Canyoning!

A group of 11 of us spent the day on Saturday canyoning in the Waitekere Ranges, about 40 minutes outside of Auckland. I’m sure you are probably wondering what “canyoning” is, because I myself didn’t really know too much about it until after I did it! Well, to sum it up, we basically walked through the forest UPHILL for a good little while and then followed the river back downhill. (This, of course, required jumping down waterfalls, swimming through pools and wading through the water.)

So, we were picked up at the university at 10 and then we drove out to some shed near where we were going to start our trek. We all had on our bathing suits, but we needed to get helmets, thermal shirts, booties and shoes for our feet. We gathered up our harnesses and wetsuits, and carried them with us so that we didn’t have to actually wear them for our hike. (We would have just been way too hot.) Keep in mind though, that this meant that we were hiking through the woods wearing a long sleeve shirt, no pants (just our bathing suit bottoms), a helmet, booties and funny looking shoes, with wetsuits tied as “backpacks” on our backs. It really was a pretty funny sight.

Our uphill climb lasted about 40 minutes and then we were finally at the river where we would begin our journey. We all jumped off a big cliff and into a pool of water. It was deep enough that we were allowed to do whatever kind of jump we wanted, so some people got pretty creative with their flips and funny jumps. (I however, looked super lame jumping off holding my nose every time, but I got too much water in my nose otherwise, so I just played it simple.) Then we swam through the water to the next waterfall and jumped off that ledge. It pretty much worked this way for most of the day. We would wade or swim through the water, depending on how deep it was, until we got to another spot where we would jump back in! Some of the jumps were pretty high and we had to have specific instructions on WHERE to jump so that we didn’t hit a rock or anything. Here's Cate jumping!:

At one of the jumps, they had all of the guys go together and then all of the girls. We decided to jump like ballerinas! (I'm the only person with a blue wetsuit, so I'm pretty easy to pick out!)There were two spots where we could not jump from, so we had to abseil/rappel down. I’m terrible at judging distance, but I can tell you that this was a pretty big drop! For the first half, it was mostly rock, but then it turned into the waterfall part, which was pretty slippery because of the moss and stuff growing. My feet slipped a big while I was making my way down and I swung out along the rocks. But Cate was my “safety” from down below and held my rope nice and tight for me until I got back on track! The second time that we rappelled down, the waterfall was much more vertical and slippery. Surprisingly though, I did much better that time, making it down with no mishaps.

Nick abseiling down the rock:

In addition to jumping, swimming and wading, we also got to do a couple of slides. The first one was pretty small, so they sent us down backwards, headfirst! (This is Kelly going down the backwards slide.)

The next ones were larger and longer, so we went down them forwards, but one had a pretty good drop off at the end, so you went flying into the water. Here I am going down the slide:Then there was a spot where we had to be lowered down into the pool, because it was too high and also too shallow to jump. So we sat in our harnesses while the guide lowered us down the waterfall. When I got towards the bottom though, my rope started to swing and I smacked into the rock. My hand is pretty sore (not a major injury by ANY means, but it’s just a little bruised). I also fell several times during the day while we were walking, because you couldn’t really see the rocks in the water to know how good your footing was. Since some of the rocks were slippery, or the water would be shallow and then suddenly drop off, I fell on several occasions.

It was a very fun day, but I was definitely very happy when we were told we could remove our wetsuits! Mine was SUPER tight on me and was very difficult to get on and off (especially once it was wet). After rinsing off and getting out of our suits, we trekked back up the hill, again sporting our interesting outfits, just a bit more exhausted this time. This was definitely quite an experience!