A Happy Easter!

Saturday night we met up with Phil's brother Collin and Greg, both paddlers from Palmerson North. En convey, we drove north together and camped somewhere between Taupo and Rotorua. It was a really good evening, sitting around a fire with a large box of beers.

The next morning we headed to the Rangieki. We drove first to a waterfall near the bottom of the river. Its a 9m drop that Doni and I had already ran, however we got there to find levels pretty high. This meant the drop would have been very challenging; the line was far right, but at that flow the water was fiercly pushing left. So, after alot of umming and aahing we decided to give it a miss (im still wishing id gone for it).

Dry and frustrated, we drove up to the Jeff's Joy section of the river. Its a really nice run, mostly grade 3/3+ boogey water apart from the grade 4 Jeff's Joy rapids at the top. All but Greg had run the section before, but with my memory it was like a new river to me too. No horror stories to report, everyone got safely and happily down.

That evening we travelled to Rotorua (to paddle the Kaituna the next day). We went to the cinema to see ''300'', a very graphic ancient war movie - plenty of blood and guts, well recomended.

The next day we hit Rotorua's gem, the Kaituna. We ran it twice. I had forgotten just how good the river was! What a river. Man, it's perfect. Beautiful river, big drops, big boofs and playspots galour. Soo much fun ... i could stay on that river forever.

On Tuesday we scouted Artiritiri. Its massive! Steve Fisher claims it to be one of the most challenging runs he's ever made (apparently he got worked pretty hard about half-way down). Doni and I are probably going to run the bottom bit next weekend, its the easiest part of the section and has a nice pool drop at the end. (looking forward to that).