Awa Ara: A River's Run

Moormans River Adventure

2009-05-07T23:41:00.000-07:00

Plan for the day: meet at 10:30am, check river levels (since its rained a TON in the past couple days) to see what fun creeks are running, pick one, and GO.

Actual events of the day: I slept through three alarms and six missed calls, having been up late working on a paper, and finally opened my eyes circa 11am. John's 9am meeting didn't finish until 11:30. Multiple logistical snafus later, and after about 45 minutes of debating which river to run (Hardware is above some people's heads, Balcony is too far away, Tye dropped too low just too early, Conway is a little too far away and not enough is known about it, Bullpasture is too high and too far, etc), we decide on the Moorman's River, just west of Charlottesville. The crew assembled plans to meet Dave at the put-in, but then snafu number 30 of the day occurs, and directions get mixed up. We finally put on the river at 3:10pm.

And we had a FANTASTIC run. Beautiful day, great group of people, really fun little river to explore. (personal first D also...and it felt great to get on something new after running the LJ and Balcony about a hundred times this year).

Here are a couple pictures to evidence the fun of the day:

Group shot from behind

Dave surfing a fun little wave

Davis on the same wave

John surfing

Me seal launching off a cool rock

and landing waaaay too flat.

Attempt number two didn't hurt quite so much.

John preparing to launch

launching!

This day was the best day I could have asked for to have as my last day on the water in Virginia until the fall. I couldn't be happier. :-)

Soggy Springtime Fun

2009-05-05T20:25:00.001-07:00

It's official. We had about two days of sun all spring. And its still raining. Which is PERFECT kayaking weather. Maury, Lower James, Balcony Falls on the James have all been run multiple times, and all were great days on the water, with one sobering exception: at the end of my one run down Goshen Pass, we found out that there had been a fatality earlier in the day right above the rapid Devil's Kitchen. Our thoughts and prayers have been with the family and friends of Mercer Oast. God Bless. Needless to say, it was very sobering to find out while on the river, and was a potent reminder of the power of the river.

Here's a selection of photos taken this spring:

Lila and me jumping off Jump Rock at Balcony Falls

Outdoors Club Officers Pic at Balcony Falls

Bob running Balcony (I wont mention that hit the hole and swam)

me filming at Pipeline in Richmond

Ryan smiling for the camera in Pipeline

John G in Pipeline
ditto

John T in Pipeline

and again

Ryan

Group shot! (Lower James in Richmond)

Meghan seal launching at Balcony
Dave
Dave finding his mystery move!

Bob, me, Kelsey at Balcony

John T styling Corner Rapid on the Maury (and nicely helping me with my portage by transporting my boat)

John T in Devil's Kitchen on the Maury

John and Brad unpinning Bob's boat

All in all, its been a great spring on the water. I've got one more run in planned for Thursday, and then its off to Costa Rica to study Spanish for five weeks! Sadly though, I wont see a kayak until July when I get to Jackson Hole, where I'll be working for Rendevous River Sports/Jackson Hole Kayak School and the Teton Raptor Center...both of which should be a blast.

Global Warming has its perks

2009-02-08T20:11:00.000-08:00

Saturday was a beautiful day in Virginia, 65 F and sunny, so my friend John and I went down to the Lower James in Richmond for a couple of laps on this short, fun run. Here are some photo highlights:

Me in Hollywood (taken by mtwash125 on flickr.com)

Same (taken by mtwash125 on flickr.com)

Same (taken by mtwash125 on flickr.com)

Me on the second drop of Pipeline (taken by John)

John surfing in Pipeline

John surfing deep in Pipeline

John seal launching into the canal in between Brown's Island and the city. We parked at Belle Isle and so had to walk back up from below Pipeline, and decided to paddle part of the way in the canal.

Overall, we had an incredible day. We got two laps in, and on the second one, I nailed Hollywood. I had never run it so cleanly--such a sweet feeling!

