Melanie and I spent a lovely wet three days packrafting down the Colo River in NSW, Australia.
The trip was a bit of a gamble since we knew a cyclone was bearing down on NSW and bringing with it heavy rains. Melanie and I figured if we played our cards right we might get some initial higher water with the early rains that came before the main force of the storm hit the Colo basin. Yeah, right!
Well as it turns out we had a low water float for all three days and rain for two of those days. A few hours after we got off the Colo it spiked from .6 meters to 16 meters! It would have been some
miserable portages and bush bashing if we were on the river in that high of water.
I ignored a few basic rules of river adventuring 1) Don't try to predict how much rain will fall 2) It's always better to boat a river on descending flood waters 3) Don't be on rivers when a cyclone is predicted to dump record amounts of rain. Despite the low water we still had a great time on the river and not surprisingly we saw no one else on the river in the three days. Proof that there are still smart people in this world.
All photos shot on my itsy, bitsy Sony RX100 camera, cool.
Nice work Bill!
If it was the same rain event I'm thinking, there may have been a couple of packrafters not far behind you.
Sounds like they got out just as the surge started to hit!
Lovely river.
Posted by: Darren M | March 03, 2013 at 11:37 PM