Packrafting Fiordland Rivers, from Mountain to Sea, and back again!

11/11/18 ~ 17/11/18

Introduction

What is Packrafting?

This is my first post on packrafting, so I’ll introduce it. Packrafting is largely unknown, due to it only really becoming popular in the past 10-15 years. Basically, you carry a raft, paddle and vest extra in your pack and go hiking as you would normally. However, now you can reach rivers and lakes, blow up your raft and head downstream!

All your gear generally can be stuffed into the raft prior to blowing it up via a heavy-duty zipper called a T-Zip (or can be tied onto the bow). The benefit of this is that it changes up the way you plan trips and adds way more customisation to trails and adds another whole dimension to hiking. Sometimes it’s as simple as driving to a trailhead, walking a few hours and jumping in the river to raft back to your car – now, you haven’t walked in and out the same trail!

The Hollyford-Pyke Loop

The Hollyford-Pyke Loop is a pretty well-known accessible multi-day packrafting trip in New Zealand. It’s ideal as it has a river heading out to sea, and a river heading back inland – ideal for a loop! You basically start rafting in the Hollyford River straight away, and head almost directly north towards the west coast, including paddling across the massive Lake McKerrow.

Once you reach the coast, you then have to hike along it towards the end of Big Bay. From here, you hike due East towards the Pyke River. Once on the Pyke, you raft all the way back down to where the Pyke meets the junction with the Hollyford River again and you walk the Hollyford Trail back to the carpark.

Conditions

It only contains mostly class I, and a few class II rapids in regular conditions. There is one III+ rapid on the first day that can be portaged (walked around).

This loop can also be done entirely hiking, although trail conditions around the Pyke are meant to be rough.

Time Required

The track should be aimed to completed in 5-7 days, depending on ability level. We took 6 days, including two half days. 2 of the 6 days were hiking, and 4 were paddling. However, that included a long 31km hike on one day which most would break up by camping at Big Bay.

Map of the Packraft Trip

My Packraft

In October 2018 after extensive research, i bought my first packraft – the Kokopelli Rogue (see amazon link for purchase). This is a fairly lightweight packraft, with a built-in spraydeck and comes with: a repair kit, blow up kit, inflatable seat and spray skirt. It handles well both in white water and in flat water.

I’ve been super happy with it so far! The Aqua Bound Manta Ray hybrid plastic/carbon fibre paddle breaks down into 4 pieces for easy carrying. Yes packrafts are expensive, and there’s not a lot of competition (only about 6-8 brands). Alpacka and Kokopelli are probably the two largest brands. I personally found Kokopelli rafts to be more value for money.

The Packraft Trip

Day 1

Te Anau to the Hollyford road end

I had met up with Lauren the afternoon before and camped at Te Anau at the Lakeside caravan park. We got up early, but didn’t leave for some time as we packed for the long packraft trip – both for the first time.

After some struggles and gear sacrificing, we both managed to pack. My pack, the HMG Southwest, is only a 55L. Jamming the raft in the front pocket takes out a lot of space.

We set off down the Milford road towards the Hollyford Track turnoff, and then to the end of the road at the boat ramp and footbridge. By about 1:30pm, we were blowing up our rafts and storing our gear inside.

Hollyford River

Finally, we were on the Hollyford river and heading roughly north to the west coast! The first sections of the Hollyford river were fairly straightforward and gentle rapid trains. There were a few class II- rapid wave trains, but most were class I. The only major obstacles was avoiding the strainer logs in the water – there were a lot of tree falls! They were pretty straight-forward to get around though.

It began all sunny and nice, but we knew rain was forecast for the first day at least. It came, but having spray skirts and enclosed rafts made it bearable. When the sun was out, the water was a beautiful turquoise!