Indian Summer II: Rapidan River

2008-11-02T14:25:00.000-08:00

The Rapidan River is a mountain stream in the Shenandoah Mtns of Virginia, and is one of my favorite places to fish. I haven't been up there since last fall, and so was stoked to get up there again last Friday! I went up with my dad, and we had beautiful weather. The fishing was great as well, I caught about a dozen Brookies on little Copper Johns, Royal Wulffs, and a little tan and gray unknown dry fly I found in my box. A couple of the really little ones, including the first fish I caught below, earned their wings when I set the hook a little aggressively and pulled them out of the water!

This is the second fish I caught, right after I released him

Same fish, different shot

My dad stalking the 'monster' Brookies

A nice 6" Brookie

The view downstream from one pool, the fall foliage colors were spectacular.

An older, bigger Brookie I caught

The inside of that fish's mouth was black, which we think is normal coloration for older fish during spawning season.

The same fish again, this shot showing the supposedly-normal black coloration on his belly. I've contacted the VA DGIF about it.

My dad

Rivers have always had a special, indescribable, powerful effect on me. There's just something about being out on the water that makes everything else fall away. All that matters is the moment I'm living in right then, whether its a cast to a rising fish, dropping into a rapid I've run many times, or one I've never run. The lens through which I view the world changes entirely--having my fly rod, or the bow of my boat and my paddle in between me and the river changes everything. It's a beautiful thing.

Indian Summer I: James River trip

2008-10-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday was a beautiful day, one of the last warm ones of the fall. I hadn't been kayaking in way too long (midterms tend to get in the way of outdoor fun), and was really craving it, so to celebrate one of the days perfect fall days, I ran the Upper and Lower James with the UVA Outdoors Club. The river was pretty low, about 3.5 ft., but that level has unfortunately been the standard this fall. We had a great day out overall, with very little carnage considering we had a first-timer and couple of second-timers on the Lower. Bob swam in Hollywood, but I running safety and it worked out no problem. He didn't have enough speed coming off the tongue and couldn't get left fast enough, and so ended up getting pinned on Washing Machine rock. He swam immediately and caught the rope I threw to him. Matt got his paddle, but Bob's boat ended getting pinned at the bottom of Hollywood. I walked back up, ran Hollywood, and pulled his boat free. Right below Hollywood, I was leading and found a fun, really narrow slot line...everyone but Matt made it through smoothly.
He ended up getting flipped on a pinning rock about halfway through, and was unable to roll because it was so shallow. He ended up with some scuffed up hands, but nothing major. Beth swam surfing at Pipeline, but recovered her boat and pride quickly. Overall we had an awesome day! I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked, but here's a few:

Matt gracefully entering the river.

The view upstream from Pony Pasture. What a beautiful day!

Bob enjoying the day.

Home

2008-10-07T20:09:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the states, finally. I got back in the end of July, and the rest of my summer was a whirlwind of seeing parents, family, and friends, and getting ready for school to start up. The past month has somehow been even crazier with school, etc. I have managed to get some paddling in, the NRG and Gauley in WV and the James in Richmond a couple of times. Here's a picture of the spectacular sunset we saw one evening in Richmond:

UVA is a little deficient in quantity of intermediate-advanced paddlers, so one of my goals for the year is to get a core group of people moving into class III stuff by the spring...i.e. I want more people to paddle with! So I've been leading / helping lead some beginner kayaking trips through Outdoors at UVA, my school's outdoors club.

We've had very little water this fall, except for one big rainy weekend when a hurricane came through, so hopefully as we move into October and the cooler months, the water will come and more stuff will start running well! Pray for rain...

Speechless

2008-05-11T22:31:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing whispers and rumors of a place called "Cave Stream" somewhere in the vicinity of Castle Hill since I arrived in Christchurch. Nothing concrete: no directions to its locations, no detailed descriptions of what exactly it was, just vague accounts and knowing looks shared between those who had been there.

Then I found out that the Dalai Lama has described Castle Hill as a "spiritual center of the universe." My fate was sealed...I had to find this place.

