race efforts (see results below and photo above). Nick Clendon continues his reign ...

Results from the Race Director:

1st - VUCC A (55m 08s) (Nick Clendon, Fergus Bramley, Nigel Parry)

2nd - VUCC B (56m 51s) (Jo & Hamish McWilliam, Mike Denton)

3rd - Young VUCC (1h 1m 41s) (Stu, Dan, Theo)

4th - RWWC (1h 08m 44s) (Max & Mel Grant, Phil Devlin)

5th - 3M's Wairarapa (1h 14m 34s)

6th - ‘ASB’ (1h 16m 55s) (Brett Palmer, Alice Karvelas & Sue Robertson)

Congratulations to the winners (Victoria University Canoe Club A Team), well done to all participants, and hope to see you next year.

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Lea Smith playing on the Rangitikei near Mangaweka (photo anon).

Out and About

Paddling has accelerated with the spring season, for many of us. Here is a glimpse of some recent activities. [Apologies in advance - I do try to get contributions from other people too, honest!]

14th-15th Sept: the Tongariro Releases were enjoyed as always.

A large Wellington group drove up and stayed in the rustic Potaka bach, and watched Team NZ nearly capsize over breakfast! I paddled Access 10 with Ingrid Harder (now a sailor), Alice Karvelas, Dean Benvenuti, Glen Clark and Boyd McManus (of Turangi) and saw zillions more, e.g. a Christchurch crew of Robin Rutter-Baumann, Doug Rankin, Andre Pinkert etc; Guido Wassink from Auckland; Don Paterson from OPC (reminiscing about my school visit to OPC when he was an instructor there and I was a teenager) etc. An OBE in my group may have been seen in front of the lunch crowd. On the Sunday, for the first time in a while, we did both Access 14 and Access 13, for the benefit of those who had not seen it before (like Glen).

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Whoopee! Rangitikei River. (photo anon)

21st Sept: Woohoo! Whakapapa Release! Woohoo!

How long have I been waiting to paddle this river again? This time, Genesis forecast that the release would go ahead and that the river would drop below the minimum by the end of the afternoon. The same paddling crew as before was mustered (Dean B, Glen Clark and myself meeting up with Boyd) and we drove up in constant rain, listening (on the radio) to Team NZ’s promising win in San Francisco being disallowed due to exceeding a time limit! We saw several groups when we arrived: Ruahine (Craig Peters, Greg Sawyer, Phil Devlin and co), Taranaki paddlers, two lonely Auckland paddlers and some from OPC (Don Patterson again). Maddeningly, Craig Peters had to withdraw before even starting, due to a cracked boat. Glen lost a contact lens out of one eye but soldiered on. The level was just over the minimum, maybe around 20 cumecs. The rain was so heavy that you could barely see through the mist and raindrops - I’ve hardly seen such poor visibility. At one point, the needles of windblown rain in the eyes were so painful that we stopped for a snack break on shore till it calmed down. It didn’t exactly seem likely that the river would drop during the day as forecast (surely not?). Yet, the river seemed to stubbornly resist coming up, for a long time anyway - but by the last rapid, it was pumping. Despite the groups paddling separately for most of the trip, we coincidentally came together by the end, lending a gala atmosphere to the last rapid with crowds of appreciative spectators. When the drivers drove back to the top at 4 pm, they found 180 cumecs going over the spillway!

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Alan Bell gives the club raft an outing on the Rangitikei (photo anon). The papa cliffs go on forever.

Labour Weekend: Kaituna/Wairoa/Rangitikei Gorge

Yet again, the crew of Dean B, Glen and myself came together, along with Glen’s partner Jacqui (obliging driver) and another keen carload of Mike Denton, Arran Whiteford and Dan Kirkman. It was simply ages since I’d done these rivers. Our crew was a little stir crazy, with some whimsical phrases being repeated endlessly, like ‘rotisserie chicken’, ‘chicken and chips’, ‘Italian disco hits’ and other inexplicable things. It was Glen’s last hoorah before moving back to Christchurch. We camped at Reid’s Farm, and managed a dip in the Waiotapu hot pools before even arriving in Rotorua, then a café lunch once we arrived (priorities right). The lads clocked up the laps in a frenzy, and we moved on to the scenic McLaren’s Falls camp where the aforementioned rotisserie chicken was devoured. The Wairoa has changed since I last did it, especially Mother’s Nightmare and Rollercoaster, but little did we know that a minor rapid early on (of two drops) had also changed, catching probe Dan out despite being sent first down ‘the recommended line’ (a boof right into the eddy). This simple boof has morphed into a sticky hole, and Dan’s boat was immediately cartwheeling nastily, while he had to practice hunching up even to swim free of it. Other easier routes were used after that. [Dean also tried the old recommended route and also got stuck. He got out eventually.] Rollercoaster was its usual thrill, channelling you through a chaotic foaming hole. Our carload did two laps of the river while the others did three, with an OBE for Arran in the bottom waterfall, the nemesis of many paddlers and rarely paddled out of once it has you. Caught on video, it seems inexplicable that Arran could get so much air and still be sucked back into the hole anyway! We camped at Access 10 to ease the drive on the last day. The Rangitikei Gorge was at a particularly friendly level (21.5 cumecs), the most friendly level I can remember. The left side of Foaming was still paddleable, between the rocks. It was Dan’s first time.

