Lara was quite eager to check out Blue Creek Canyon, a narrow marble defile notable as the only dry canyon in New Zealand in typical conditions; the water disappears underground into a cave system above the start of the canyoning section and appears at Blue Creek Resurgence at the canyon's very end. I had been through it once before and a return was not at the top of my list but it was nice enough and I was willing to give a concession as I knew there would be some other new-to-me things we would get to check out over the coming days.
We had a late start on the long drive after packing up, handling errands, grabbing food, and a lengthy attempt to rehabilitate a headlamp. It was typical endless Canterbury Plains driving, alternating drivers through the small towns up until we finally reached Lewis Pass. We stopped briefly to sniff out our way to Sylvia Flat Hot Springs, which I was surprised to find completely missing apart from the sulphur smell (I later found out they were buried in slips around 2017 or so). We ended the day quite late at the Marble Flat Campground. I found a nice spot in the beech forest that kept me nearly free of dew in the morning. What neither of us were prepared for was a loud night of noisy truck traffic and then a random ute driving fast through the campground yelling obscenities at 3am. Well I did have my earplugs so I was partially prepared I suppose. I vowed to not camp there again.
We awoke and got moving fairly early to continue driving. I voted for a stop at the roadside Maruia Falls near Murchison, a hard feature to drive past without a stop. I knew it was abruptly formed in the 1929 Murchison earthquake but I finally got a clearer explanation since it couldn't have been as a fault scarp; a It is frequently kayaked; a landslide to the east pushed the river out of its channel and forced it to the west. Every time I look at the falls I think it is right at the limit of what I would potentially consider packrafting over.
We both were caught a little off guard at just how far it is to the north side of Mt Owen (a full 2 hour drive past the southern access) as we had to drive almost to Motueka before turning to go up the Wangapeka valley to its road end. Sandflies immediately swarmed as we tried to get our gear organized and down a snack before hiking. We had a good track to start off on alongside a noisy Blue Creek. Past some mining relics the track begin to climb with a couple steep root-clinging sections and the noise of the creek disappeared. I was dripping sweat with the humid heat that was probably record breaking for this time of year. We struggled for a few minutes finding the canyon trail turnoff, ultimately stumbling around below a bluff rather than further up. The side trail was fairly easy to follow once we found its start but it dragged on a lot longer than I thought it would as we paralleled the creekbed for quite a while before dropping down to it. Eventually we arrived at the dry creekbed below a massive overhanging wall of marble with our first drop right below us. We put on our harnesses and I ended up rigging the first drop for Lara and downclimbing after to save some rope wear.
The canyon had a nice mix of dark narrows with water-carved marble surrounded by the ever present greenery of moss and ferns. There were a few nice pothole features and a particularly nice rappel into a grotto (frontispiece). We took our time, taking turns trading off rigging the rappels, working through downclimbs, and trying different descender combinations. There were a few nice dark hallway sections and a few logjams to surmount. Occasionally we would get hints of some nice reflected golden light in the canyon. Generally the drops were straightforward and minimally awkward other than the occasional slippery rock.
Towards the end of the canyon (rappel #12?) we encountered our first clear cold pool of water at the base of the rappel. I went for a descent in my boxers and managed to swing out to hit the thigh depth part of the pool, missing the part that was well past waist depth. I attempted to give Lara a guided rappel with mixed results, mostly getting her past the deep part but hitting the water in a seated position rather than on foot. Beyond this was one more thigh depth pool to cross, the final extent of the water we would see in the canyon.
As we neared the end of the canyon we noticed some wonderful veining and deformation patterns in the marble and after the last rappel (#17 or so) we spotted some of the cave entrances shooting out cold air and then a short distance further the end of the canyon and the crystal waters of the resurgence.
Harnesses off and some crisp spring water downed, we briefly check out the resurgence and carried on down the track back to the car. Along the way we passed a nicely restored 4-battery stamp mill. Undoubtedly more money was spent on getting it here and restoring it than it ever produced in gold.
Lara seemed to really enjoy the canyon, removing the moving water from the usual equation. Back at the car we debated our options among camping at Courthouse Flat (a bit early but a nice quiet spot), dayhiking the following day up to Granity Pass, or retracing the last 2 hours of our drive to try to camp at the south side of Mt Owen to set us up for a multi-day hike. Between the weather forecast and the time of day we ultimately decided we would be better off getting the driving over to the Owen River behind us. On arriving at the carpark we only saw one other vehicle; a quick snooping glance into the car suggested cavers and I wondered if it was anyone I knew. We were a little nervous about camping just beyond the trailhead paddock, but as we made dinner the farmer strolled past, said hello, and was quite friendly and relaxed about it which alleviated all our fears. He seemed quite proud of his "magic" spot with mysterious alpine karst mountain beyond. I was only slightly embarrassed to be wearing a bug net for the persistent sandflies. I slept well under the beech with a decidedly much quieter camping spot!
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