Rafting in Westland

Garry Sheeran heads to Westland for the rafting adventure of a lifetime.

Seated high in the raft's stern, Paul Button narrows his eyes as he searches for the best line, the smartest angle to take us safely through the maelstrom of tumbling, turbulent white water ahead.

Then the urgent command: "Forward paddle, go hard."

Now our chief guide's paddle is flashing like a conductor's baton. We'd better do the same.

Up front and seated on the raft's bulbous sides, we lean forward, dig our blades deep and stroke for all we're worth.

Ever more steeply stepping waves crash higher over the raft and over us, sending the self-emptying bilges into overdrive in a frantic effort to stop us swamping.

Suddenly, calm. No more waves, but a metre-plus drop opens up before us as ice-cold, silt-grey meltwaters cascade over a row of big boulders.

"Hold," cries Paul. Then: "Down!"

Clutching safety ropes, we drop to the raft's floor while all hell breaks loose. More under the water than above it, the raft's blunt nose digs deep into glacier-fed waters, and we with it. It seems like time has stopped.

White-water rafting is serious adventure. And Westland's mighty Landsborough is certainly a serious river. Now we were entering the business end of things.

An hour into our journey and the gently curving river had straightened up and sped up as we entered The Squeeze, a narrow, kilometre-long run of evil rapids and rock drops.

This was the place where, two decades ago, the river had claimed the lives of two rafting bunnies like myself.

At that time several competing rafting companies were running the Landsborough, but enthusiasm waned and the river was left once again to its own solitude and breathtakingly magnificent beauty.

Now Queenstown Rafting is once again on the river and we were on this summer season's first run.

Rafting companies were doing it better now, Paul had earlier assured us. Safety had been tightened even further. Now he was showing us that was the case. And so it proved to be.

But with the Squeeze successfully behind us, there were even wilder waters ahead.

The Hell Fire rapids was "oh-my-god" stuff for rafters like myself. In white-water parlance they are grade five or even six conditions a degree of difficulty that commercial rafting operators don't send clients down, and think twice before trying it themselves.

So we sidled into a small gravel beach just before the hell-fire, tucked into lunch and then alternately watched or helped the professionals ease the empty inflatables down the raging waters attached to several lines.

So this is white-water rafting. What a ball!

After a lifetime of recreation on the water fizzboats, sailboats, yachts and more recently sea kayaks the chance to round out my aquatic education was just too good an opportunity to miss. And not just for rafting's sake.

Queenstown Rafting promotes its three-day Landsborough rafting excursion as the Landsborough Wilderness Experience. And that is what it really is.

Besides the excitement of the rafting is the Landsborough Valley itself truly majestic South Island back country, unique in that it runs north-south and not west-east (or vice versa on the other side of the Main Divide), before the Landsborough River reaches the Haast River just below Haast Gates and then runs out to the West Coast.

Its isolation has placed it off the radar as far as South Island valley walks go. There's no road access in from the Haast and if you make the long trek to the top of the valley, the only way out is to cross the Southern Divide and drop down to the Hermitage hotel at Mt Cook.

And that's a journey requiring more than a strong pair of legs.

So when the opportunity came to be choppered into the Landsborough, about 40km up river from its conjunction with the Haast and just below the Unesco-gazetted Hooker-Landsborough Wilderness Area one of only two of its kind in New Zealand I grabbed it eagerly.

Mention of the helicopter brings me to the third great joy of this long weekend in the wilds. And that is the hospitality and near-home comforts provided by the team of young, trained and experienced rafting guides who accompany us down the Landsborough.

The helicopter puts us down at Toetoe Flat, one of many shale terraces the glacier has left on the valley floor, the site of a bush landing strip long used by deer hunters flying in by fixed-wing aircraft and also the site of the first night's camp spot for rafters.

Everything is set up before we arrive a few logs on the open fire and pretty soon Bob is cooking king prawns on a hot steel plate as the tabs on the Speights and Monteith tinnies are yanked free. The wine will come later.

Bob and Paul spend southern winter months in Canada, working for a rafting company in Vancouver before flying back to New Zealand in the spring to do the same in their home patch.

When Paul takes off his safety helmet after rafting's done for the day, he dons a chef's hat (figuratively speaking), and pretty soon chocolate cake is being baked in a Dutch oven with hot embers from the open fire. The cake is afters to marinated chicken, a colourful salad and rice pilaf.

It's a superb dinner in surroundings that are, well, breathtaking.

On one side are the lower reaches of the Southern Alps with ancient beech forest crowding around our tiny campsite and the haunting cries of morepork owls. On the other, a calmer stretch of the Landsborough River burbles by, while overhead a near-full moon flits through the clouds.

Small talk around the fire lingers on till we retire to tents where sleeping is up off the ground and I thought camp stretchers were a thing of the past.

Anticipated overnight rain didn't come and after a cooked breakfast and a run through safety drills in case we either fell out or were tipped unceremoniously into the freezing cold water, we set out in leisurely and languid style down the river until we got to the Squeeze and Hell Fire rapids.

Yet even those moments of excitement were but punctuation marks in some wonderfully carefree moments of pure enjoyment, either drifting with the down-river current and revelling in the spectacular majesty of snow-clad Southern Alp peaks, the call of wild birds, or the thundering of waterfalls.

It's not long before you're actually looking forward to those challenging stretches and the adventure they may bring.

The second night's stop is at a camp in a quieter stretch of the river and by early afternoon on the second day we're at the point where the Landsborough joins the Haast, where the chopper picked us up 48 hours earlier.

It's a classic back-country trip made accessible to pretty well most comers by some careful thought and meticulous planning by Queenstown Rafting.

Cost will be a fact for many potential takers. But if the taste of white-water rafting on the Shotover River whets your appetite for more, or if tangling with the Landsborough is on your wishlist of must-dos, then this wilderness experience will live up to expectations.

Fact file:

Departure: Queenstown Rafting Adventure Centre, Queenstown.

When: Every Friday to March 31.

Provided: All rafting equipment, also wet, safety and camping gear. All meals, truck and chopper transport into and out of Landsborough.

Price and duration: $1495 per person, three days/two nights. www.landsborough.co.nz

 

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