It is always a long drive to Karamea at the top of the West Coast but with that comes a Shangri-La-like sense of isolation. The plan was to spend a few days up in the area based out of the newly renovated caver hut and to hopefully find some new caves. The rivers on the way (Mokihinui, Little Wanganui, Karamea) were all thoroughly flooded, apparently a very intensely rainy night through here. We picked up our hut key and special permit from the DOC office. Wanting to give Lara's painfully blistered foot a bit more of a break, we decided to hold off on rough West Coast cross country tramping and instead stick to the mellow Fenian Track into Fenian Caves, which despite having a DOC track to and through them, did not seem to have been surveyed. At the carpark we saw an impressively flooded Ōpārara River, a non-stop Class II+ conveyor belt that had me tempted to pack my packraft for the return.
The track was a nicely graded old benched mining road that made for good easy travel. It was mostly in the bush but occasionally we could catch glimpses of scary Class IV-V rapids at moderate flood stage (OK yes glad to have left my packraft behind) and a few nice cascading creeks across the narrow valley.
We turned off the main Fenian Track to start the cave loop which immediately became rougher and muddier. At the first cave, Miner's Cave, we appreciated the nice big entrance. The stream seemed to continue for a little ways so we decided to survey it. There was a little learning curve as I learned to calibrate my new BRIC (thankfully excellently designed procedures) and to train Lara up in being lead instrument as I crudely sketched on a not-precise-enough touchscreen tablet. The going was slow but the cave was not without interest- glowworms, bulbous stalactites, a descending stream, a couple side passages, a weird rift passage in the ceiling, but strangest of all, the cave was almost completely eroded into the underlying rotten granite and not the limestone which only formed the ceiling. Weird! We surveyed almost 100m of cave including two loop closures, losing interest in continuing down the wet belly crawl that almost certainly sumped, at least at the current flow.
After Miner's Cave we continued on to Tunnel Cave which the track goes through. In the interest of time I used the BRIC to make a backbone survey as I walked through but didn't really bother to sketch or properly survey it. The length was only about 60m but there was at least one prominent side passage that went to an additional entrance. We continued on out the other side, eventually checking out a few of the entrances to Cavern Creek Cave (swimming to explore further!), then closed our loop and returned to the car.
The roar of the Ōpārara River was already lessened and the view of the river at the car was considerably different now that rocks poked through and the river lost about a meter in height. From here we worked our way into the Ōpārara Basin to the end of the road and packed up for the short walk into Honeycomb Hill Hut for a nice peaceful night. In the morning the first instinct was to walk a few mintues over to the Honeycomb swingbridge as the level of the Ōpārara River would determine the day's activities. The river had dropped A LOT, but still was clearly up slightly, enough that it would be reasonably packraftable, perhaps with a few scrape-y riffles but no dangerous hydraulics. With a little convincing I got Lara to agree to a packraft trip through the arches with some lidar cave prospecting detours. If anything it guaranteed to be world-class scenery. We returned to the cars, packed for the river, and then returned to the hut. We followed the well-marked track past the hut to head to the north towards Honeycomb Hill Arch, with multiple confusing crossings of a meandering stream and a couple cave mouths that were too tempting to not check out. Less ideally the track actually spat us out downstream of the arch but we could use it to access the river easily enough and paddle up to the arch.
The arch (natural bridge, really) was sublime as always- the multi-level ledges, stylo-bedded textures, amber honey waters, all draped in bright green mosses and ferns. I could not help but make Lara paddle around in my red boat for that extra pop of color to an already dreamy landscape. Photos abounded and then we worked our way downstream.
There were plenty of logs to avoid but the shallow pool-riffle style meant that we could get out pretty much anywhere such that nothing was difficult to deal with. The quality of paddling was perhaps a low B with the shallows and nuisances, but this was more than made up by the A++ scenery.
We were a little nervous about a couple hundred meter section of the river that was a narrow vertical-walled gorge on the lidar, but as I expected it was calm water the whole way through. Every time a little tributary joined (nearly every one from the right side of the river emerging from a cave), it was a deep blood red orange color that darkened the river as it mixed. It was a little bumpy and scrape-y (another 100 cfs would have been grand), but overall more paddleable than I expected.
