Day 40: A-frame hut to an unconventional Rakaia river crossing

We'd tented outside A-frame hut last night. A cute little 3-bunker, but there were already a couple resident when we arrived late last night. Emma had a poor time of it in the morning, with a headache and nausea. But it would clear up after a little walking.

We had a short way to go from the hut to reach the saddle. There we could see the Rakaia down at the bottom.

This section of the track comes over an old station which underwent tenure review some few years ago, with a lot of it being converted to conservation land. There was still an old 4WD track down to the road from the saddle, so it was an easy descent.

We were hoping to get to the road in time for the shuttle driver to be dropping off the TA SOBOs in order to catch a ride with him into town for a resupply. We got there with a little time to kill, but it was soon apparent that he would not be coming today. We'd anticipated that this might be a possibility so we were already trying for a hitch. After a couple of hours however we'd only seen one empty stock truck come up the road, and subsequently a full stock truck heading back down the road. We abandoned hope for a hitch shortly thereafter, and begrudgingly came up with a bail-out plan of walking the 30 km down this unsealed farm service road to get out to something resembling civilisation. All while trying for a hitch where possible. There is a campsite available about 16 km down that we could make use of for the night, so that was the plan.

However, as we were walking down the road I absent mindedly kept watching out from our high-position over the Rakaia—looking for a spot that we could attempt a crossing. A few times I thought to myself that we could cross here. Eventually, boredom from the road walk got the best of me and we thought we might as well give it a crack.

I identified a spot just downriver of a massive confluence of all the braids. The river then broke out into new braids shortly after. I could see that the majority of the flow was contained in the first and fourth of these braids. There were about 8 in total that we'd need to get across. The first braid presented with this long diagonal rapid running from near its true-left bank down toward its true-right bank, with water falling over the top from left to right. I thought we could at least give this first braid a crack walking from the true-right back upstream along the shallow rapid toward the true-left. Then if we could do this, it would not take long to make our way across to the fourth braid and scan its length for a sensible crossing. I could see we'd have plenty of opportunity to find something as there were a lengthy island that we could work our way down the braids edge. We could always bail-out back to the road if nothing safe could be found.

This was to be a far from conventional Rakaia crossing, we were already 6 or 7 km downstream from the TA's road end, and the few people we'd heard of that had done the Rakaia crossing had gone across well upstream of the Wilberforce confluence, something that we'd already walked well passed. Still after a couple of weeks of blazing blue skies, and with our last known flow being sub 160 cumecs, we didn't see much harm in at least scoping it out. We didn't intend to cross it, but here we were, and it should be a little bit of fun either way.

Convincing Emma to give it a crack didn't take long, and we found a spot we could scramble down from the road to the riverbed.

Again the phones were buried in the packs to keep them dry, so all the best parts were not captured in photo. The first braid went very easily, and contained about a quarter to a third of the total flow. Inspired, we continued on. We crossed the second and third braids at their upstream diversion point. Flow here was reasonable, but very safe. Depth just above the knees and unchanging across the length of the crossings. Easy. We were probably nearing half the flow behind us, but we knew the hardest part was to come in the fourth braid.

Here we had to walk for some way downstream to where the fourth braid thankfully started to itself braid out a little. I set about trying a few crossings checking the flow and depth, leaving Emma on the bank. The first two I tried I probably would have got across by myself, aided by the hiking poles. But it were quite a fight and I wasn't certain that I would be able to support Emma across with me safely. Supporting Emma across would also mean that I'd have to cross three times, once to drop my pack, two to come back and put on Emma's pack, and three with Emma by my downstream side. The length and difficulty of these crossings would have made such a thing quite tiresome. So we kept walking downstream.

We were running out of options as the fourth braid would soon converge back into the third, but I spotted a shallow 'island' out in the middle of a slightly wider part that was easy to wade out onto from our true-right bank by going diagonally down-stream. From here I attempted my third crossing of this braid. There were only about a meter and a half to two meters nearing the true-left bank where there was significant remaining flow and depth. I was able to slowly work my way through this, a half a footstep at a time. The flow was enough that the riverbed stones would move slightly underfoot when I disturbed them, but with my hiking poles doing a bit of heavy lifting, and a calm mind, progress was able to be slowly, and safely made through it. I successfully reached the true-left bank... quite elated as this was probably our last opportunity for a crossing before needing to bail out back to the road. I dropped pack, had a wee rest, and then made my way back across to help Emma. She gave me her pack and got in downstream of me, linked up. We co-ordinated footsteps and slowly, cautiously, made our way through the narrow high-flow gap. Successful, we knew that the rest of the Rakaia would be easy from here... and it was.

After crossing the last braid we were presented with the next challenge of finding a way to actually get to the northern side's TA trail head in Lake Coleridge Village. We were somewhat contemptuous of the idea of walking the remaining 7 or 8 km along the riverbed south, and were longing for a way to make it up to a road that ran parallel. But scanning the landscape, we could see no way to bridge the two without a long bush bash through thistle, so we kept on the riverbed heading downstream, considering it the lesser of two evils. Fortune was with us as we soon happened upon the tail of a 4WD track, some 5 km or so long, heading in our desired direction. Huzzah.

This track made for very easy, and fast walking. Our curiosity was piqued as to where this would lead us, but for the present we were just happy to be making fast ground. As it happened, it would bring us right to the Lake Coleridge powerhouse, just on the outskirts of the Village where we were hoping to get to. We were treated to rather a spectacular show of it. Trust power, its present owner, have gone to some lengths to allow the public to learn of it. They'd placed many information boards, and old parts out on a well maintained park adjacent to the powerhouse. They let you walk right up to the side of it, where there are bars that let you see all through the powerfloor and look at the generators in action. It was quite interesting learning of its long history, as it dates back to pre-WWI.

We explored the village, heaps of public facilities were around; but only a handful of houses, and people. Strictly no camping anywhere, and no where to go for the night, with the lodge having closed last year. In the end we elected to wander back out a different way onto the Rakaia to set tent for the night on its banks... the banks being a part of the Queen's chain of course so this is quite acceptable to camp here. We weren't expecting rain overnight, but we were only a short way off of the powerhouses outflow. I assured Emma that the likelihood of them turning up the flow early in the morning tomorrow was slim, being that it would be a Sunday, so not a large rush on the power-grid. I didn't quite manage to convince myself though, and hope not to wake up to water seeping through the bottom of the tent.

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