Dreaming of the Karamea River
A New Zealand K37D Incept Inflatable Kayak Adventure
by Jonathan Kennett
Photos by Murray 'the Fish' Drake

For almost 15 years I’ve dreamed of paddling down the mighty Karamea River. It’s a gnarly beast – whipped my butt when I tried tramping down it as a teenager. “You’ll keep” I thought and sure enough, it did.

Tubing is how I’ve usually explored mountain rivers. Just a couple of truck tubes, one for me and one for my pack. But I seriously doubted the wild Karamea was going to let me pass safely on such a make-shift arrangement, so the hunt for the ideal craft began.

It had to be tough enough to handle grade four rapids, yet light enough for me to carry in to the hills without suffering a hernia. Finally, despite lots of conflicting advice, I settled for the K37D. Incept call it a kayak, but it’s more like a raft/canoe. Whatever you call it, ‘the thing’ was, we soon discovered, ideal for mountain rivers. 

After a few test-runs down the Hutt Gorge and the Pelorous River we felt ready for the Karamea. The inevitable last-minute full-mental and we were finally driving out of Nelson to the Baton road end.

The Old Baton Saddle Pack Track, looked on the map to be the quickest way in to the Karamea. Looks can be deceiving. I lumped the raft, paddles, life jackets and helmets and my friend ‘Fish’ took the rest of our five days of supplies. Handicapped with 30 kg of luggage each made the tramp drag on twice as long as the mate-of-a-mate had told us. No matter.  Flannagans Hut near the head of the valley is one of the loveliest in the country, so we stopped early and enjoyed the location.

Up well before sparrows flatulence, we struggled to follow the route beyond the hut. Under the feeble guidance of our LED headlamps, we found bogs, scrub, plenty of speargrass higher up, and finally, near the saddle, the perfect spot for a dawn breakfast. Beautiful.

From Baton Saddle we said goodbye to snivelisation and hello to the massive Tasman Wilderness Area. Just one hitch – the track down the other side is rough as guts. It crippled as and by the time we reached the valley floor we were looking forward to lunch at Karamea Bend Hut. This was also a great spot to hide from the sandflies, while we pumped up the raft.

At last, into the water. Put simply, the Karamea starts off as a series of earthquake lakes interspersed with grade 3 to 5 rapids (harder in higher flows). From Karamea Bend the first rapid is at Questa Creek. We planned this grade 3+ rapid carefully, and then proceeded to completely botch it up, getting pinned against a log right at the top.

“Oh, there’s the food bag” the Fish calmly pointed out as it floated away. “Well get after it” I replied, struggling with the raft which was getting pushed under the log. When he jumped in the water, the raft almost popped back up by itself, and we were soon paddling again – with the food bag tied in securely this time.

The Karamea is a beautiful river and as there are no tracks beside it, and it is often flanked by cliffs or huge boulders, a boat is definitely the way to see it. It’s famous for its huge eels, but we saw only trout, and lots of paradise ducks. After half a day of floating and paddling, including three excellent rapids, we paddled up the Roaring Lion river to find Roaring Lion Hut. It took a bit of searching, but was worth it (it is actually 200 metres up valley from the location marked on the map). The hut is well looked after by fishermen, and the occasional party of kayakers.

The following day was to be our hardest. That’s what we were told. Half an hours paddling from the hut was the dreaded Roaring Lion rapid. It’s one kilometres long, and you can’t see the hardest section, grade 5, from the top. Even before the trip, we had decided to portage it.

To our inexperienced eyes the rapid seemed to consist of three distinct sections. A few hundred metres of grade 4 water at the top, then grade 2 in the middle and then grade 5 down the bottom. We started portaging on the true left, but it was hard work! You have to climb over house size boulders. So in the middle we paddled across, only to find that it was even harder on the other side. We should have stayed on the left, but by the time we knew that, crossing back wasn’t possible. It took a hard 2 hours to clamber, tug, grunt and bush bash our way past the rapid.