So, the day before semester break began, Cara and I went up to Castle Hill to search for the cave...it turned out not to be so hard to find, only taking us one wrong turn and about 20 min to discover. Grabbing our headlamps on the way out of the car, we scrambled down a hill, and were quickly granted our first siting of what lay ahead. The entrance to the cave (actually the exit point of the stream):Just inside the cave:After standing in awe of this massive hole in the ground and the crystal clear (and cold!) water trickling out of it for a few minutes, I started to venture in. I quickly ran out of rock to stand on, and began wading through the water. Ankle deep became chest deep in a matter of seconds, the shock nearly taking my breath away. I turned around laughing, and Cara's face was one of shock. She wasn't too sure about continuing into the cave if it was that deep already, but I eventually persuaded her to come in. Teeth chattering a little bit, we started wading up stream, and luckily for us it quickly subsided back to about mid-calf deep. With nothing but darkness ahead, I paused to look back towards from where we came:
This cave is indescribable. The stream winds its way through limestone mini-caverns, over little drops (the biggest one by the exit was about 1.5m tall), and was joined midway by trickle of a waterfall:
The stream has gradually carved pockets and ridges and a myriad of unnameable formations in the limestone, here are a few:I was going first and Cara second through most of the journey. Talking afterwards, we confessed that we both had worst-case "what-if" scenarios running through our minds the whole time. She was afraid one of us would get hurt (sprain an ankle, etc), while I struggled to control visions of walls of water rushing around a bend in the stream and overtaking us. That's one of the crazy things about caving...the dark combined with the one entrance, one exit thing makes your imagination run wild. All of our fears were just that though...imagined. It would take a torrential downpour for the cave to flood and if one of us were to get hurt, the cave is not actually that long...it only took us an hour or so to travel the length.

I could sit in front of my computer for literally days and try to make up words to describe this whole experience...the cold water that eventually felt soft because my legs were numb, the crazy rock formations, the two or three random bright red rocks, the eel I saw in one of the pools, the 'stars' on the ceiling that were actually just tiny droplets of water, stopping and turning our lights off to sit in the total darkness halfway through, Cara reaching out to touch me to make sure I was still there, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, having Cara close her eyes before leading her around the corner and asking her to open her eyes and see the light, standing in the last final pool in total awe before climbing the ladder out, reaching the top of the ladder and shimming our way across a narrow ledge looking down into the pool from which we came:
But instead I'm simply Speechless.

What if a Moa walked out of the bush?

2008-03-30T17:17:00.001-07:00

Stewart Island is often considered the "third island" of New Zealand, even though few people ever go there. It's off the southern tip of the South Island, and is one of the few places left where you can see a kiwi in the wild. To get there, you take a passenger ferry from the town of Bluff to Oban, which is the only town on the island. Stewart Island is small compared to the South Island, but seems so much bigger because to get anywhere, you have to walk or take a boat--there are only 27km of road on the whole island!

I went down to Stewart Island with a few friends over Easter Weekend. We didn't really have any plans for once we got down there, but it worked out really well! We left late Saturday afternoon, and drove the whole 9 hours to Bluff, camping there overnight. We stopped on the way down, once to visit the Moeraki Boulders, which are just north of Dunedin. They are these huge, perfectly spherical boulders that were formed millions of years ago under the ocean. See http://www.newzealandnz.co.nz/destinations/moeraki.html for more info. Here's a picture (of Emma's) of Cara, me, Emma, and Tina on one of the boulders...

We arrived in Oban mid-morning on Sunday, and after talking to some locals, decided to take a water taxi (basically just a little boat) up Freshwater River and from there hike across the island to Mason Bay (about a 15km flat tramp) which is on the west coast, spend the night at the backcountry hut there (the NZ Department of Conservation maintains a network of huts on most tracks), and then turn around and come back through Freshwater and continue up and over a ridge to the North Arm Hut, covering about 26km that day. From North Arm, we planned to continue back into Oban Tuesday morning (only about 12km) in time to catch the 4pm ferry back to Bluff. Things didn't quite go as planned, but I'll come back to that later.

