1st Descent- Maretu River, Gisbourne

Heavy rain warnings for the Eastern areas of the North Island have been on the news all week. On Thursday night we got the call from Brendan, Willz and Tyler to say that it was all on! So Ryan and I rallied over to the meet the others and set up camp at the take out- down Makaretu Road (Around 70km from Gisbourne, just after you go through Matawai, road on the right). Good Friday came and we were up nice and early to seize the day. We had a solid crew of 7- Tyler Fox, Brendan Bayley, Willz Martin, Ryan Lucas, Kendal, Drew and myself. We were all pretty amped and ready to explore the Maretu River, one that has not been kayaked before. Tyler had done his homework and google earthed the river to checkout the descent, which looked impressive, so we were all fired up for a good day on the river! The first section was loaded with easy slides and a few boulder gardens. These then led into some steeper sections of slides and drops. There was one long gorge section that we had to portage as it was unrunable and not smooth. We then carried on to find a perfect 15foot waterfall, we all ran it a few times as it was so nice! This was followed by a massive slide/drop that looked super knarley and quite full on. Noone ran it as it did not look like it went, maybe with more water...but only maybe. After portaging the big one we came across a nice 25foot waterfall, it was another beauty! We then carried on to find a lot more sweet slides and fun rapids. It took us 6hours to do the whole descent (10km in length) and the shuttle took a good 2hours as well. It was an epic day on the river though and well worth it! A totally sick run that I hope gets done again.Here are some pictures and videos from the mission.

The next day Willz, Ryan and I tried to walk in to another run that we had heard about. We hiked across paddocks and around bush for 2hours before realising we were on the wrong track! We had started late and did not have time on our side so were left to abandon the mission and paddle out on class 2.

Now it’s back to study..