Its been a while coming, but here is a blog and pictures of my Tasmania trip from January.


Watch this space, first installment in an hour or so!!

you have 54 mins....

pressures on! I did say hour or SO
and ive just come across a whole bunch of more pics I want to add in now

Hey,

Mizu is just in the team (no mod privileges) I'm about to have my nanna nap (I missed it yesterday because of the Shred meeting) get it done before I awake and all will be good!!!!!

Will do spaz

Mizu Kuma - 11 March 2011 03:50 PM

Ya did go to the 'State' of Tasmania??? This isn't gonna be some X Rated thing now is it???

Is this why it was gonna take an hour???

man, i spent a week down there in the bush! lots of photos to come..........yes, the State ..

K2_SCS Takes On Tasmania!

Day 1, 18th Jan, MY BDAY!

Fly in early in the morning to Launceston from Melbourne. The crew pick me up, and we go for a cruise around some local towns for breaky and a coffee. Go check out Cataract Gorge as its in major flood and we wanted to see the masses of water coming in!
These pics don’t do it justice. The size and power of the waves and rapids were amazing!

Video link



I was frothing to paddle it, but it was defiantly not a good idea to do this at the start of the trip with no paddling been done for a while.

Went to check the dam at the top of the river and it was overflowing huge amounts of water. Again this wont do it any justice of the size of this dam. Apparently someone has kayaked down this wall when it was like this.
Video Link


Had lunch then drove out to check out a waterfall we wanted to run on the Arm River.


The falls are about 8m high with the first part being a 5m rock slide and the second a 3m drop into the pool. Wasn’t enough water for it to be a clean run, so we will hit it up next time!!

So we pitched up camp nearby next to the Mercy River. They were releasing from the dam which didn’t happen often so it was at a ripper level to paddle. A nice Grade III river where they do training for Tasmanias Canoe Slalom teams.
View from the bridge on the cruisy start as we paddle down

We paddled the river at dusk so it was quite exciting as we were losing light. Got of the river just as it got dark. When doing the shuttle back to camp the car was full of gear and people so two of us decided seeing it was my birthday we could do what ever I wanted and sat on the spare tire of the 4x4 holding onto the roof racks while flying down the dirt road back to camp.
Finished off the night with some birthday beers and sitting around the fire. Had the biggest grin on my face all day and had an amazing birthday!!

Cool K2! Look forward to the rest.

January is a great month for a birthday

Day 2, The Lea River
We woke up at 5am today to get one more paddle in on the Mercy River as a couple of people didn’t do it the night before. It was good cos it only takes about 45min to do the run and its soo fun. Was good to do it one more time before the day had even started!
This time I paddled my friends new craft called a PackRaft, or Alpacka Raft which you can see in the above pic , the red boat(I was in the blue kayak that time though). Its basically a 1man inflatable raft which is designed to be super light weight and can be folded into a tiny 2kg package. Ideal for isolated river trips where you have to carry all gear in. It was super fun and this was the first time we paddled it on white water. Most people use them for tame white water and flat water stuff. We were gonna give it a good test this trip

After breakfast we packed up and started making our way across to the Lea River. It is an amazing river with a beautiful gorge. Nice Grade IV river with some awesome waterfalls, drops and rapids.
We went of the guide books instructions and ended up having a super tough hike in through a crappy overgrown “trail”. It was super tough carrying boats and gear through.



Eventually it opened out on to fire trails in a pine plantation, and turns out we could have walked an extra 2ks on fire trails and not have the need to bush bash!! We know for next time.
Boat carrying

The color of the river was amazing due to the tannin from the tea trees, but at the same time was still so clear


Me in the packraft ready to start. It really was a beautiful river to be in

First fun little rapid drop


The packraft was handling the rapids a lot better than we thought


The first of the big drops came up and we scouted it and it was good to run. First the Kayak ran it and it was good and clean. Second we sent one of the bigger rafts. And it was all good too. These rafts are about 12foot long so gives you an idea of the drop size.
My friend, a very experienced paddler and the trip leader (owner of the pack raft) asked if I was keen to run the drop in the new boat. I was super excited as it was the biggest thing the boat would have done so far and I got to do it first!
Here is a shot of me going off the drop!