Because of the tides, the earliest ferry we could catch didn't leave until 2:30, so we had some time to kill in Oban...we picked up more food, visited the DOC office, and then hung out near the little beach in the harbor. This wasn't just any beach though...the sand was gold! Unfortunately its not real gold...just Fool's Gold rocks broken down into sand:

Anyways, we caught the taxi up to the Freshwater hut, took a few minutes to pack up and snap a few photos, and we were off. Below is a picture of the footbridge going across the river, and another looking down on the dock and across the Manuka forest:

The trail from Freshwater to Mason Bay was flat, but beautiful. The variety of terrain on the island is remarkable: on the eastern side of Freshwater, it was a rainforest, while directly across on the western side was a manuka forest that continued for about 5km and then turned into tussock land, and both were laced with swampy areas. It's pretty much never dry in the area we hiked through, evidenced by the constant mud pits on the trail...at one point Tina and Dan took their shoes off and hiked for a couple of kms barefoot!
It was not all mud though...about 30 min out from Freshwater, we saw one of the closest-looking rainbows I've ever seen (notice how its in front of the mountains in the pictures below)...it seemed like we really could have found the pot of gold at the end!

We stopped a couple of times (the hike only took about 3 hours) for food and water, and were greeted pretty much everytime by a variety of birds. This little Tomtit was completely unafraid of us....I'm not even zooming in at all in this picture:
We camped Sunday night at Mason Bay, and walked out to the beach that night in the dark. Camp was about 2km from the beach, and we could here the waves from camp. As we approached , the sounds just got louder and louder. We were surrounded by sand dunes the size of houses; these eventually fell away into a huge expanse of sand, cut down the middle by a pebble-bottomed stream. What little I could see of the waves looked miles away, but sounded like they were about to crash down on top of me. I kept walking out, and before I thought I was even close to the water line, the Tasman Sea rushed in around my feet. Looking out into the dark ocean, not being able to see anything but a faint white line of breakers, hearing the pure power of the ocean, and knowing that I'll probably never see that stretch of beach in the daylight was one of the most powerful experiences I've ever had.

We returned from the beach, and everyone else pretty much went to sleep, exhausted from a long day of travel. I wasn't tired yet, so sat out on the front porch for awhile, just listening to the ocean in the distance and the closer sounds of wind and insects. I'm also pretty sure I saw a kiwi...he was in the shadows, and so I couldn't see him too clearly, but it definitely the right shape and size!

We woke up early the next morning and made our way back to Freshwater through the morning mist. We had heard from a few people that the climb up and over the ridge to North Arm is hell--straight up, straight down, and mud up to your thighs was the description of the same trail that the DOC described to us as "moderate to hard"), and everyone was pretty beat from slogging through the mud (plus Tina, Dan, and Cara were in sneakers). So, we decided not to press on, and instead Dan and Tina caught the afternoon water taxi back to Oman (there wasn't room for all 5 of us) and Cara, Emma, and I spent the night in Freshwater Hut, taking one out the next afternoon. It was a little stressful at times trying to figure out if we were going to be able to make it back at all by Tuesday afternoon because the water taxi's have limited seating and can only come up Freshwater 1-2 times per day, depending on the tides, but luckily it all worked out, especially because Emma and I both had tests on Wednesday!

The three of us who stayed ended up having a great 24 hours. One of the other guys in the hut, Stefan, had been doing the Northwest and Southern Circuits combined with some of his friends, but blew out his calf so was heading in early. The good news for us was that he had lots of cheese and chocolate to share! Our other bunk mate was a kind of crazy German guy who had just come from the North Arm Hut; Cara saw him coming into camp, and he stopped and angrily flicked off the sign pointing towards the track he just finished...he told us later that it took him 11 hours! We definitely made the right decision to bail on that.

We slept in the next morning, and then did a short hike (about 1.5 hours) up Rocky Mountain, which is supposed to have spectacular views of the island...when its clear. We got up to the top and were completely clouded in! The summit cairn, and view of the ridge line covered in clouds:

We sat on top for 30 min or so, hoping it might clear up, but of course it didn't. About 15 minutes after we started down, however, the clouds started lifting, and we could see all the way across the island to Mason Bay! In the picture below, the sand dunes (the hut where we stayed is right next to those) and the bay itself can be seen:
When we were almost back to the hut, Cara somehow saw something big up in the trees...a Kaka! This bird is a parrot native to New Zealand, and we sat and watched him fly around and eat insects off the high branches of the trees for awhile before coming down. This is the best picture I could get of him:

We caught the taxi out that afternoon, caught the ferry after some much-needed fish and chips, and then drove the 9 hours all the way back to Christchurch...finally made it home around 3:30am. What a weekend!

