Falls Creek / Falls Creek, V (P)
Falls Creek is a guidebook writer’s nightmare. It is a great trip - if you catch the water. Don’t blame me if you try and tick it and spend all summer and still don’t get it. You need to get there right after it stops raining - it drops very fast and you need to be putting in just as the rain is stopping. You want it to be brown and flowing nicely with a few rocks showing; the rapid upstream of bridge should look paddleable. If it looks a scrape the run will be a scrape. If there are no rocks showing there will be very few eddies! There is a rock with a flat top on river left just upstream of the bridge - usually you put your boat on this when you get in. If it is out of the water the river is low. If it is just covered then it is a perfect flow as long as you can see it. If you can’t see it you’ll probably be walking out.
The creek starts easy then picks up with a couple of warm-up drops before heading into Mini Gorge. (It is worth scouting this gorge as it has a tree across it but can be paddled via a number of lines.) Mini is a good indicator of what the rest of the river is like. If you don’t go well in here, you better walkout! Boulder gardens follow for a few hundred metres. Make sure to take out when it eases off. Eddy left and walk along the track to inspect the Bridge Gorge. If you buckle here, river right offers the best escape and look for an old tram track from the bridge. Bridge consists of a tricky bouldery entry rapid and then the guts of it - a sweeping bend with a big hole (Swindler). Catch your breath in the small eddy on the right before hucking 20 feet over mini Huka (middle of the boil then right down the drop). The next drop is a portage on the left on slippery rocks or boof through a narrow slot on the right if you are certain there are no trees in it.
A few smaller rapids follow before you get to a rapid with a big boulder in the middle. Find the line around this to boof, then you are straight into Tongue and Groove, or portage left. Things ease until Five Finger, a complicated boulder garden which leads straight into the next drop which has a beautiful slab boof on the left but a horrendous sieve on the right of it. Then you are at the mandatory meltdown called Chernobyl. Immediately after Chernobyl catch the eddy on the right under the cliff where there is a static line. Climb up the gully and haul your boat to the top. From here you can see Golden shower and Tarleton Falls. Unless you are very brave and/or very stupid you’ll be better off abseiling down the cliff to the obvious spot where you can climb down the rest. Portage the next couple of rapids and it’s all over except for the super-sick huck off Bellaflop, which has to be one of the best trip finishes anywhere.
Put-in: From Hokitika head south for about 18 kilometres. Take the first left after Woolhouse Creek (if it is brown and high with no rocks then Falls Creek is usually on). After about 1 kilometre you get to a fork - take the right. Carry on up and over the hill (15-20 minutes) until you get to a bridge - this is Falls Creek.
Take-out: from the put in take the left fork and head downstream until you get to the river flats of the Hokitika. The road is 4WD. After the gate (which is sometimes locked) but not far down to the river, go and identify where you get out.
This section appears in New Zealand Whitewater, 4th edition, 2006 on p193.
