Taking on the Takaputahi

The Takaputahi River is the biggest tributary of the Motu River. This kayak trip had been time in the planning and had an aura about it as I had not heard of anyone kayaking it within at least fourteen years.

Apart from information received by an Opotiki local who had "Lilo'd it", the only person who was able to shed some real light on it was Noel Rusden, a rafter, who said that we should expect a class IV river with a class VI rapid at the bottom of Boulder Mile. Bryce and I received this information just as we were leaving lunchtime Friday. I decided to invest $24.00 in a club Overflow and take the Acrobat off the roof!

A strong team of four Gisborne paddlers, four paddlers from Hawkes Bay and one from Opotiki assembled at Tirohanga on Friday night ready to take on the "Taka" the next day.

Three paddlers from Auckland were due to fly in by private plane first thing in the morning. One of them was a mate of Tomo's from Gisborne and the other two were mates of his. Mark from Opotiki joined the team late on the Friday night. He was a mate of our host for the night who was a mate of Craig's! About this time I started getting an itchy neck. This happens when I paddle with paddlers of unknown abilities on unknown rivers, especially as remote as the Takaputahi.

A 5.30am start in the dark from our overnight sleep in the garage and it's on with breakfast and packing while Craig disappears to the grass airstrip to pick up the Auckland contingent. The cloud is down and it's still drizzling so they'd better be good. We were packed and waiting, an hour lost at the beginning is an hour you haven't got at the end. Craig's back, no sign, they either never made it off the ground or fell out of the sky, either way we can't wait.

Saturday morning we drove to the put-in at Rawea, nine paddlers crammed into Scott's double cab builder's truck. It was raining and had been for a couple of days and the river appeared to be up a bit but still reasonably clear and not flooding.

We left our overnight gear on Scott's truck to be helicoptered into the Mangakiri camp site. From the put in we paddled for an hour down a really pretty gorge before we heard the sounds of thundering water, and rounding a corner we saw the river dropping steeply away into a class IV rapid.

I'd been chafing at the bit watching Stu whoopying away in Pat's Acrobat 270 while I'd left mine at home and was paddling this slug, mumble, mumble. After going from nice class II to gnarly, class IV in one breath I was glad of my conservative nature on "new stuff". We hopped out to survey the scene. Vertical canyon walls of hard black rock wet, mossy and foreboding. Overhanging native bush, dim light, and a jumble of sharp edged rock stretching 150 metres then disappearing round the corner. A 4m high rock obscures what is obviously the 2m drop mentioned in the guide book, but what about the rest of it? It's a mess!

Scott reckons he can see a line and gets ready to see if he is right; good on ya, Scott! He's virtually soloing as it's almost impossible to get to that side if he bites the biscuit. Winding it up he disappears from view over the drop, reappearing in a more vertical position moments later, gets that under control, hits the small gap next to the wall and hangs a hard right above a jumble of tombstones to hit a spit sized eddy behind a rock mid-stream. Quick breather and turn round to hit the next metre high drop on the angle, bounce up in the air (must be a rock there, thanks for that Scott) and turns back to hit a thin, two-boat eddy at the top of the next bit, whatever that is.

There is no ready portage and standing with my throwbag at the ready only works for the first few paddlers. Stu comes out of the big drop vertical and rock splats the wall. Warren does an involuntary 360 between the drops but gets it round in time. Tomo's paddling old technology, a Dancer, going well until the last crucial move, gets washed backwards onto three rocks and vertically pins backwards, looks bad. Shout to Craig that I need help and swim across to the next rock to get closer with a line. Get my face out of the water and look up and he's off and swimming for any place out of the flow, his Dancer wants to go it alone! That does it, it's too risky a line, there's no real portage but I'm portaging anyway. Returning to Craig, he says its our turn now, right! Yeah, right, anything you say, Craig. Damn peer pressure. Tomo's been yanked across the river on the end of a line by Bryce and Warren and his runaway boat picked up by Stu while he was exploring the next bit out front.

The line goes well, the Overflow stable under pressure and I arrive at the top of the next bit. Craig missed the breakout at the top and decides to take the fast survey option, no idea what happened to him but no ones screaming! Can't see a thing over my shoulder but Bryce is pointing to an imaginary point on the lip and Warren is making wave motions with his hand, ahah! Wouldn't like to be first down here but trust the team and go for it, reasonably straight forward, three or four holes to break through and a sloping rimu log to miss. Mark tried a limbo move under the log, glad he came out, I wasn't looking forward to going in after him.

Having negotiated this rapid we paddled on toward Boulder mile with the river dropping steeply away before us, the cloud cover starting to lift and the Urewera bush displayed in all its glory.

We stopped for lunch and our chopper dropped in after dropping our gear at the hut to say that three paddlers from Auckland were on the water behind us and their gear had been taken in as well. The pilot thought at least one of them didn't look that flash and had some concerns. They'd been delayed by the weather but had decided to carry on anyway getting on the water about midday. We weighed the new information and decided to carry on.

After another hours paddling the river started to drop away again and we saw the first of some large boulders - the start of Boulder Mile. It took us about an hour and a half to paddle through Boulder Mile which consisted mainly of class III+ to IV rapids of continuous drop/pool variety and very exciting.

The real surprise lay at the bottom of Boulder Mile where we saw the sight all paddlers fear the most. A class VI unrunnable rapid consisting of the river funneled into a two metre drop and immediately after two large trees wedged between two rocks and totally obstructing the river. A large boil was foaming where the water was hitting the tree. It was impassable. To attempt to paddle this was likely to be fatal. The choice was walk it or die. We all chose to walk.

While surveying the unrunnable rapid my thoughts went back to the three paddlers behind us and the severe time pressure they would be under. They would have got on the water about noon and at least one paddler was thought to be in over his head. You could only see the log jam from a bank scout and if they were bombing rapids unseen then we could easily end up with a fatality here. I called a Time Out to go over options and we decided we had to keep ourselves safe first, and we could not imperil ourselves by waiting when we did not know what obstacles still lay ahead or what their present status was. Spring got into his first aid kit for paper to leave the others a note.

From here we it took about 50 minutes to the Motu confluence and a further hour downstream to the Mangakiri Hut for the night, arriving about 6pm.

We rigged up a throw bag and boat arrangement to attract the attention of the others, in case they didn't know where they were. As far as we knew they didn't have maps, and it would have been a shame to miss the hut after a hard days paddle. We had a nice tea, with the luxury of being able to fly all the goodies in (the port was for medicinal purposes only). Just on dark Tomo and Scott went down the stream to see if anyone had turned up and a short while later we heard a very relieved yodel drifting up from the main river.

They'd had all sort of epics and the note left at the unrunnable rapid, as it turned out, was a lifesaver. The lead paddler was lining up the rapid when onte of the group noticed the note on a stick in the riverbank. One paddler especially was in way over his head and as he put it "nearly drowned several times." He was mentally and physically stuffed.

After a restful night we paddled out through the lower Gorge and onto a jet boat pick up in the vicinity of the White Rapid.

In short the Takaputahi is a great paddle and one that doesn't get paddled often. To avoid major drama I suggest it is left to itself whilst flooding.

We were :
Poverty Bay Kayak Club - Craig Peerless, Scott Bothwell, Spring Thompson, Tomo Nicholson
Hawkes Bay Canoe Club and Associates - Rob Worlledge, Bryce Harkness, Warren Hales, Stu Cameron.
Opotiki - Mark Thompson
Auckland - Stubsie, Strings and Bruiser