From Kaitoke I drove back into Upper Hutt to check messages and assess my packraft options for the day. I had a message that Martin had a group of five packrafters to do a fairly mellow section of the lower Otaki River at 10am. I decided in the space of a few minutes to join and drove the hour around to the other side of the Tararuas to arrive just in time. It would be a 7km/4.5mi Grade II run at 50cumec/1770cfs, after a short car shuttle and 2.5mi hike along the closed road to the Otaki Forks. There was a light drizzling rain on the hike in, once again shaping up to be a nice social outing. Looking down at the river from the road it was clear the river could take a whole lot more than the 50 cumec it currently had, but also looked like there would be good coverage at the current flow.
After a good amount of time waiting for everyone to get ready we finally pushed off just below the swingbridge at the forks. This was a considerably more stretch of river than the gorge run the day before, but there was some boulder dodging and riffles and a few good wave trains. The scenery was not quite up to the Hutt Gorge but was still much better than I expected. Interestingly the river seemed to be much colder than the Hutt. Without much incident we cruised down the river, making pretty good time. Our take-out was the second bridge. After a little hangout it was time to say adios and I drove right back around to the east side for a pleasant stay with Russ before our morning ferry departure. I did not manage to do a more adventurous overnight wilderness packraft trip like I had hoped but by the end of the weekend was very satisfied to squeeze in two different paddling runs and meet some neat people. Thanks again to Martin for helping connect me.
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