Hurunui River and Rangitata Gorge

2008-03-26T04:11:00.000-07:00

One of New Zealand's greatest treasures is its rivers. Last weekend I was lucky enough to paddle two of them in as many days.

Saturday March 15 was the last day of the University Canoe Club's intro to kayaking course. I was helping to instruct for this course, and for this last day we paddled down a beautiful grade II section of the Hurunui River. This river is about 1 1/2 hours north of Christchurch, and is beautiful. Unfortunately, Didymo is present here, as of just 6 months ago. This algae is spreading exponentially throughout NZ, and is a serious threat to its river ecosystems. See http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/pest-and-disease-response/pests-and-diseases-watchlist/didymosphenia-geminata for more info.

Below is a picture of a spring coming out of the moss just above the Hurunui. This spring water was much colder than the river water...

On Sunday, I went up to the Rangitata Gorge with a few guys. This short, grade III-IV run is about 2 hours SW of Christchurch. The water on this river was ice cold--I flipped doing a seal launch at one point and had instant brainfreeze, probably the worst I've ever experienced --and ice blue. It was also clean enough to drink!
There was a series of grade II and III rapids in the gorge, and two IV's. I walked both the IV's, and was very glad I did. Dylan and Andy are about my level skill wise and decided to give the second (and longer) one a shot...both flipped and broke their paddles, and Dylan swam about 200m of grade IV water...no fun at all. Both were okay though. Maybe next time I'll give it a shot!

James Litchwark running the first class IV drop...
Sunset from the top of the gorge...

Wildfoods Festival: Huhu grubs, wasp larvae, and honey-baked tree

2008-03-18T02:07:00.000-07:00

I drove over to Hokitika on the West Coast with about 20 of my friends from uni for the Wildfoods festival March 7-9. The drive over through Arthur's Pass was absolutely gorgeous. Steep, forested mountains, with waterfalls everywhere...even going over top the road!

We didn't have a campsite lined up, but found a perfect one up on a hill. It used to be an psychiatric hospital, which was a little creepy, but luckily we didn't find that out until the morning we were leaving. We had a great view, and we also discovered that at the bottom of the hill was a cave/depression that had glow worms (little worms that glow in the dark!) in it! I think it was one of the coolest things I've seen here. It looked like you were looking at the stars, but sideways. We were also just a couple of blocks away from the ocean...we went to the beach both nights, and ended up stumbling across fires that had been abandoned to burn down, so we built them back up into raging bonfires. Sitting around these fires at night with friends, listening to the waves crash, and looking up at the incredible blanket of stars above us was definitely my favorite part of the weekend.

The festival itself was still a blast though. Apparently you are supposed to dress up (we missed this memo), and some of the costumes were crazy. The food was even wilder though...huhu grubs, wasp larvae on ice cream, tree, live grasshopper, mountain oysters, kava juice (a muscle relaxant/drug from Figi), ostrich, horse, mutton bird, eel, whitebait (little bait fish in a pattie), I could go on for hours. There was great music too...especially an African drum band that played for well over an hour because people kept calling for an encore. I wish the weekend could have an encore!

Red Fish, Blue Fish, Brown Trout

2008-03-18T01:52:00.000-07:00

I'm a little behind on updating this page...let's see if I can catch up.

Thursday, March 6, after the Main Divide, I went fishing with my friend Emmanuel, who I met through the Canterbury Fly Fishing Club (Canterbury region, not uni). He is one of the most meticulous fisherman I have ever fished with, and was very good at showing the ropes to a NZ-first timer.

