Parties on the Perth

It seems a while ago now but we had 2 days of massive groups on the Wanganui and Perth.  Usually not my cup of tea, these days were magical with everyone in control and having fun. 

Although the rivers were low, there was plenty of whitewater and the scenery was awesome.  We chatted to a group of about 15 trampers up the Wanganui who loved watching our kayaks float past and hadn't been bothered by the helicopters taking us in.  In a time when I'm thinking about kayaking values, it was of note to me that the only marks we'd left were helicopter skid marks temporarily in gravel, while the trampers followed orange triangles along a worn trail and used permanent ladders to scale difficult parts.

I tried to get round people for interviews but it's proving to be impossible, so if you were there PLEASE do get in touch so we can keep in contact.

Cheers, Andy

Getting to grips with this project

It may seem beyond belief, but it's hard to conceptualise my job this year at times.  This week, I've paddled the Whitcombe and Hokitika Rivers on stunning sunny days with great people.  Is this work?  Well, I was taking extra safety measures to meet my risk management procedures, I stopped and photographed everything along with my Sony GPS to geotag everything.  The Hoki, from Serpentine, took us from 0930 till 1800!  That gave us plenty of time to enjoy the place and everyone was blown away by the gorges. 

But I still worried that my work wasn't going anywhere or achieving anything.  Then we stopped just upstream of the 'Gates of Argonath' and did a couple of recorded interviews.  It started to come together and make sense: these are early days in a year long project, and the data I'm collecting will piece together to be a detailed snapshot of West Coast kayaking and rafting, the relationship between the people and the rivers. 

If you're around and keen to paddle/meet/talk about rivers and what they mean to you, please get in touch:
westcoastwhitewater@gmail.com
Andy England on Facebook
0276856782

Thanks for reading

a bit more on what this is about...

I have a year off my teaching job to find out all I can about how important West Coast rivers are.

I was awarded a Teacher Fellowship by the Royal Society of New Zealand. I'll work with the Department of Conservation and Lincoln University to describe the significance of West Coast rivers to whitewater kayakers and rafters.

The first phase, right now, is to paddle as many West Coast rivers as possible taking geotagged photos of all key features (put in, gorges, major rapids etc). I then interview people about what the rivers mean to them, both in general and for named rivers. For example, do you go to the Arahura for whitewater or scenery, or both, or a social experience, or all of the above and which is most important?! Basically, we'll just have a chat and I'll figure it out later. The more people I can paddle with, the better the range of interviews I can get.

Hopefully, this should do 2 things: get a detailed record of what our whitewater rivers look like and find out what things kayakers/rafters value about them.

Then, over winter, I'll follow up all contacts with a survey to get some figures around what it is that we value. So any help in getting surveys out (and in) will be gratefully received.

What's in this for kayakers and rafters? Well, various decisions are made that affect us - like hydro developments and access limitations - by people who currently know very little about our world. My project should provide both us and them with new information about what we have and why we value it, which in turn should lead to better decisions. I was inspired to do this by fighting hydro developments and finding that decision makers still use a 1991 survey! It was a great piece of work but things have changed since then. Hopefully, my work this year can go some way to bringing our data back up to speed.

I'd love to hear from anyone who cares, whatever their opinion...