The Class III+ Rapids

Before we knew it, we could hear the sound of a large rapid ahead. We hesitated… ‘Umm, perhaps we should head over to that landing on the right?’ i said, as we paddled straight across the river from the other side. I remember hearing about a class III+ rapid, but i had it in my head it was somewhere else. This was it! Both Lauren and myself were not confident in our ability to manoeuver through the boulder garden and raging rapids. It didn’t look like a friendly rapid at all!

The portage route was clearly heavily used by boaters and had deep scars from dragging boats etc which had now filled with water. It made the traverse insanely difficult to navigate whilst carrying our rafts. We tried two carrying one boat at first, but it would take too long to consider. I ended up deflating mine and carrying loose. Lauren had her raft on her head!

It took ages, but we found a route around all the mud, water and forest and were able to rejoin the river after the rapids. You can’t follow close to the river and should aim to follow the trail that heads away from the river (not the parts with all the inundated logs).

The rain was quite heavy at this point, and due to the amount of time the portage had taken, we ended up doubting if we would make it to Lake McKerrow Hut as planned.

We ended up camping in a rough sandy spot to the side of the river. It was not overly ideal, but we managed to get the tent up, get into a dry set of clothes and avoid the sandflies.

Day 2

Sadly, it was still raining in the morning and after some breakfast, we had to have a wet pack up of the tent. At least it only had to go in the raft. We ended up leaving about 8:45am.

The mountains looked awesome with the clouds overhead – a surreal landscape! Too bad i didn’t get any photos on the days paddle – too wet!

We were getting close towards McKerrow Hut, when there was a rapid wave train with a side feeder stream on the right pushing a decent flow into the base of the rapids. I hit this current going fast down the rapid chain and it nearly knocked me out of my boat with the side force of the flow! ‘Whew!’ i thought, ‘that was a close one!’.

I made a terrible decision shortly after to take the shorter more direct route to the hut. It turns out that it was a boney (shallow) ‘get out and walk’ type stream for a lot of the way. Lauren got through mostly fine, but i had to walk my boat around some parts.

Lake McKerrow

We made it to McKerrow hut, and had some lunch. About 10 minutes later we heard boat noises and a few guys came into the hut. The had been on a week-long hunting trip with their jet boats up and down the Hollyford and Pyke rivers. One had a bloody nose from a rough rapid, and they apparently ‘lost’ a boat in that same rapid that almost took me out.

We finished up and headed back to our rafts. We decided to get across the start of Lake McKerrow to Devil Trail Hut (on the Hollyford Track) and stay there – this took about an hour.

Devil Trail Hut

Once at the hut, we put on some dry clothes and I chopped a small amount of firewood for the fire (although the axe and saw were as sharp as stone age tools). We had the hut to ourselves, which is always nice. We ended up playing some cards and watching a movie to see out the night.

Day 3

The sandflies at the hut were insane. Going outside was certain death, so we needed to lather up with repellent. We ended up packing up quite slowly and leaving at 8am.

I was getting destroyed by the sandflies in places I missed with repellent and it ended up making me take forever to blow up my raft. Alas, I was off eventually and away from the pests.

Lake Mckerrow (again)

Lauren was about 20 mins ahead by the time I left. We had the long paddle along Lake McKerrow, but we knew we left a little late and had a good chance of hitting the strong westerly headwinds off the coast. These apparently were a regular thing starting from 10am-12pm each morning.

The first couple of hours were easy and flat paddling. I caught up with Lauren on the western bank of the lake where we had a snack. It was clear that it was going to be tough from here on as we were starting to angle straight toward the wind as it picked up.

It WAS tough. I was watching the grass move on the bank, and it was about as slow as a snail! Paddle harder you say? I was paddling my life away!

We still had 3km left at this point of this choppy swell in the wind and our arms were getting exhausted. After about 2km, we saw a dolphin, and it swam DIRECTLY below me only inches away! I was shocked – it was so awesome! I instinctivly stumbled into my dry bag to get my camera out, watching as my boat went into reverse mode from the wind. The dolphin made a few more passes during this time, and by the time I got the camera out it was nowhere to be seen! ‘grrr’! 