We fished the Boyle and Doubtful Rivers at their confluence, which is about 2 1/2 NW of Christchurch. We were in a beautiful valley, and were very lucky with the weather...even the wind stayed fairly calm. It was, however, still on of the hardest days of fishing I've ever had. We left Christchurch at 4:45am, were on the water by 9, and fished until about 8pm. We saw 25 or so fish, he caught one about 5.5 lbs, I had two on and lost both. One was definitely big, Emmanuel thought it looked like 7 lbs or so. Here's a picture of his fish:
The hardest part about the day was seeing the fish. Unlike all of the fishing I've done in the US, where I'm mostly casting into places that look fishy, here we were walking along the edge of the river (which was wide, fast, and cold) looking for fish (that he described as "smudges") in quickly moving water. The first 10 fish or so that he pointed out to me, I either couldn't see or it took me a while to make them out. Towards the end of the day, I was seeing them a lot faster, but still couldn't really find them on my own. Its definitely going to take practice to get the hang of it. Overall it was a great day though! I had a blast, and learned a ton.

The Mud Divide

2008-03-12T14:25:00.000-07:00

The Main Divide is a wine, food, and music festival held at the Pegasus Bay Vineyard just north of Christchurch. About 15 of went up for it two weekends ago....and it was one of the most fun days I've ever had!

It had rained the night before, and continued to drizzle on and off all day. This definitely deterred some people from coming, but for those of us who went it just made it so much more fun. Two words: mud surfing. It starts like this:
And ends like this:Basically its the most effective way i know to trash a skirt and get as muddy as possible in a very short period of time...but we loved it!

The wine was wonderful (some of us liked it a little too much and had to head home early unfortunately), the food was good, but the music was INCREDIBLE. About 10 different artists played, all different, and all very good. The day started off with very mellow music and gradually increased in energy until the last two artists who played very upbeat electro/techno dance. I don't think I've ever had so much fun dancing!

Pictures (finally)

2008-02-25T19:09:00.000-08:00

Below are some pictures that my friend Annabel let me take off her camera, since I'm still without one.

Castle Hill:

The rock outcropping and little cave at Sumner beach, just south of Christchurch:

The Source

2008-02-22T22:50:00.000-08:00

I followed a river to its source the other day. In doing so, I found mine.

A little stream, whose name I do not know, runs through a field that lies below Castle Hill. (Castle Hill, for perspective, is one of the most incredible rock formations I've seen. Its a hill about an hour to the west of Christchurch that is covered with statuesque, towering limestone spires.) Anyways, I followed this stream through the field, across a mini marsh, under a boulder the size of a small house, and then up the hill. There it bubbled up from a hole about 1/2 meter wide surrounded by lush green grasses. It tumbled out of the dark and deep hole to tumble over a flat rock and down the way I came.

It was perfect.

Moving In

2008-02-14T15:28:00.000-08:00

Well I made it. I'm moved into my dorm after about 30 hours of travel and a 4 day Orientation with the IFSA-Butler program.

Orientation was great; we were at the Shakespear YMCA camp north of Auckland. The first day we went kayaking in the harbor, and went out around the point and found an awesome cave. I have pictures on my disposable camera that I'll put up at some point. The next few days we did mountain boarding, mtn. biking, hiking, archery, and went to some hot springs, and also had a lot of academic briefings. The last night we went to a marae, which is the traditional family home of the Maori and had a hangi, which is a meal cooked in the ground. The visit was great, except my camera and another girls cell phone were stolen, which is why I'm not posting any pictures. The family was really apologetic about it.

On a brighter note, I'm pretty settled in at the University. I have a single room and eventually will have 5 more flatmates, but none of them are here yet....so my flat has kinda become the party spot. I've had people over the past three nights, and every night it seems like there are more and more people I don't know! Its been great though...I think we're going to take it a little easier tonight, and then light it back up on Saturday.

Its definitely taking me a little while to get my feet back under me here. Its a little weird to be starting over completely and having to figure everything out from scratch...linens, room decorations, cell phone, bike, car, friends, going out scene, what beer is good, etc. New Zealand is an incredible country though, and I've actually really enjoyed starting all over here. Christchurch is a beautiful city, and I'm really looking forward to exploring it!

Leaving Charlottesville

2008-02-01T20:29:00.000-08:00

Left Charlottesville today for my mom's house in Philadelphia. I didn't really get to say goodbye to most of my closest friends, but I think in a way that's almost better: its not really "goodbye," just "farewell for now" I suppose.

I think, however, that the next six days are going to be some of the hardest during the next 5 months. Being so close to everyone, yet completely unable to be with them. That said, its so, so good to be home.