{"id":3765,"date":"2020-03-07T20:20:21","date_gmt":"2020-03-07T07:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/?p=3765"},"modified":"2020-04-25T22:00:58","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T10:00:58","slug":"7th-march-2020-upper-grey-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/?p=3765","title":{"rendered":"7th March 2020: Upper Grey River"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Date: <\/strong>7\/03\/20
River: <\/strong>Upper Grey River, West Coast, NZ
River Conditions: <\/strong>Low flow, 143.6 cumecs at Dobson, water clear and cold. Grade 2.
Weather Conditions: <\/strong>Cool but sunny with the odd cloud.
Number on Trip: <\/strong>19 people.
Time on River: <\/strong>1.25 hours.
Comments: <\/strong>The drive through the Lewis Pass was a real pleasure, the mountains, jagged against the sky, the forests, green and tall, the road winding through the tunnel of trees. We are lucky to live in such a beautiful country and have such easy access to such wonderful, unspoiled nature, hopefully we can hold on to this despite the numerous threats to the environment, that we often take for granted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arriving at the meeting\npoint, the first thing I noticed was the giant ice cream cones almost everyone\nseemed to be eating. I pulled up and ordered a double of gold rush on top with\nrum and raisin on the bottom, it was positively huge and acted as fuel for the\nnext trip. We discussed the next adventure as we finished our ice creams,\nbefore heading out of Springs Junction and turning off down Palmer Road to run\nthe Upper Grey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Driving through native\nforest interspersed with farm land, we crossed the Upper Grey, the Brown Grey\nbefore reach our destination where Palmer Road crosses the Blue Grey. We washed\ndown our gear with disinfectant to kill off any didymo that may have hitched a\nride across the main divided, before getting our wet, and now lavender scented\nin some cases, kayaking gear on. Graeme chose not to paddle as he had a bit of\na headache and planned to meet us at the get out with his vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Hugh leads the group away from the Palmer Road bridge over the Blue Grey River.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We divided into our two\ngroups again to make things manageable on the river, before bouncing down the\nsomewhat bony Blue Grey, on down to the confluence with the Upper Grey. Hugh in\nhis pack raft kept racing ahead, while the rest of the group dawdled behind. I\nkept up with Hugh, to slow him down and to make sure he wasn\u2019t on his own. He\nwas worried that if we didn\u2019t keep a reasonable pace on, any serious issue could\nmean being stuck on the river as the sunset. I passed this on to the rest of\nthe group and we picked up the pace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Hugh contemplates the beautiful scenery from his pack raft, whilst waiting for the rest of the group to catch up.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Once we reached the\nconfluence with the Upper Grey, the volume increased and the river moved from\nflowing through farm land and into the shadowy green of the native bush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Thick native bush lines the river banks, as crystal clear water flows over river smoothed rocks.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As we moved further down the river, the rapids became more interesting and we tried to keep more together as a group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Making a splash on the Upper Grey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There were some great play spots but with us not being sure how far it was to the take out and darkness not being too far away, Hugh urged us to keep the pace up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A nice play spot on the Upper Grey.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was paddling near the front of the group with Hugh, when we spotted a large tree fallen in the river. Hugh bounced down the rapid and off the tree with no drama, I “stopped” on a rock at the top of the rapid and took the opportunity to take a few photos while I was stuck, and to signal to the others in the group to go left. I had intended them to just go the left of me and avoid the tree, but the rest of the group ended up going down a small, bony channel against the left back. Once everyone was past, I wriggled myself off the rock and ran the rapid, avoiding the hazard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Most of the group avoided this hazard by taking the left channel, after we’d examined it closely.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hugh was somewhat surprised to see a figure, who turned out to be Graeme, standing beside the river, as he was expecting that we were going to get out about 3 or 4km further down the river. Still we were quite pleased to see him, as it had been a fairly long day and fatigue was begin to set in. We scrambled up the bank and got changed, then Graeme drove us back up to the put in to pick up the vehicles. We drove back to pick up our gear, returning in time to welcome the second group. We loaded up and ferried their drivers back to the put in, before heading off to Reefton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Graeme waits patiently at the take out for the rest of the group to arrive<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The drive to Reefton was\nuneventful and we checked into the Old Nurses Home Guesthouse around twenty\npast seven, with not much time before our dinner booking at the Dawson Hotel at\neight. I dropped my bags off and phoned Lauri, before wandering down to the\nDawson for dinner. There was a bit of a wait to be seated as they were pretty\nbusy, with a number of events happening in the area, and a further wait to\norder. I was keen to have the pork belly, but that had been pretty popular and\nhad run out. I settled on a T bone steak with Argentinian chimichurri sauce,\nwhich was quite delicious. We were helped to survive the wait by a young man who\nwas having his 13th<\/sup> birthday party in the restaurant, sharing his\ncake with our group. We didn\u2019t get back to the guesthouse until after ten, and\nthen it was time for a shower before collapsing into bed.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Date: 7\/03\/20River: Upper Grey River, West Coast, NZRiver Conditions: Low flow, 143.6 cumecs at Dobson, water clear and cold. Grade 2.Weather Conditions: Cool but sunny with the odd cloud.Number on Trip: 19 people.Time on River: 1.25 hours.Comments: The drive through the Lewis Pass was a real pleasure, the mountains, jagged against the sky, the forests, green and tall, the road winding through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":3789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kayaking","category-river"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3765"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3841,"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3765\/revisions\/3841"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deltaprime.net.nz\/whitewater\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}