Ula

Date: 17 Aug

Water level: low

Doing the drop after the slides. A bit too far to the left.

Paddlers: Fredrik, Marius, Alison, Vegar, Vegard, Berit, Arild, Thale, Håvard E, Håvard D, Ellen

Jori

Date: 16 Aug

Water level: 1.1o (low)

Sweet continious bouldery grade 3-4 run. No scouting needed (at least not at this water level). Got more push after merge with Grøna. Would be awesome at higher flows.

Marius

Paddlers: Håvard E, Håvard D, Vegar, Vegard, Ellen, Alison, Erika, Fredrik, Marius, Ole

Urula

Date: 10 August
Waterlevel: 20 cumecs (sweet)
3 portages.

Pascal in a tricky rapid

Paddlers: Jon, John, Ferry, Hans, Pascal, Lachland, Matthew, Arnstein, Kai, Ronny, (Andreas, Anders, Jarle)

Skjøli

Water level: 1.50. Got in at the gorge. Charged the cataract from the right. Took the left channel where the river divided. Big hole in the middle of the river about 20 meters after the channels merged. Scary, but an awesome adrenalin rush.

Paddlers: Toni, Sam, Colin, Nico, Arrits, Christoph and another German.

Upper Bøvra

Paddled on the Sjoa Festival. Water level: 1.20 (perfect). Did the first challenging rapid - charged it a bit too far to the right, but I was fine. Two portages.

Mao in the first rapid

Terje

Paddlers: Eivind, Mao, Ferry, Kristian, Terje, Pascal, Hans, Rune

Upper Rauma

Paddled on the Sjoa Festival. Portaged some of the stuff. Little Huka falls. Got stuck in a tiny, but super sticky hole in the last rapid on the left side.

First rapid

Arild

Kristian

Paddlers: Sinan, Ann, Pete, Helena, Kristian, Mikkel, Anders, Brent, Andreas, Arild

Ula

Paddled on the Sjoa Festival. Not much water. But sweet as !

Rondana and get in

Rune

Ann in the double drop

Eivind's boof

Mao in the middle of it

Paddlers: Mao, Ann, Eivind, Thomas, Hans, Rune, Kristian, Ferry, Terje

Mohaka

The most beautiful river on the north island. Great paddling as well. Huge rocks ! Beware of rocks falling from the walls. Grade III run and grade IV run.

Tongariro Access 14

Cool river. Only two dam releases a year. Get out before Tree Trunk Gorge.

The dam

The get in

Tree Trunk Gorge

Jezz

Paddlers: Jono, James, Tim, Toni

Rangitaiki (Jeff's Joy Run)

Mint river. Beware of rock A.

Matt

James

Wairoa

Paddled about 10 times. About 2 hours drive from Auckland. Sweet as !

Matt in the bottom waterfall

Mangakarongaronga

Fun stuff. Seldom flows. It was incidentally flowing on one of our Wairo trips !

Ross and Toni scouting

Chris

Milford Sound in Sun and Rain

Like Norway, fiords are a big tourist atraction. We decided to take a day off paddling and be "regular" tourists.

Milford Sound isn't a sound - it's a fiord. Therefore it should be named Milford Fiord.

We went for a climb up the hill to get to the creek that makes the Bowen Fall. The pipeline was slippery!

Finally there

So why are we trespassing?...

... to see Bowen Falls f0r free!

Jono and Mao are relaxing and drinking beer. The kiwi beer is really tasty!

As soon as it starts to rain, a lot of small waterfalls emerges.

The tunnel on our way back to Hollyford

We were a bit sleepy after today's activities

We met this fellow on our way home

We went back a second time to Milford to do a cruise. This time it had rained a lot which made the waterfalls bigger.

Drinking water straight from the waterfall. The water had this yellowish colour which reminded me of something I would not drink.

A flock of seals are relaxing

Dolphins were chasing us as we set the course back to land.

And as we were on our way to land, the weather improved.

Water coming down

A river on the Milford side, but no kayaking today

Hollyford and Gunn's Camp

In Fiordlands it rains a lot, about 9 meters a year. Which is about the same amount of rain that pours down in Bergen each year. But this year, New Zealand had the worst draught in 80 years. Even though the rivers were a bit low, I didn't complain about the nice weather.

The Kia watching us as we drove into Fiordlands.

Random river

Waterfalls

The dry gravel road down to the camp

James playing golf.

James relaxing. Simple life.

Rangitata River

After paddling the Hooker, we drove down from the Southern Alps plateau towards the east coast in order to paddle the Rangitata.

We encountered a few sheeps on our way to the get in. I learned that sheeps are unpredictable animals that love to hide in the ditch and jump right in front of your car.

The Rangitata started quite slow with a long flat section. But the adrenalin started pumping as soon as we arrived at the gorge. Retrospectively, it would have been better to just walk up to the top of the gorge than doing the long drive to the official get in.

Paddlers: James, James, Toni, Markus, Yan, Katrina, Jono and Espen.

Hooker River

The first river to paddle after leaving Queenstown was the Hooker. I had already been here with Mari a couple of weeks before and was very pleased to get the opportunity to paddle this glacier river.

Paddlers: James, Toni, Markus, Jono and Espen

Walking from the camping ground. Lesson learned: Never leave your paddling gear outdoors when there are Kias in the area. The cute parrot lookalike love plastic and rubber and during the night they managed to pearce a few drytops and spay-skirts

The Hooker River actually starts from the terminal lake of the Hooker glacier, but we only did the lower part from the terminal lake of the Mueller glacier.

The swingbridge

The Mueller Glacier. The ice made it sure that this would be a cold experience.

In the water

Markus

Me

James and Toni right by the swing bridge

Nice colour contrast

James the canoist

It is interesting when you can't see beneath the water surface

Big mountains

At the get out

Glacier Kayaking!