Kaituna: Lower

I drove back into Rotorua and the minutes raced by as the moments dragged. I felt like I had got away with something and that after this day, everything would be different. This dichotomy of tiredness yet awareness, accomplishment yet humility has for me followed a number of intense experiences - like the last vestiges of a flow state that refuses to accept normal life.

The day had started at 5am with pizza and coffee in the car on the way to Maungarangi road. The early rise served its purpose and we slid down the put-in ramp at precisely 7am. So it began. The normal Okere Falls lap went smoothly for me, capped by a smooth dry face line on Tutea. It's hard to beat that feeling of muscle memory dialling in, the body focusing for the challenges ahead. As we floated down and unanimously voted to walk Trout we laughed about paddling well now being an 'omen'. In retrospect this was certainly another way to calm our nerves (or at least mine).

We rolled down through the slalom gates and very quickly the walls closed in. Awesome gorge. Here the whitewater is tame enough that you can appreciate the scale of the cliffs above. Their vertical grandeur dwarfs the horizontal space in which we manoeuvre. A brief flattening heralds our arrival at the first bigger rapid, an awkward single drop with no chance of scouting or portaging, game on. I fail to push hard enough up the curler and take a roll as I exit the drop. I push all notion of omens away from my brain. What seems like moments later we are scrambling up a flagged route on the true left, making sure to place feet carefully as I am helpfully assured that "swimming gnarly would have like a 20% chance of survival I reckon". Food for sobering thought, on and up.

The portage is for the most part exactly what you would envisage if you imagined carrying your boat on a flagged route through forest dominated by Tawa and supplejack. As such it is certainly hard work but feels honest in some intangible way. After about 2hrs we reach a stream and it seems a fair assumption that we turn right and follow it down to the river. After some more scrambling we emerge at the river as it rounds a bend to the right. A large tree is visible midstream and from our current position it is unclear whether it blocks the whole river. This causes some consternation, did we somehow take the wrong track? Have we dropped into the middle of Gnarly gorge? We take the initiative for a quick jaunt back upstream and confirm in our minds that we have indeed followed the intended route. A ferry glide to the true right, tying the boat off to a tree and scrambling up a bank fortunately reveals that the log does not span the entire river. With that we embark on a committing move above the tree and nervously round a few more corners before the river eases.

Now for Smoky gorge, the technical crux. Scene of many a youtube video and place of few eddy turns. We drop in and soon (who really knows the memory blurs) are confronted with number one. From above all I perceive is a lot of water piling into a narrow gap over a steep gradient. Intimidating. It goes well. I also skim out of number two and clean number three. Excitement builds. From here we get into a section with many kilometres of continuous freight train. We rack up the 6 minute kilometres without any effort. Rain filters down through the small gap in the trees that we follow downward. Things are idyllic to say the least. In unprecedented fashion we get out to look at the slot drop, this being the Kaituna and scouting a real novelty. Skim, and into Smoky falls, very surreal and more clean lines.

The final kilometres of whitewater pass quickly. There's one with a pushy move above a tree but more memorable are the springs issuing from the walls of the canyon. The unexpectedness of water flowing direct from rock only adds to the palpable mystique of this place. The body complains as we push through the 45 minutes of flat water down to the road but for the most part I focus on trying to mentally imprint the scenery. Back in the car I begin to try and absorb what this run means to me as a person and a paddler.

The Kaituna is something of an enigma, incredibly remote at the bottom of the lower gorges but simultaneously always a short distance from farm or forestry. The upper river is a theme park of colour and paying customers but the lower river is a place of seriousness and solitude. Surely spanning this divide is what makes the river so deservedly central to whitewater lore. It is a place that stories are told about and for good reason. A river capable of bringing joy safely yet also filled with terrifying consequence. I hope to pass safely through the lower gorges again sometime soon.