From Roaring Lion the travel was much faster than expected. A series of fun grade 3 rapids kept us moving along, but there were enough calm stretches for us to have snacks and lunch on the river (trying to avoid sandflies). To our surprise, only 6 hours after putting in that morning, we were at Grays Hut. Well, somewhere near Grays Hut anyway. It was also difficult to find. It’s an old forest service 6-bunk hut, in excellent condition, and tucked up on a scenic river terrace on the bush edge.

The forth, and final day of the trip was clear and calm, just like the rest. We were relieved for there were rapids ahead that after a little west coast rain develop into grade 5 or 6 maelstroms. Luckily, the river was very low (0.85 metres on the gauge). This meant we could paddle all the rapids and there are plenty of them! 

In less than an hour we had reached Kakapo Stream and were stopping to scout out ‘Holy Shit’, a long grade 4 rapid. The top half looked good, so we tackled it, and then cut out for a chance to scout the bottom half. Powerful white water squeezed in between large boulders, forming a series of chutes and drops. We wouldn’t have attempted it two days ago, but since then our skills had developed so we abandoned plan A (to portage) and activated plan B (to paddle).

Like Whio we glided, paddled and dropped out way across to the main drop, and almost had it lined up perfectly. Suddenly the Fish heard his paddle crack, and fearing it would snap, stopped paddling. We quickly spun side on and crashed into a boulder. Fish fell out just before the biggest drop, and there was plenty of serious water below it. My first thought was “The Fish is going to swim a grade 4 rapid – Awesome!” (I’m sure, as his name suggests, he would have been fine). Then, a nano second later it flashed across my mind, “I’m going over those drops solo – there’s no way I’ll stay in – Holy Shiite!”

“GET BACK ON,” I yelled and to my amazement, he popped out of the froth like a well trained dolphin and lay across the canoe on his belly, eyes wide as saucers.

I frantically paddled to swing us round… to no avail. We dropped down into the stopper side on. The raft and Fish disappeared beneath the froth, but my head was high enough to see it all – we’re going over for sure I predicted, but no! The Fish’s perpendicular, limpet like mass acted as an out-rigger and we popped out just fine.

Fish quickly assumed the conventional rafting position and we lined up perfectly for the next drop – well, almost perfectly. We went over it backwards. No matter, the river can’t tell the difference between the front and rear of a canoe (to be honest, I had trouble myself initially). The K37D is quite versatile in that respect. Sometime it can be to the paddlers advantage to take drops backwards, then spin around frontward.

There were several good rapids further down the Karamea Gorge, but alas, it was all over far to quickly. After a brief stop at the water gauge (true left), we drifted and paddled down mostly flat water to the Last Resort in Karamea where a “CANOE” sign tempted us out of the river. From Grays Hut to Karamea took four hours. Plenty of day left to relax, dry out our gear, and enjoy Karamea township.

Before the trip, people had told us we were crazy to try such a hard river. But there were a few reasons we believed we could attempt it safely.

First, the river was very low (0.85m on the last day). It had been a dry summer, and there was no rain at all forecast during our trip. This made the rapids a grade easier than normal.

Second, we always had the attitude that we would portage what we shouldn’t attempt paddling, taking into consideration that we were a long way from help.

And third, the K37D was the ideal craft for this trip. It’s narrower than a raft, so it squeezes between rocks, yet it’s wider than a kayak and is more stable and easier to paddle. It is also big enough to carry gear for two people, yet it only weighs 22 kg, which is lighter than a raft or a plastic kayak. Also, it has a flat bottom, so it’s stable and easy to turn, and, more importantly in low summer flows, it will float in very shallow water. Another crucial feature is that it is self bailing, and in 30 seconds of being completely swamped, all water drains from it. Finally, it uses incredibly tough, high quality materials. We’ve given it such a thrashing, and not had a single puncture, or problem of any sort.

After twenty years of exploring the back country, mostly mountain biking and tramping, the K37D has suddenly opened up a range of new areas to explore.

Thanks Incept. You helped make a long held dream become a reality.

Jonathan Kennett

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