The worst part was that the lost paddling time had sent me in reverse for over 50m (even visible on the map!). ‘Damn you dolphin!’ I muttered to myself, as I furiously began the arduous task of paddling again. I didn’t even get a photo of it in the end after all that!

Eventually, I made it to the outlet to the lake and took a break out of the wind.

The Lake Outlet to the West Coast

We were both exhausted by this point, but still had some say to go before arriving at Martins Bay Hut. Thankfully, being in a flowing river helped a lot and we made ground with far less effort than on the lake. We passed a lot of large boats by the river and waved to some locals/tourists.

Once we approached the sand spit, I saw Lauren get out of the river behind me. I thought she must have been ready to hike the rest due to being exhausted, so I did the same (as i was exhausted!). I ended up packing up on some persons nice grassy yard (hope they don’t mind!), and set off to rejoin the hiking trail.

It wasn’t as easy to get to as I had hoped. I was on a private grassy runway, and then bush bashed through some tall grasses and shrubs to find myself in a large washout area with a tour group.

I ended up following them for a little bit, as the trail marked on the map had been destroyed there and they knew where to go. Eventually I found the trail and had a nice forest walk for a bit. I startled a deer here right by the track.

Martins Bay Hut

It was only a few kilometres of hiking before reaching Martins Bay Hut. It was here I also saw Lauren arrive by raft! ‘What the…?’, I thought, as I had seen her leave the river prior. It turns out she left briefly and came back in haha.

We ended up sharing the hut with two other Australians, a father and a daughter, who had hiked the length of the Hollyford track. We crashed pretty early, but I made the effort to stay up for sunset. The sunset was beautiful, and it’s a bit of a novelty for me to witness a west coast sunset (living on an east coast my entire life).

Day 4

I was glad to not have to raft the next day, as my arms were wrecked!  We set of hiking at 8:30am and had the journey along the coastline to tackle. Almost immediately as we arrived at the western shore, we entered a fur seal colony.

The seals were everywhere – lying on rocks, in pools and amongst the coastal flax vegetation above the shore. Passing by without causing a disturbance was futile. They carried on a bit when we passed between, so we let the move towards the water before moving. This slowed us down, but it was better for the seals.

The first 8km was mostly rock and boulder scrambling right on the shore. There was no way of going through the vegetation here. It was slow going, but not too bad as it was flat. The coast was quite pretty and a nice change after the river and mountains.

Once reaching the second half, it was mostly sandy and gravel beach walking and much easier. There was some signs of remote civilisation, which surprised me, given how isolated we were.

Big Bay

Once in Big Bay, it was clear we were entering a kind of ‘village’, which we later learned was a whitebait catching village. People must boat or fly in to reach here, as there are no roads. The only vehicles were quad bikes and such. There is a rough quad bike road on the side, but it’s quite muddy and I preferred the beach walk.

We reached Big Bay Hut, only to find a team of soil scientists were living there for the week. They were very generous and kind though and even offered up sandwiches for lunch and a tea. We talked for a while and they shared the story of their studies over the past 10 years in the region below Haast (you can see their past studies in the Haast Visitor Centre).

Eventually, it was time to move on for us as we really wanted to make it to Pyke River which was 15km away. It was going to be a big 31km day of hiking, but it was all flat and accessible. We were told we might be able to get paddled across the stream by the fishermen, and one of them was kind enough to help us out. This enables us to skip a long detour!

The trail after here was very easy to follow and had been recently cleared. We got through the mileage quite fast. It did thicken towards the Pyke River, but not too much.

A lot of the trail was a tree-fern filled swamp. It was actually quite nice. There is one surreal section where you’re walking in a gravel creek bed, but there’s no water anywhere – felt strange!

Pyke River

We made it to the Pyke River and started looking for a camp spot. There wasn’t any real sites, but plenty of flat area around to pitch a tent. We ended up camping on some moss in the gravel. The sunset was again nice this evening.