Near Vilya Creek we pulled our boats ashore to check out a very promising lidar lead at the back of the limestone slab. The creek was definitely not the way to go and traversing through the bush was initially very difficult with lots of windfall until we got a lucky break intersecting a trapline track. We then made quick work to the limestone/granite contact, intersected my foamy root beer stream of interest and then followed it downstream until it inevitably would head underground. What we came upon was a beautiful classic entrance with an apron of hanging moss across its entrance. I did not see any footprints on some of the mossy slopes and my expectations were high as we followed the stream underground. A short distance on the ceiling lowered to a stooping height passage. It was starting to seem like this cave would soon sump when I spotted some directional formations growing off on some of the bulbous stalactites; directional formations meant a draft and another entrance so I continued on with a burst of optimism. Just as it seemed like we would be crawling the passage instead opened up. In front of us was a loud roar of a waterfall, a stunning sight. As we came on to it it turned out to be a beautiful 7m granite falls plunging into a subway tube with dimensions twice that. Down the tube I could see green daylight of a resurgence entrance. We worked our way down to this lower entrance. Unfortunately there were no major side passages but it was a nice enough 100m of cave. Just as we arrived at the lower entrance and I was about to suggest to Lara that we return tomorrow to survey this cave I spotted a large white tag on the wall that said "AR 102". Arrg! Instantly deflated, it turns out we had rediscovered a cave from the 1980s, the hard way, from its backside. The cave was nice and I wished I could have been the first to give it a nice map and a better name but oh well. Our consolation prize was and easy stroll down the stream to the river and then a good riverside trapping line back to our boats.
Almost immediately downstream of Vilya Creek, granite bedrock began appearing in the river. There were still some cobble riffles but now there were also a few granite ledge drops to contend with. Some were junky at this flow, others I could help Lara portage and then run myself. At one of these portages I dropped my phone into the river. After about 30 seconds of very cold fishing I was able to retrieve it. It was totally fine in its waterproof case but was instantly fogged and unfortunately meant the end of good photos.
A couple junky rapids slowed us down but we soon reached the top entrance of Ōpārara Arch (bridge), the 200+m-long stately tunnel. We worked our way down to the middle of the tunnel and then got out to scout downstream. The bottom entrance was not runnable in its current condition between log and rock sieves but looking further I decided it still would be more efficient for me to run it. So back at the boats the plan was for Lara to pack up and hike the [excellent, recently upgraded] trail back out to the road, while I portaged and paddled the final 800m down to the road bridge; from there I would quickly stash my boat, switch into running shoes, and run the 2km to the roadend to collect the car.
I made good time, covering the 800m in less than 15 minutes despite a couple portages and an awesome closeup encounter with a majestic blue duck, king of New Zealand whitewater rivers. I got to see it effortless ride waves four times its size in a rapid, which was a definite highlight. Despite spitting rain it was a pleasant jog along the road and back to the car. Lara beat me back to the trailhead by just a few minutes so excellent timing after all. More gear sorting then we hopped in, returned to the roadend, and settled back into the hut.
For our last half-day we decided to explore some of the karst just north of the Honeycomb special protected area, hoping that lidar would give us an edge on previous explorers. We crossed the Ōpārara River just downstream of its large swooping bend, quite near to the limestone/mudstone contact, and entered the broken limestone terrain.
We found a few new caves including a throughtrip, but once again, mostly rediscovered Buller Caving Club finds from the 1980s (marked by the stenciled poker chips we found inside the entrances). The caves on the lower slope seemed to be mostly sediment filled and so we worked our way up the slope. As we did the going got very rough with lots of deadends in a a maze of vertical walled chasms. We killed lots of time working our way through these with less to show for the efforts than we hoped. Back on the lower slopes we came upon a cave with a neat archway at its entrance. Overall it was a frustrating lesson. Yes lidar is an invaluable tool for knowing where promising places to find caves are, but they don't tell you which ones have already been found.
We packed up and cleaned the hut a little after noon. At the carpark we detoured for a quick stroll through Box Canyon Cave then drove on to Charleston Cave Base. We had miraculously good drying sun overall and strung out a throw rope to hang everything out to dry. It took hours but by the end of it all my gear apart from some dirty clothes were dry, which was going to make packing at the end of my trip smoother.
No comments:
Post a Comment