Mather Creek April 9

Power out at the Geology building, good weather and a keen friend prompted a quick getaway to Wanaka to finish off Mather Creek, a canyon I had done a partial first descent of a couple years ago. It had since been fully descended by a couple groups who raved about the canyon so I had to check it out. The canyon is next to Muir Creek and so by association is presumably named after Stephen Mather, the American conservationist. The flow was really low in the Haast River, which meant an easy approach on the riverbank instead of the bush bashing. We reached the creek in good time and then began the 1.5hr climb through steep bush to the start of the track. The going was quite easy until the end when we had to sidle across several small gorge-lets to reach the canyon. No sooner had we reached the start of the canyon had a moderate drizzle set in. We ate lunch and geared up and shortly encountered our first of many waterfalls. The canyon is essentially in three parts with more open streamway between the three segments. The upper section had a couple nice slides then rapid fire abseils. The anchors were kind of awkwardly positioned on the side of the canyon such that it felt a bit more like vertical bush bashing at times than actual canyoning. 

The canyon has many challenging downclimbs and jumps so it was nice to be going through the canyon in low flow and not be worried about the hydraulics. The middle section had some tricky jumps to 14m, which we mostly opted out of for abseiling. This section had some of the best waterfalls and particularly beautiful pools. The bottom canyon is by far the shortest but is probably my favorite. The deepness and darkness of this canyon was enhanced as it was past 5pm by the time we reached it. A couple tricky jumps into shallow water and a spicy downclimb across the full flow of the creek lead to the canyon's grand finale, a roaring 15m waterfall into a bottomless pool guarded by an impressive 6m high rock arch. The force of the waterfall rips misty spray through the arch. Unfortunately we managed to stick the rope on this last abseil. After 20 minutes of trying to free the rope by several strategies dusk had set in and we were forced to call it a day.

The following day we found a easy place to rappel just above the last drop and I managed to easily free my rope unharmed. We wrapped up the day with a pleasant gaunt down Cross Creek. It's too bad I missed most of the canyon season this year- it was not for a lack of motivation or ambition!