The best skill isn’t how to cross a river, it’s knowing when not to cross
Looking at large rivers is mesmerising. The constantly-changing surface pattern occasionally interrupted by a breaking wave, while just below the surface the water relentlessly pushes itself down valley. Looking at sizable rivers you need to get across is even more absorbing as you try your best to read the best line, where the current might be most forceful and where the footing is too uneven. In fine weather, river crossings are generally straightforward – at some point there’s usually a weakness where it fans out to become shallow and slow enough. But with a bit of rain things can quickly change. Recently I made my way up over Kellys Stream, near Arthur’s Pass, before crossing over to the Taipo River via Hunts Creek and the Dry Creek Tops. What started out as a lovely day ended with me holed up in Julia Hut in heavy nor’west rain. Never mind. I was soon soaking in the nearby hot pool, checking out a pair of fantails swooping about on the other side of the gorge. That night it bucketed down. The river came up quickly and flooded the hot pools. It didn’t matter – I dug a bigger hot pool higher up the bank before soaking away most of the day in it. By evening the valley was in full flood. There was no prospect of heading over to the Wilberforce. Even the swingbridge was impossible to cross, as Mary Creek raged all around the bridge’s northern anchors. Perfect weather returned the next day, but the rivers were still too flooded to carry on. So it wasn’t until after three nights at Julia Hut that, right on dawn, I could head away. Just as another nor’wester was kicking in. On Whitehorn Pass the wind and the rain were raging again. Down in the valley the Cronin Stream was filling fast, forcing me to hug the west bank before I could pick up the last section of track that leads to the Canterbury Mountaineering Club’s Park Morpeth Hut. I arrived utterly drenched and just in time to escape the really heavy downpours. Walls of water were hurled in waves against the hut and the noise, interspersed with the thunder, was phenomenal. The weather forecasters say around 400-500mm of rain fell in one 24-hour block. And for the next four nights I was marooned at the hut by raging rivers and successive fronts. I spent the days walking the banks trying to read in the flow the best spots to cross. I tried to imagine what the footing behind this boulder or that would be like and also placed cairns on the river’s edge to measure how much it might be dropping. [caption id="attachment_34245" align="aligncenter" width="1280"]