If you have web feet, feathers and a bill this was the trip for you!
The weather forecast was for heavy rain late Saturday, that was OK, as I worked out we would be coming out of Coppermine Creek at that time. Brave club members made their way to the West coast, six trucks in all. The very thing about this trip was the amount of young ones along with us, the youngest was Xander Campbell at seven months, Lily Bentley, Autumn Richards and Robbie Iva.
On Friday night in our excellent accommodation we all watched NZ beat Tonga 41 – 10, which made the whole thing feel more like home. The rain started on Friday afternoon at Makarora on the way over and just got heavier and never stopped all weekend. Heavy rain warnings were issued, we would decide what to do when we hit the Waita River on Saturday.
The river was up but not as much as it should have been, probably because of the dry spell before the rain. Trip leader, me, has to do a test run to give people an idea what they are in for and if they want to take the crossing on. This crossing can be tricky because you have to travel up stream into the current, this will be a problem for the lower trucks as more body area is against the flow and can cause floatation. This river has a good gravel bottom better than most roads, in low gear with a steady amount of throttle to avoid stalling, you don’t want a big bow wave, you can’t afford to have your engine stop in here. This was a good experience for everyone and something you would not do by yourself in a lone vehicle situation.
The start of the bush track had been done up and was like the M1 with packed gravel and no mud at all until where the track branched back to the river flats. It was time to pick out the best route through the bush, I opted to go straight through on the old track and was the only one that had to winch, someone has to keep these tracks open. Those that weaved their way around and through made it with very little assistance. Very soon we were out on the grass flats where we made our way to the next river crossing. The river here is about half the width and it was impossible to cross. We had to turn around and go back to what we had just come through. While doing this Al noticed the river had risen quite rapidly. We knew if we didn’t get to that final crossing quickly we could be stuck for 2 to 3 days! In our haste Keri had to give his new truck the jandal - he likes doing that! That Lexus V8 sure sounds nice. As he was turning cross ways on the muddy track a lump of wood was flicked up and broke Dan’s trusty Range Rover driver’s window, which is all you need when it is persisting down!
Reaching the main crossing the river had come up another 20 cm, this is always where problems can occur with it just being too deep, trip leader in first. This time the river was flowing with us and the deepest bit was at the start, we had no problems crossing although some did feel they began to float momentarily.
We hadn’t had lunch so it was back to our house for a dry out and something to eat.
We had a look at Jackson Bay just down the road, the sea was mad with a strong south westerly and still raining. We took a detour down to Martyr saddle - I have never seen the Jackson river so angry. It was almost over the road in places, this is a lovely drive, no dust on a day like today.
Not too much to do now but go back to our warm dry house open a beer and cook a meal.
Sunday brought still more rain - three trucks made a bee line for home early on because of other things on, the other three trucks shot off to Kwitchatown for a look. Kwitchatown is a group of small huts, an interesting place to get in and out of and some of the holes in the track were nearly as deep as the Waita river. From here it was time to say goodbye to Vaughan and Autumn to go back to Greymouth. Dan and ourselves made our way back to Queenstown, we have done one or two trips that have been reasonably dry so a wet one does no harm. I think we made the most of the bad weather with a very social trip.
Report by Bert