THE HOLY GRAIL OF PACKRAFTING THE HOLLYFORD-PYKE CIRCUIT

"The main rafting challenges of the Hollyford River are navigating the logjams and occasional class II rapids."

The pack-raft wasn’t built for two.

It was sturdy, exceedingly buoyant, and had lots of room - for one person. But a slit had been cut in Eva’s raft after she’d floated down a section of river with hidden knives just under the surface.

With only a short stretch to the next hut, she simply jumped onto the front of my raft, the most shatterproof of the bunch.

There was blessed little drama for a while. Eva sat facing upstream, gazing at the serenity of Fiordland as I navigated the river. It didn’t need much navigating beyond avoiding logjams, a consequence of the extreme weather that has shaped the most rugged part of New Zealand.

Then, the hairpin rapid. Just beyond it was a tree so gargantuan it could be classified as a unique species all its own. It was half-submerged and on its side, creating a maze of spindly branches just above the surface. I had naively come to believe in my abilities to control the raft through sheer willpower. This didn’t work very well. We pretty much drifted straight into the massive