This is one of those cases were the story is more impressive than the trip. I got up at the ungodly hour of 4:30am so that I could drive to Mt Cook to meet up with Chucky and the rest of the South Island canyoning crew. We had plans to do Sawyers Stream but I knew by the time I hit the Waitaki Valley that that was not going to happen. All of the dams on the Waitaki were flooding wall to wall over the top of the dams in an frothy white Niagara Falls with spray forming a low 200m high cloud. Regardless it was a warm sunny morning by the time I reached Mt Cook and I knew the gang would be keen to do something. I could see Sawyers Stream as I drove past- we were definitely not going in there today! When I arrived Richard was holding down the camp while the others were scouting a potential canyon (a ditch that is usually only a trickle).The others returned and said that Red Tarns looked like it was probably a canyon and they could definitely see several waterfalls at the very bottom of the stream. All eight of us geared up for a first descent. Bolts, drills, slings, wetsuits, 200m of rope...this canyon was never going to know what hit it!
We went up the steep Red Tarns trail single-file like some sheep. After ten minutes of walking we crossed a small trickle and I bent down to get a drink of water. Someone joked that they hoped this wasn't our canyon and we all had a good laugh after we headed further up the hill. After another 10 minutes of walking it became obvious- that trickle was our "canyon" and we would not find anything else around. We walked back down the track and unenthusiastically bushwhacked along the creek. I got excited when I saw a small patch of actual bedrock. Eventually we reached a 10 m waterfall.
While everyone else suited up and began rigging the drop I traversed to the side and found a way to climb into the canyon a couple waterfalls below. I downclimbed all the other waterfalls to where I could see the end of the canyon and then climbed back up to the start with the others. Basically the whole canyon could be downclimbed. Trying to make the most of the absurd situation I went through the whole canyon in boxers. Going through the waterfalls was freezing but I warmed quickly once I was out of them. The best abseil was actually in the tributary creek so we found a place to climb out of the canyon and abseil back in. Then because I could, I climbed back up to retrieve the anchor and carefully climb back down. Three more downclimbs and we were out of the canyon. What shenanigans!
Then with nothing better to do we decided to walk up Sawyers Stream to the base of the canyon. Getting to the base required getting very wet and climbing through a waterfall so again I stripped down to boxers and climbed up to get photos and videos to show the others. Very impressive. It was not so much a canyon at the moment as one continuous multi-tiered waterfall. Between this trip and a previous one I have now done the full round trip of Sawyer Canyon apart from the 200m of actual canyon! Twice unlucky- bummer. Out of options in the Mt Cook area, we decided to drive on to Wanaka hoping the water levels were more reasonable there.
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