There is a small chute above the drop that you have to get through first then the drop. It was super clean and I aced it. Was soo stoked and was absolutely buzzing as I got to the bottom and everyone was cheering!
Here is a sequence of the drop shot from the bottom:







Here are some shots of another bigger raft doing it. He hit a rock in the bottom of the pool and here is the aftermath haha




btw there is soo many pics to come, so its gonna be in lots of parts and a long thread

It was cold, but not that bad. It was a reasonably warm day too. The water was much colder last week on the Big River in Vic near Lake Eildon, or up near Falls Creek on the Kiewa rivers. Thats all straight off the mountains, which are higher up.

Day 2 Lea River – continued…
Paddled down river for a bit more and with nice rapids most of the way down. Then we came up to our next big rapid. It’s a grade 4 rapid with a nice waterfall at the end. It starts off with rapid called the Dog Leg, then leads into a pool called Prep Room and finishes off with the Screaming Plastic Surgeon. It consists of a couple of small drops,twists n turns a chute and then sharp left to the waterfall which has a small 1m leadin drop before the big one.
Leader on the Dog Leg


Lead in of the Surgeon


Finish and the main drop


So the first big raft goes down, all going good but the end up going of the waterfall sideways getting thrown in the air and some how one paddler ended up back in the boat at the bottom!
Thankfully they were both safe. The leader who was in that raft asked me how I felt about running it in the alpacka and to his surprise is was straight up ready to do it!
Me just after they flipped and stoked to run it!

I aced the whole rapid, styled it all the way down, only bugger is with the final falls I landed to nose heavy and got shot out of the boat and went for a swim. If I was in a kayak or had thigh straps in the packa I could have rolled. But I was still stoked as was everyone else to have made the rapid 
Here are some shots of the last drop:

Kept on paddling on down, and here are pics of various rapids and drops on the way down:









See Hamlet the Adventure dog in the front enjoying the paddle! He comes on all our trips

Day 2 continued
Coming up to the next big rapid, and the last big one. I was asked if I wanted to do the rapid first. This gave me butterflys in my stomach, but at the same time I answered straight away with “Yeh bloody oath!” From the top all I could see is the a horizon line. IT was a two stage rapid with a steep shute along a wall, and then a second big drop. I didn’t scout the rapid to suss it out but there was another person on the opposite side of the river and could see it all and hand signaled the path to take. I strapped in and off I went!!
Here is a shot from the top of me dropping in.

Here is the first drop/chute:

Oh just found a photo of me, so I could scout the first drop but not the main one:


Here is my fave shot of the trip of me going off the second big drop! I totally aced it and was the best feeling to be the guinea pig and run the line first!


Me on safety at the bottom with the trip leader running the bottom drop

Few last pics of the river, again its so beautiful down there!





Could have been a sick shot if the flash didn’t go off


Long paddle across a lake back to the cars at the end. We thought we’d share the work back haha



That was the end of our second day! Wow a lot in there hahaha. Drove back down to Hobart that night.
Shot of Craddle Mountain on the way home

this thread gives me flashbacks of white water rafting down a glacier fed river in Jasper

Awesome pics K2!!

I grew up in hobart and im pretty familiar with the rivers down that way. The Picton river is good one. Pretty mellow but good fun. The top end of the almighty dewernt river is fun to rumble down as well!!

Did u get to see some of the other sights?? Mt Wellington? Port Arthur? Eaglehawk neck? The sights around Hobart are pretty cool aswell.. Not to mention the beaches around the South Arm where i grew up put on a pretty decent swell!!

Hope you had a sick trip man!!
Yeeww!