Holy smokes! This dude is crazy. He almost took the top of that tree off, I whisper to Joel. Get that video camera out of my face. Im trying to scout the river below. Relax Joel, its only easy class 5 and were only flying 25 km into the wilderness. Hey John, how long youve been flying for? The kiwi pilot yells over the loud noise emanating from the props and replies that he's been doing this for 17 years. Mainly shuttling hunters into the wilderness and their kills back to civilization. Looking at the small two seater chopper were in I decide its quite an adventurous way to make a living.
I look back over at my boating partner for the past two months. The look on his face reminds me of what we are about to do. We were thrown together last minute when a mutual friend realized we would both be living on the South Island of New Zealand. We had no idea what to expect of the boating here. We only knew that the rivers on the West coast were some of the most adventurous rivers in the land of the kiwi due to the fact that they were only accessible by helicopter. We had met some awesome local paddlers who were showing us around, none of them had done the river we were now flying up. Joel and I had drawn the shortest straw and were the last to be flown up the Taipo River. The river below looked low, almost unboatable. We would soon realize after a few more heli trips that this was only normal. It didnt look too bad to either Joel or me.
We were beginning to wonder if the 30 U.S. dollars we had spent was going to pay off. Oh shit! The helicopter pilot skims another treetop as he ascends over another ridge coming in from the left. The glass covering the small cockpit extends to the floor and beyond our feet. I videotape the tips of our boats, strapped to the landing bars of the chopper, with the river and forest canopy screaming by below. The pilot says its easier to maintain control if he stays closer to the ground. He also jokes that it is less distance to fall if the engine fails. At least I hope hes joking.
After a few minutes the look on Joels face changes. We see the first of the big rapids. It comes at the end of a gorge that we cant see into. To my surprise a big smile masks the anxiety that he has been feeling. We look at each other and no words come out of our open mouths. Whitewater! Was that a hole at the bottom of that drop? Joel asks. It seemed to me that the entire quarter mile rapid was nothing but a series of holes and drops. Now there looks like plenty of water, too much water. This must be the class 5+ that 99% of the people who do this river walk. In other words, out of the 100 or so people that have done this run only one person has run the entire thing. Hmmm. The river disappears. The treetops covering the gorge like the godsend cover over Reggies cage.
A couple of minutes more and the river appears again at the entrance to the gorge. The serpent like river is a boil with holes, drops and color. The waters color is the closest Ill ever come to seeing the true color of a sapphire. Im not talking about the Bombay blue, but rather the most inviting color of water Ive ever seen. I know the suns rays penetrating the water help to color the water this way. I will soon learn from our kiwi paddling partners that the water is also this color due to the rock type in the snow-covered mountains up river. The best part of the whole thing is most of the time you can only see white. The river is one drop after another. Just what we were both looking for. A few more minutes of fly time and our small group of kiwis appear on the shore in a bend in the river. The pilot tells us that this is the only place he can land for another 10 km. I quickly try and figure out where he could land here. Images of gung-ho Marines jumping out of Vietnam era Hueys run through my mind. Is this pilot going to have us stand on the landing bars and throw our boats down and then jump as if we were gung-ho Marines under fire from Charlie? I soon knew the answer. This pilot once again illustrated how good of a pilot he was as he drifted down towards a rocky landing spot.
The image of us floating down to that beach with Mike, Stefan, and Rex looking back up at us two Yanks will forever be etched in my memory. Three smiling kiwis holding down gear waiting for two smiling yanks who can barely believe they are about to paddle one of the rivers that has haunted their dreams since first hearing about the West coast of New Zealand.