The Mohaka

The second weekend in June saw us leaving Auckland once again in the Barracuda Fun Bus with Dave, this time headed for a “long boating weekend” on the Mohaka River. The River is between Taupo and Napier, so we drove just as far as Taupo on Friday afternoon, allowing us a chance to catch up with the lads in the house there. Sam and Tim were busy packing up their gear as they were going snowboarding at Mount Ruapehu for the weekend.

The next morning we met for breakfast at 8am. One of the other people coming canoeing with us for the weekend had already done a 100km cycle at that stage… This weekend was largely for friends of Dave who like doing multi-sport races. These are long races involving running, road cycling and/or mountain biking and canoeing. As a result, we were spending the weekend with some very fit and motivated people.

After breakfast we drove off up through the mountains and, after dropping our bags off at our accommodation for the night, we arrived at the get on for the river. We were a little daunted by the amount of frost still on the ground, even though it was after 11am at this stage, so we got ourselves into as many thermal layers as possible. Most of the group were in multi-sport boats; a long narrow boat designed specially for speeding down easy enough rivers. Seán took his downriver boat and Nic and I borrowed the demo Beachcombers from Barracuda. I did offer to take one of the party, a 4 year old boy, down the river in the front hatch of the sea kayak, but his mother vetoed that one!


With the shuttles done 9 of us set off downstream. The river is a Grade II so pretty flat with some little rapids. It was interesting to do the river looking from the perspective of racing though. We picked the quickest lines through the rapids, trying to go with the fastest water to make good time down the river. While Seán, Dave, Nic and I all had plenty of white water experience; the others in the group were a bit daunted by the river and, as racers, were trying to find the ultimate line down a river. Seán and Dave were kept busy teaching them that every rapid is different and they should do practise runs on every river they plan to race to find out where they should be going. The group really appreciated the advice and it was great to be on the river with people who were really interested in learning and absorbed everything we said. As I was in a much more stable boat than the others I got to fish a few of them out of the water on the way down also.

After our first trip down the river, 8 of us decided we’d go again, so after getting our gear and ourselves upstream we hopped in again, leaving those staying dry to shuttle the cars down for us again. This trip was a little quicker as we had a couple less swims. As the water was really cold I was also glad of this as it meant less time for my hands to be in the water, let alone what it must have been like for the swimmers!

At the end of the second run, five hardy enthusiasts decided to go again. I have to say that Seán and I weren’t included in that number! They decided to race down the river and it wasn’t too long before they arrived and we all set off back to our accommodation for a tasty home made dinner. We tucked up warm in our dorm room for the night, thinking of the frost outside the door.


The next morning, after a good fried breakfast we decided to try getting on the river beside our accommodation, instead of going further downstream to the usual get in. This time the river party was reduced to 5, Seán and I included. The energetic girl who did the cycle and all three river runs the day before abstained from paddling that day as her training programme required her to spend four hours running and cycling that day. We did tell her she was crazy! Apparently she and her partner have decided to dedicate a year to training really hard for these multi-sport races, and once the year is over all training will cease and they’re going to start trying for children!

Anyway, the remaining five padders hopped on the river and were very relieved when we turned a corner and the sun started shining down on us as it was a very cold morning! When we arrived at the end of the river, we looked up at Dave’s van and saw that his roof bars were missing. Unfortunately the roof bars had a bit of a fight with a tree while we were on the river, and the tree won. We farmed out a couple of the boats to the other vehicles, but had to put two directly onto Dave’s roof. Thankfully he had some pretty good padding in the van, which protected his roof for the trip.

On our way home we stopped at a bridge over the river, on the main Taupo to Napier highway, which has a walkway built underneath it. It’s quite strange walking under the bridge looking down at the water as the whole bridge shakes when a truck goes over it! The walkway itself is quite odd as it goes almost to the very edge of the bridge, but to get to it you have to climb over the structures of the bridge itself. It’s as if the walkway was being built on a Friday afternoon and the boys decided to quit a bit early!