Rakaia River Gorge

Last Monday on our way to Mt. Hutt we stopped and had a picnic lunch on the banks of the Rakaia River. This river has its headwaters in the Southern Alps not too far from Mt. Hutt. This first picture shows the braided pattern of the river as it meanders through the extremely flat Canterbury Plains toward the east coast of the South Island. The river was flowing fairly low – about what I remember the Merced River looking like in late June. Ben and Mark talked about how much fun it would be to kayak in the river and play in the small rapids. A much larger amount of water clearly flows through this reach of the river at other parts of the year, judging by the size of the gorge. The floor of the valley is swept clean of most plant life and there is a very even distribution of rocks similar in size to those we found at Birdling’s Flat. The perfect size and shape for skimming on the flat parts of the water. I imagined my brothers slipping on some waders to test some of the pools for trout. Signs near the trail mentioned that brown and rainbow trout could be found in the waters.

We heard a number of birds in the bush around our picnic spot. One little Fantail flitted about for quite a while, but I could never capture him with the camera. Before getting back in the car and heading up to Mt. Hutt, I had Mark take this family portrait. Can you tell who is who?