Letting go - or, not rafting as planned

As you’re probably aware I was due to go on a guided packrafting adventure following the Hollyford-Pyke loop, leaving home in just two days’ time. It appears that the universe has conspired against that plan.

The greater Milford Sound area has had massive rainfalls and resulting floods on Monday and Tuesday. The road from Te Anau to Milford is badly damaged and most of the huts - or all those alongside rivers and lakes - on the route have been submerged. I saw a video yesterday of the McKerrow Lake Hut with water halfway up the sides. People in the hut had to break the windows and climb onto the roof for safety and were airlifted out yesterday!

The guiding outfit I signed up with is still sort of hopeful that the trip might run, with some sort of flexible format, but I have made the difficult decision that the trip is off for me - even if I’m not able to recover money from my travel insurance.

It has been fairly hard to arrive at the decision - but not because I am unsure of the decision. The main reason I signed up for the trip was to give me a focus and something to look forward to. After our Old Ghost Road hike I found I was suffering from post-trip depression and I needed another focus and trip to look forward to.

So packrafting and this trip have been my focus for two months - and it is bleeping, bleep-bleeping hard to accept that it isn’t going ahead, despite the training, the time invested scouring the route, reading trip reports and taking my packraft for a walk in the swamp.

It’s been a bit like having a mini funeral for a dream and I’m still pretty annoyed while trying to be philosophical and accept that it means I will be in the right place at the right time for something better (or at least not in the wrong place at the wrong time).

So why did I cancel if the trip might still be possible?

There is a chance that river levels will be down to near normal flows. At this stage this is guess-work. What a flood, in general, means is new log jams in the river. Log jams are bad news for all paddlers. The risk is that your boat is caught against the logs, and the water pins the boat (and anybody in or out the boat) against the logs. It can have a nasty ending if you’re not rescued.

Floods are not unusual in the area, but this has been an unprecedented amount of water in a short time - so it may (but more likely, may not) be business as usual on the river by Monday. Given that I am a relatively newbie to the packrafting side, I feel it pays to err on the side of caution… but that is not the only factor to consider.

If the huts are underwater (which they are) that also means that a lot of the track is underwater. The probability of a track wash away is extremely high (you just have to look at the condition of the road into Milford Sound to get an idea). The likelihood of a lot of mud on what remains of the track is high - and I know from my recent swamp adventure that this is a LOT of hard work.

Factor in possible slips over the track in places, and possible windfall (for those not from New Zealand this means heaps and heaps of trees blown over, crisscrossing the path making progress painfully slow as you ducked under, climb over, or weave around them) and the path is likely to much harder and slower to walk.

Okay… but you’re rafting, aren’t you? Why are you worried about the track?

Apart from one 10- to 20-minute portage around rapids well above my paddling grade, I could (should) in theory be able to paddle all the way to the coast. But life in the outdoors is never that simple.

Paddling the length of McKerrow Lake can take anywhere between five and ten hours. That’s a significant difference and depends on whether you’re paddling on an incoming or outgoing tide, and if you got up early enough to beat the wind that comes up around mid-morning.

Many, many paddlers choose to walk some of the track when paddling gets too hard. There are also days when paddling would simply be a bad idea - and it would be nice to know you could walk in or out on the track.

Plus, it’s not just a normal tramp - or at least not for me. The packraft plus kit (personal flotation device, helmet, drysuit or wetsuit, thermals, paddle) adds at least 5kgs to the weight of your pack. So a comfortable 12kg pack with gear and food for five days becomes 17kgs. Trust me, that is a big difference over 10 or 20km, and an even bigger difference if you are traipsing through mud, and climbing over trees that the Gods have liberally scattered in your path.

Then, there is a beach section that has to be walked from Martin’s Bay to Big Bay and from Big Bay to the Pyke River. And another walking section from the end of Lake Alabaster back to the start. So given that the extra 5kgs makes a very big difference to me and how comfortably I am able to walk, the condition of the track plays an important part too.

As I type there is no access to the start point of the trip - and it is likely to remain a challenge for at least a week or more (I am being optimistic). We’ve been told that there is no way we could stay at Gunn’s Camp for the night before the trip as planned. It is underwater. That alone means an extra night in Te Anau (at extra cost) and that however they get to the start of the trip, they will be later to get there and later on the water.

All this signals longer and harder days than initially planned.

Then we would have to camp (if possible and not flooded) rather than stay in huts as planned - at least for two or three of the four nights on the trail.

Camping isn’t the biggest hardship in the world, you say?

You haven’t met the West Coast sandflies then! Sit still for two minutes and they’ve ganged up ready to carry you away! Seriously, camping itself is not a huge issue - but camping is just that little bit harder than staying in huts - and becomes a factor if you are sore and tired. And I fully expect that my sore and tired receptors would be communicating by megaphone.

So, if you’re flexible and just go with the flow - can’t you still go?

Yes, perhaps. But I don’t want to be flexible. I’d really like to do the trip I signed up for under the conditions I signed up for. I don’t want to travel all the way there to find we can’t start and be offered an alternative route. Or to start and only get down the Hollyford and have a helicopter ride out.

This isn’t the only window of opportunity to do the trip (finances aside) so it makes perfect sense to say: This is now WAY harder and WAY more uncomfortable than the original trip - I’ll wait until conditions are back to normal and pop this back on the trip planning radar then.

It all made sense to me when I realised that finances and the tour operator’s indecision (perhaps also motivated by finances) were clouding my judgement. If I’d arranged to do this trip with a group of friends I know I would have called a rain check. It’s a little harder when you’ve paid money upfront but yes, it still makes sense to hold off for a few weeks and plan for the trip I wanted to do.

Won’t it be an epic adventure if you go?

IF the trip gets off the ground - yes it will probably be an epic adventure. A 10-years-younger-and-fitter me might even have been excited about the idea. But this older and stiffer (and perhaps, wiser) me says I’d prefer a shot at the idyllic, relaxing, mild adventure I envisaged over a hard and epic one.

So, I’m not going paddling.

The mess of gear waiting to be thrown in my kit bag will probably leer tauntingly at me from the bed for a while longer while I get over feeling annoyed, relieved, disappointed, angry, frustrated, bereaved - and then I’ll find another trip for motivation or reschedule this adventure for a later date.

What am I going to do instead?

I’m not sure. I could try to rally some enthusiasm and head off to a national packrafting meet-up in Queenstown, but I just don’t have the motivation to throw more money after a packrafting adventure right now. At a day or two out accommodation and flights are exorbitant, the alternative drive is long, and everything feels too hard.

The small feel-good factor from all of this is that I don’t have to drop Shanti off at the kennels - and I might just get to tick off an overnight tramp and tent trip with Shanti instead, which has been on my bucket list for a while.