Mangaore

I first visited the Mangahao slalom course in 2013. The course is an inspiring place, with continuous class III rapids lined with native bush. Five minutes drive downstream is the Manawatū town of Shannon. Conversely, Shannon is not an inspiring place, the sort of fading rural town where the buildings quietly ignore the passing of the last half century. The course is situated on the Mangaore Stream but the water comes from the Mangahao River. This occurs because a system of dams in the Managahao River divert the water through a power station which, while generating, releases into the top of the course. Consequently, the Mangaore Stream frequently receives about twenty times it’s natural flow.

The slalom course spans around 200m of the stream length and, like any slalom course, the normal mode for paddlers is to yo-yo up and down. Stretch the spraydeck over the cockpit, dance with the water, pop the spraydeck off, contemplate or commiserate on the walk back. Every time a slightly different dance, some things better, some worse. But what of the stream outside the course?

In 2019 we gathered to answer this question. The goal was to explore downstream of the course, see how the picturesque merged with the farmland of Shannon. In planning this trip we were unusual but certainly not pioneering. Graham Egarr wrote of the section in his 1989 book North Island Rivers that “The rapids very soon diminish downstream [...] you can run the river down to where the rapids peter out 6km below the outlet [of the powerstation] on the main road at Shannon. There are two fences across the river, but with care you can slip beneath them.” While scouring satellite imagery revealed two weirs, it made clear that willows were likely to be our biggest concern.

We slipped our boats into the water where we had many times before, just below where the water spills out of the powerstation. Today the slalom course was not a loop. As we floated downstream of the course, the native vegetation was the first casualty, disappearing almost immediately. The replacement was blackberry, gorse and other small shrubs. The rapids were continuous, requiring a game of chess between small eddies to watch for trees, fences and other hazards. A pleasant playwave on a corner broke the continuity briefly. Before long a horizon line appeared ahead, heralding the first weir. We climbed through a junkyard to have a look at the rapid and with the vantage point provided by an abandoned car, saw it to be a simple run. The second weir also arrived quickly. A small eddy courtesy of a water intake structure provided a view. This weir was nasty, with a jagged concrete block profile. However, the weir only spanned three quarters of the stream so we were able to move through easily on the true right. As the bush had given way to blackberry, now the blackberry ceded to willows. It became more important than ever to play a smart game, ensuring an eddy was always downstream, an escape. Paddling this section was like tying ones shoe laces at gunpoint. The task at hand is easy, class II moves at best, but there is often a real threat of death if you make a mistake. Fortunately, at no point did the willows fully block the river and soon the main road bridge swept around the corner. A scramble up the bank and we were standing in the Manawatū farmland looking toward the town centre.

So we did it, it wasn’t particularly difficult and it wasn’t particularly spectacular. But for me it was a fantastic trip and I’ve been thinking about it frequently in idle moments. Partly, the trip was interesting because of the incongruence of paddling from the edge of the Tararua into the dairy farmland. Partly, it was the contradiction of paddling a stream which has been given the water of a river. But I already knew these facts and the paddling was actually similar to what I had imagined. The trip was valuable for me because I got to experience all facets of the place simultaneously. I knew the farmland existed and I knew the water came from another river, but on the infinite loop of the slalom course it was easy to forget. I feel like I’ve formed a deeper connection with the stream by experiencing, rather than observing the contradictions.