If you will indulge me, below is another long trip report by me, from last summer on the Coast, to whet people’s appetite for summer trips. [I nearly managed to get some great trip reports lined up from others who I know can write a great yarn. Nearly. But, not quite. Still hopin’.]

Lower Perth - Sat 16th Feb 2013 by Lucy Forde

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Kerry Hoglund assesses Knuckle Grinder from below - Perth River (photo by Nigel Parry). Nah!

For some months, I hatched a scheme to join a Whitewater Canoe Club trip on the Lower Perth River, in February. Alan Merry and Nigel Parry, my partners-in-crime from the Taipo, independently decided that it would be a fine idea as well, so we all devised our feeble excuses to gravitate down to the West Coast at the appropriate time, some more radical than others (I merely organised a tramping holiday for myself, but Alan even moved to Christchurch!). I contacted the trip organiser, Andre Pinkert, well in advance, while Alan bided his time, staying noncommittal in case of a heavy rain spoiler. I’d met Andre on the Waiatoto previously. He’s even a crown research institute scientist like me.

The Perth is a tributary of the Whataroa, which is down near Franz Josef, about 1 hour & 20 min drive from Hokitika. The Perth is one of those rivers that can never get too low to paddle, along with the Whataroa, Wanganui and Whitcombe (wa-wa-wa, all those w’s), so when you schedule a trip on these rivers, your remaining enemy is too much rain (not too little). The Perth is the smaller tributary of the Whataroa, but it is bluer (the Whataroa seems to have more of that greyish glacial dust in it) - a very pretty glacial blue, like the Hokitika.

About a couple of weeks before the trip, about to embark on a long tramp in Fiordland, I got a call from Andre saying that the trip was now full and that club members were going to be given precedence over me (even though I had put my hand up a long way in advance), so I might not be able to do the trip after all. This was a blow (though I had to admit it was logical that club members get the first pick over outsiders), but it turned out that circumstances did change quite a bit anyway. Andre originally intended to limit the numbers to eight people (yeah right), but for some reason (including several of the original people pulling out), that all went out the window, and in the end there were 14 of us, basically all-comers! Woohoo! There was even an embarassing online survey to fill out, requiring self-assessment of your own level of skill and experience.

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Bottom drop of Knuckle Grinder - Perth River (photo by Lucy Forde).

The rivers were indeed very low by the 16th, so the trip was on. It was hot and sunny. Perfecto. We drove in convoy all the way from the Hokitika camp to the helipad by the Whataroa River, and held a briefing. Andre explained how he was splitting the 14 paddlers into two groups of seven (splitting up the two weakest paddlers - not named, those with PLBs, those who had done it before and so on, and keeping the Wellingtonians together since we knew each other, warts/swims and all). There were only three of the 14 who had paddled the section before, and one of those couldn’t remember much anyway! Alan (not one who’d done it before) was appointed group leader of one group, and we flew off to the put-in using two different helicopters. Nigel got his desired spot in the front of the heli this time. The guidebook talks about a lower put-in at Five Finger Stream, but also describes a fearsome grade 5 rapid called Knuckle-Grinder below that! Although Kerry Hoglund reckoned that Knuckle-Grinder was now only grade 4, we got the helis to drop us at the bottom of the rapid rather than at the top, so that anyone who was sufficiently crazymotivated could still walk up it if they wanted to. Unsurprisingly, noone wanted to portage up the long and steep rapid, though a handful of people ran the last drop. I don’t know if the full rapid was grade 4+, or more. It looked bad from a distance.

We had assumed that the non-Welly pure-ChCh group was the more gung-ho, and planned to let them go first, but when they pfaffed around for a long time at the put-in, Alan got bored and decided to kick off with his group first anyway. In the meantime, a guy called Stew paddled up to me and complained about how much he hated big groups, how a group of five was his preferred maximum, blah blah blah. But then, amusingly, though he was meant to be allocated to the other group, he seemed to tag along down the rapids with us, and eventually joined our group officially, turning it into a group of eight! So much for hating large groups! The others reckoned that Stew was actually more sociable than he would like to admit (or, maybe some buddy of his was in our group). We had a veteran C1 paddler with us too, Angus Dickson. He was a careful, deliberate paddler, rarely getting flustered, almost always in full control, and catching every last eddy, often choosing to paddle at the back of the group so that he would have a lot of space.

