Access up the true right, to a short but spectacular canyon on the edge of the Milford Track. A large catchment, very high rainfall an extremely deep canyon make this a very very serious proposition.
Giants Gate Topo – quick notes
Start @ 200m contour at mouth of canyon
5m DC on TR to shallow pool
25m R on TL (1 bolt) to deep pool
50m swim
DC?
50m walk – shallow water
5m R on TL (webbing)
50m scramble/walk
5m DC on TL or 2m J on TR into deep pool
7m DC on TL
50m scramble
8m R on TL (webbing)
*Helicopter extraction*
Possible escape route on TR
100m scramble
Next drop, bolts ripped out from 1st descent. We didn’t explore past this section. From here it got slotty and committing again.
We reckon there was about 1/3 of the canyon left to go, with 1 or 2 more drops before the ‘final drop’ that the kayakers did.
Rachel Jones, from April 2022 partial descent during SAR operation.
First canyon descent by Alain Rohr, Second canyon descent in April 2022 by Wanaka Canyon SAR team during a search operation for a missing tramper.
The final drop has been kayaked (!) with the first descent in 2013 by Dylan Thomson, Shannon Mast, Justin Venable and Robert Hervey:
Since then it has been kayaked a handful of times:
April 2022 Descent, (Roy Bailey, Dave Lundin, Alain Rohr, Rachel Jones)
According to Alain, lots has changed in this canyon since the first descent in 2007. No bolts remained from the trip!.
This trip was at the end of a particularly dry summer, so water levels were very low for the canyon, but still a moderate flow overall. The main water hazard was the 25m waterfall, but we didn’t explore the last 1/3 of the canyon so can’t comment on the rest of it.