Murchison
Date: 2nd-3rd July
Location: Buller Granity
Weather: overcast, COLD
Group: Jimmy, Grace, Chris H, Kalam, Kristy, Scott, Jesse, Gretchen, Kelly and Me
Grade: 2/3
Duration: 4 hours
Key learning: how to use a cows tail had to tow 2 boats.
Incidents: 4 swimmers on Granity rapid (grade 3) grace got recirculated in a big hole, Jesse flushed quickly, Chris and Kristy swam but were not caught by the hole.
we set off from Greymouth on Friday night hoping to get back on Sunday with another 4 rivers under our belt, but we were unaware of the super low temperature of the water and the events of the day to follow. Saturday morning we awoke at 9.00 am and set up to go amped for a sweet grade 3 mission we jumped in and started warming up with some eddy turns and quickly found out that the water was freezing so most of us decided that practising a roll wouldn't be a wise choice everything went super smoothly until we hit Granity rapid. We jumped out had a quick look and made the decision if we wanted to run it or not in the end 8 of 10 were keen so Kelly and Gretchen set up safety just above the middle eddy the first group to run the rapid consisted of Jimmy, Jesse, Grace and then me. we were all confident running the rapid so we headed down but grace flipped at the top and floated the whole rapid upside down as i tryed to get to her, she finally rolled back up just in time to catch the middle eddy. Jimmy walked back to the top and guided the less confident 4 down everything went smoothly until they hit the buffer. From there it all happened in a flash Chris and Scott dropped into a big hole and went over Scott rolled back up Chris swam followed by Kristy who clipped a big hole and also swam so me and grace quickly jumped out of the eddy to help Chris jumped on Graces stern just before the big hole at the bottom resulting in grace getting thrown directly into the biggest part of the hole upside down and she ended up swimming and getting recirculated in there for a long time she finally flushed out at the same time Jesse had jumped back in his boat and started coming down he dropped over the hole and it pulled him back into it and he ended up swimming to. while this was going on me and Kalam were rounding up all the boats and paddles that were floating down river. once it was all over everyone was fine but shaken up headed down and everything was OK after that point we decided to call that the day and headed to the pub for a well needed beer and hot chips. the next morning we woke up to find every thing frozen solid including all our thermals and wetsuits and to top it all off i felt really sick and ended up throwing up. so that was the end of our epic weekend in Murch with a total of 1 river 2 days.
Thanks to Kristy and Kelly for the photos.
Camp for the two nights
Scouting Granity
Me chasing graces boat
Were things started to go wrong
Oh SHIT !!!