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One of the ungorgey rapids - Perth River (photo by Nigel Parry).

We were told that the more major rapids of the day would be in the last gorge. But the first few rapids were still pretty full-on, long and fast and bony (at this level), with many channel choices between islets and often an inability to see all the way to the bottom of any of them from the water. Paddlers spent much of their time backpaddling down these rapids, trying to pick a safe route at short notice (eddies weren’t so abundant as to always allow short hops between eddies, so paddlers ahead often disappeared), charging at holes as they loomed up. These early rapids were boat-scouted. On one such rapid, where much of the rapid was out of sight, Alan decided to lead, but was fooled by the very first diagonal hole right at the top (masquerading as a wave), and began quite a long side-surf with all the group looking on close-by in the eddy. The surf location was not exactly nice, given that the water was washing down just below it against a large boulder which we needed to go left of, and the unknown long rapid lay beyond that. The surf went on and on … on … (so it seemed), and in the end Alan could only get out of it by paddling backwards, where he risked being swept into the boulder, but just managed to avoid it, expertly. Alan’s generous probe example allowed the rest of us to avoid the hole easily.

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In the last gorge - Perth River (photo by Nigel Parry). Standard West Coast schist scenery.

After a while we let the other group overtake us as planned, well before getting to the gorge. The gradient eased off. Progress had been slowish with the big groups, but there was plenty of daylight and warm sun so there was no rush and everyone was good-natured. Soon enough, everybody stopped for an early lunch, but Nigel ran over his paddle while cutting into the eddy there, and the blade fell off it! It was his split paddle (to save excess luggage fees on the plane), and that blade was evidently not well-enough attached. He managed to roll up with just the one blade, and we scanned the river for the missing blue blade but could not see it. However, after a leisurely munch, the blue blade miraculously became visible on the sandy bottom in the large eddy by us (not the eddy where it had come off, but on a different side of the river!), and it was retrieved by someone rolling upside-down and grabbing it off the bottom and rolling back up, to much appreciative hooting. Nigel was looking happy in his rented club Nomad (rented by their newest member, a Mr Merry), so happy that he even liked it more than his own Habitat! [I predicted some boat shopping for Mr Parry in the future.]

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In the last gorge - Perth River (photo by Nigel Parry). Standard West Coast blue water.

So, on to the more exciting rapids after lunch. The first bigger/trickier rapid did not really announce itself, and looked innocent enough until we saw Alan lead over a horizon-line in the distance and flop awkwardly out of sight, not appearing again downstream, from where we were looking anyway (still in our boats). I was a bit worried about what had happened to him, but more of our group followed him down regardless, and all of them seemed to do the same awkward motion, though I did see some appear eventually downstream from the right! It looked like they might be getting stuck in a hole or boil on the right. Stew stopped in an eddy just above the horizon-line to try to see down it but then couldn’t get back out of the eddy, so he eventually gave up and flopped down backwards out of sight! I resolved to paddle down pointing left to avoid whatever hole was on the right, but this wasn’t a winning move either, and my nose buried in a strong downward jet coming from the left and I pencilled down, down, down for a submarine move. While still wondering which way I should be leaning, I popped back up into the air again. Looking back up at the drop, it was the lateral jet folding on top of you that made everyone look awkward, and the bony run-up. There’d been a few rolls. After this, most of the rapids were at least a bit serious, with the odd consequence here and there like undercuts or sieves, and the rapids coming in quick succession ( though scoutable and portageable). They were potentially tricky, but not death-defying, for a crew in control, though I expect they would get pushier with more water (i.e. easiest level is bone low?).

The two groups ended up working very well together, by accident or by design. The lead group of six would be ahead, scout the rapid, sometimes set up some safety for themselves, and by the time we reached each rapid we were often in time to watch some of them paddle the various lines and/or tell us about the hazards. Then they would paddle off ahead to the next one (except when they waited to do safety for us, a couple of times) and we would walk back up to our boats and go down one at a time. As mentioned, there was no rush anyway. I don’t know if they were deliberately waiting for us to overlap at each rapid or if we were just keeping up the same rhythm. In any case, it saved our group quite a lot of time scouting, and so was efficient for us (thanks, Kerry and Andre and co.).