Day 5

Sunrise was amazing in the morning! We packed up and i was mid way through blowing up my raft when i saw two guys headed my way. They were two members of the group we had met in Lake McKerrow hut who were hunting and jet-boating. Camped not far from where we were, they had their rifles and were hunting deer. They were surprised we had gotten here so fast, and we talked for a bit. It turns out we’d all met again tonight if we made it to Alabaster Hut.

The Pyke River turned out to be a little boney initially, but soon became deep. We only had one obstacle with some fallen tree strainers that we had to portage around – right before Olivine Hut.

The Pyke river was so beautiful in places, I had to just chill and take it all in sometimes! Ahhh the serenity! Deep turquoise waters, small waterfalls and snow speckled mountains in the background.

Olivine Hut

We had a quick look in Olivine Hut – it was really cosy and awesome. The jet boaters were here the week before and left some beers – I may have had one for the ‘road’… or river! ‘Is that drink driving?’ I think to myself. We could have stayed here, but it made no sense really, as it was so early.

Lake Wilmot and Lake Alabaster

After Olivine Hut, we had to progress across two lakes – the smaller Lake Wilmot, and then the larger Lake Alabaster. Between the lakes, there was awesome views of the mountains and we had to slow down for a new snaps (I had to precariously pass my camera over to Lauren on the river haha!)

It was a super warm day and we decided to go for a swim as it looked too nice in the river!

We ran into some luck with Alabaster, as we had tail wind. We ended up using our paddles as makeshift sails to help push us down the lake when not paddling. It was MUCH nicer than on Lake McKerrow with conditions haha!

Alabaster Hut

We arrived at the hut at 3:30pm, and were surprised to see how busy it was. There were three large groups, including the boaters, a Dunedin tramping club. We managed to grab the last few mattresses and then packed up our rafts. There were a lot of curious people there who talked to us about how our rafts worked.

Day 6

BONK, BANG, CRASH, TING, BANG, BONK, TING, CRASH…

These were the sounds of the tramping clubs 6am breakfast marathon! ‘I guess we’re all getting up at 6am!‘ another random guy near me said in both annoyance and with a laugh. Several of us joined in laughing. It was pretty funny as we all were thinking it.

The rain has started up this morning, and Lauren and myself knew we were in for a wet final hike back to the cars. It would be nice to just slip back into our rafts and take on the Hollyford again. However, water doesn’t flow up hill sadly.

The rain intensified and we got drenched! Homer Falls was awesome though in the rain before we attempted the only real climb on the entire trip.

Hidden Falls

We took refuge in Hidden Falls Hut to have a lunch break and warm up a little as it was quite cold, but the rain wasn’t easing. Hidden Falls was only a short walk about and it was pumping out water with the rain!

At 2pm, we made it back to the Hollyford road carpark and were able to jump in dry clothes and relax. It was quite the refreshing feeling after hours on end of being drenched.

Overview

The packrafting trip was awesome, and we had a great time! It was a great beginner multi-day trip for Lauren and myself, who were both beginners (me moreso). The scenery is awesome and the rapids are fun enough without you saying ‘i’m going to die’. If we had to change something it would be to perhaps have been to break up the Lake McKerrow day up a little bit, as it was quite tough.

I found the 31km hiking day not too bad, but Lauren was exhausted – perhaps plan for a break in this section too. Starting earlier on the first day would have opened up more possibilities, so camping closer to the trailhead might be ideal.

Pros:

• Great long trip with opposing direction rivers
• Lots of mountain views from the river
• Seal colony was awesome
• Difficulty wasn’t too hard
• Paddling with dolphins!
• Beautiful rivers

Cons:

• Lots of log strainers in the Hollyford
• Rain on first and last days (it’s Fiordland… you’d be lucky to get a few sunny days)
• Headwinds paddling Lake McKerrow

Stats:

• Total distance: 142km
• Top speed rafting: 18.3kmph
• Max altitude: 179m (there are barely any hills!)

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