IF PADDLING TURQUOISE RIVERS in unspoiled wilderness is what floats your boat, then New Zealand’s western South Island (AKA West Coast) may be the best destination for your next packrafting adventure. The region is a world-class packrafting and whitewater kayaking destination with around 1,000km of paddle-able waterways.
The West Coast offers everything from short whitewater trips, where you can fit in two or three different runs a day with a coffee in between, to multi-day wilderness adventures. There are Grade 1 float journeys through to Grade 4+ trips requiring a great deal of teamwork and river skills, pushing the limits of what’s possible in a packraft.
The area has the highest rainfall in New Zealand, with over 130mm per hour being recorded in the Hokitika Catchment. It contains a large chunk of the Southern Alps, and 86% of the region is public conservation land. There is a plethora of trips—tramps and rivers that can be linked up into classic packrafting trips. This is a guide to some of the best.
WHEN TO GO
The best time of year for packrafting here is during the warmer months between January and April. The rivers are lower and less pushy, and the days longer and, for the West Coast at least, balmier. Winter months (May to early September) are wet and cold. Moreover, the opportunities are more limited in winter due to high water levels and, let’s be honest, packrafting on cold, short days just isn’t much fun.
September to December (spring) offers windows for packrafting between a seemingly never-ending series of wet westerly fronts coming off the Tasman Sea. Water levels are likely to be