One rapid had some interesting options. You entered the rapid over a drop, in the centre or on the left (too bony on the right), and then soon afterwards there was a huge boulder blocking the way (and most of the flow) in the centre with a big buffer off it. On the left side of the boulder was a manky-looking narrow gap that looked like it might flip you as you squeezed through, maybe. The right side gap was wider but still not as wide as a boat is long. After the boulder, the flow mostly went off down the right, pushing you into some other boulders, but that looked like where you ought to be going generally, adding to the desirability of the right side gap versus the left alternative. Unfortunately, after the initial drop, the water seemed to be pushing you left, not toward the wider gap on the right, so you had to work skilfully against the current to go right. We watched Andre Pickert and Kerry Hoglund enter the rapid from the left and head right, and neither of them made that look easy, both working hard but still bouncing off the boulder buffer a bit and having to bring their nose back around to fit through the right gap. Another guy entered hard left (being stopped in the hole briefly) but still wanted to head right, which never looked like a good line to me (I don’t know what he was thinking). [I think he may have ended up in the left gap? Or grovelling on the right?] Stew ended up tipping upside-down in the right gap and eventually swam down the rest of the long rapid, climbing out boatless onto a pile of logs in the distance.

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The Weir from afar, showing the grandeur of the place - Perth River (photo by Lucy Forde).

Alan, the sensible man, decided to try something different, and went down the centre drop - the challenge of this line was that you then had to get past a little rock before you could point to the right at the last possible moment, but he made it look pretty comfortable going to the right gap, swinging round just in time for it. Still, that didn’t mean it would be as easy when I tried it - we’ve all learned that lesson. The last of us started to reconsider the claustrophobic left gap as the lesser of two evils, because the water was shoving that way anyway, and you could enter from the centre and let the water take you there and hope for the best in the gap itself. Hopefully you could roll up in time after the left gap, if required. Nigel led the way down there okay, not making the little gap look too bad after all - cheers, Nige. Matt Hawes, a conservative paddler (like me), and I got in, and off he went down that line too. Angus, the C1 paddler and last as usual, was still watching from the side, and when I signalled to ask if Matt was okay, he smacked his lips with his fingers, indicating that not only was Matt okay, but that the line was perfect! And so it was, for Nigel, Matt, myself and Angus. No worries.

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The Weir - Perth River (photo by Lucy Forde). River-left too low to run; river-right runnable but unrescuable.

The toughest rapid for the day was the Weir. This is a simple, narrow drop but is really sucky, apparently, and located against the right cliff, which is not reachable by safety ropes (maybe for rock-climbing experts?). You can’t get close to it from downstream either. The inaccessibility for rescue makes it much more dangerous than it would be otherwise, and a swimmer would not necessarily be able to get out of the suck zone without help. I was late arriving at the rapid, having done some running repairs to my footrest after landing on an unseen rock in the rapid before, but by the time I arrived, Kerry had paddled it and everyone else had decided it was too dangerous and were portaging. I didn’t argue. A nicer route may open up on the left at higher flows, and be rescuable.

After this, I watched several people (from the water) go down the next rapid (a series of foaming holes) with random problems, so I had a quick look-see from the bank, and saw the culprit - a nasty wee sharp rock poking out into a chute, unseen from above, waiting to trip you up. Despite being able to plot a course away from the rock, I still made a dog’s breakfast of it, pinballing between every possible hole in the rapid I think, but none of them too sticky fortunately. Nigel snapped a photo of me ineffectively drawstroking to try to avoid a hole.

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Lucy Forde, inadvertantly finding all the available holes - Perth River (photo by Nigel Parry).

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End of last major rapid, with a sting in the tail - Perth River (photo by Lucy Forde). You want to go left. The river wants you to go right.

Then came the last major rapid, with a sting in its tail. It had a few parts to it, finishing with a sticky-looking hole on the right. The right-side of the hole was just above a possibly-undercut boulder on the side of the river, and/or the boulder might feed you back into the hole as well. A central chute above this would line you up nicely to go left in the hole. But, Kerry had just discovered how sticky that central chute was, as a probe, surfing in it for some time apparently. Cheers, Kerry! So Plan B was a right chute, with not long afterwards to get left. There were varying degrees of success with this line (some were swept briefly against the boulder) but no major consequences in the end. Again, Alan made it look easy, and I was well-pleased with my line, having the benefit of seeing what worked best.

All-in-all it was a super and relaxed trip. The level of cooperation was very high. There was just the one portage. And I was left wondering why this river isn’t utilised more often when water is scarce and all the rivers are low (also the Whataroa, and the Wanganui). The heli cost was middle-of-the-road. South Islanders would call it an ‘intermediate’ run, at the low water level. It is a step up from the Lower Hokitika, consequence-wise. You do need to be a technical paddler, but at least there is the option of portaging. A walk-out is barely feasible (maybe more than a day by track) and even harder from the gorge (perhaps along the rapids).

The paddlers on the trip (missing someone) were: Alan Merry, Nigel Parry, Andre Pinkert, Kerry Hoglund, Matt Hawes, Stew Dempsey, Hamish Brown, Angus Dickson, Nick Hempston, Ashton Owen, Irish Arthur (?), Nick Thomas and myself.

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River Rag – December 2013



Hutt Valley Canoe Club

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