Day 59: Canyoning up the Pararaha

Today I volunteered to go with a group from Adventure Specialties Trust on a canyoning trip.  Canyoning is when you walk up a river, picking your way over rocks and negotiating the canyon walls and waterfalls that you encounter.  The group was a group of 13 students from Auckland Secondary School, plus their teacher Sharon and me and Ben from AdSpecs.  The students have been removed from their original schools to work on attitudes and behavior problems.  So they're baddies, but not all the bad.  Not juvenile justice system material by any means.

We picked the group up at their school and they introduced themselves to us.  Then we headed out to the river, getting there just after 11am.  The Pararaha is in a different part of the Waitakeres, where I've been working all this week in Huia.  We hiked down a steep track to get into the valley.  It was gorgeous!  After a brief rest stop we struck off into the river.  It was really challenging to keep the group from spreading out too much.

We worked our way upstream, either in the river or on rough tracks going around some difficult spots, until we clambered over a logjam in the river and found ourselves at a deep pool with a waterfall.  We had lunch there and jumped off the rocks into the pool.  The water was so cold! It took your breath away.  After lunch we pressed on, and the going got a bit rougher right after the waterfall.  There was a spot where the canyon walls came straight down into the river and you either had to swim or climb to the top of the canyon and walk around.  I swam through the area and got a little freaked out at how fast the cold acted on my system.  It was more difficult to swim with a backpack (I was trying to keep it out of the water, but couldn't) and with shoes on my feet.  Finally I made it though, but a bigger challenge was just ahead.  You could swim again, or try to boulder your way across the conglomerated rocks that made up the canyon walls.  They weren't very high but were a bit steep.  I slipped and ended up in the water anyway, and also scratched up my wrist and my forearms on the rock.  That spot was also very difficult to get out of the water.  Ben had to set up a rope to help pull kids out.  If it had been me in charge I would've been rather nervous about the kids being in the water that was that cold.  Not all of them were strong swimmers, either, but I think most of those had chosen to walk around.  At any rate, when I got out of the water it felt like my arms and legs didn't want to work properly, since they were so cold.  I also lost circulation in my feet, which took a while to return. Brrr!

Farther down, there was another swim shortly before we got out of the river and back onto the track.  I opted against it after my last experience in the water, and instead climbed up and around on a steep, rough track.  I ended up falling and bashing my shin and my upper thigh on rocks and roots.  It was quite painful and I was ready to say that the river had officially kicked my butt.  But I kept on pressing on and everyone made it out of the canyon.  It was a good day, albeit rather painful, and I got to see a beautiful part of New Zealand, which I really enjoyed, and get some good experience with canyoning, which was also great.