Over troubled WATERS
When your boots are bone dry, it’s easy to underestimate a river.
Terra firma is familiar, safe, and on the opposite bank there is plenty more of it; a tempting path all the way to the carpark, fresh clothes, and that much-discussed post-tramp feed.
Water is pliant, giving, fun – how dangerous can it be?
Oftentimes deceptively innocuous, any river crossing carves a question mark into a tramper’s plans, because just as 90 per cent of an iceberg sits below the surface, a river’s dangerous secrets are mostly submerged.
Consider that every litre of water is equal to one kilogram of mass and that every time a river’s flow doubles in speed, it quadruples in force. Very quickly, you’re dealing with a liquid locomotive.
As a longtime tramper and one of New Zealand’s most experienced canyoners, Dan Clearwater is well acquainted with rivers and treats them with a healthy respect.
In all his years tramping, he recalls just one instance of being swept away in a murky Ruahine river – an incident he and his tramping mate were experienced
