Sunday 17 January 2021

Leader: Rodney Hopkirk

June and I were the only ones keen to go wet-tubing down the Otaki Gorge, and the weather wasn’t looking the best with some rain forecast.

Undeterred, we headed out. We parked one car at the suspension bridge, past Riverslea Lodge, and the other car halfway up the gorge and as far as you can drive up Gorge Road, that is, just before the bluff. We got into our wetsuits, pumped up our tubes and walked up past the bluff to Roaring Meg. En route, June commented to me that I had a bald spot, was over inflated and had a slow leak. I said that was rather personal and no way to talk about the trip leader. She laughed and said, "No I’m talking about your inner tube!" Once the confusion was cleared up, we carried on down the Roaring Meg until we reached the Otaki River and began our tubing.

The river was not at it’s lowest, but the rapids were still bumpy and required one to make one's body rigid, in a sort of horizontal planking stance, to avoid injury to the undercarriage. We experienced some rain on the way down the river, but hey, we were wet anyway! We stopped briefly at the bottom of the bluff and examined some of the debris which had come down from the road and took a few photos. Once we reached the first bridge, we decided we had had enough of being wet; we had only been in the water for just over an hour, but were starting to feel the first shivers of cold. The first bridge was just around the corner, but the second bridge was probably another hour away and we decided that would be a bridge too far. A great day out.

Scribe Rodney, Assistant Leader Xingjun (June).

Those on the trip were:

Rodney Hopkirk, Yingjun Shelton

Currently there is no photo album for this trip.