When the New Zealand weather report issues warnings of heavy rainfall there are not too many people that are super stoked on it, but there are kayakers. This week New Zealand was flooded with grey clouds all across the country. Fortunately this meant there was plenty of water to flood the creeks of the Kaimai mountain range that lies just out of Tauranga. On Friday Gregg Thomas and I cruised over to check the flows and after meeting up with Ben B, Tillzy, Jared M and Dave J we began our hunt for some white-water action. We ended up jumping onto the Upper Ngamuwahine. It turned out to have a long shuttle and a bit of a walk in that added to the mellow lead in section, but this was all in anticipation of a sick run with some very sweet drops! ‘Over the Handle Bars’ was the first and the lead into it was primo with a massive rock slide. The speed was wicked. Next up were a few mellow drops followed by the ‘Double Drop’. I checked it out and could see a sweet line. Unfortunately I did not have such a sweet line however, which sent me plunging over and upside down going into the second drop- not such a good place to be in. I came out of my boat but was lucky and had no injuries! The rest of the run was really sweet, lots of good moves and slides.
A very rad day- big ups to the dudes that I paddled with, all legends and stylee as F**K!
Pics from top-
-View at top of Handle Bars
-Me on 'Handle Bars'
-View looking back up valley
- Ben Brown stying the shit out of 'Double Drop'
- Me on 'Double Drop' about to get my ass kicked!
Photo credit: Gregg Thomas
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