50m

Private land: permission required

The upper section has a very scenic gorge section with a couple of nice deep pools to jump into before the creek loses most of its elevation in an abrupt series of falls that required some technical anchor placement to descend, the largest being 50m. After this it is about 100m scramble to the deepest bluest pool of them all and a 10m jump from TR into the one you can peek into from the bottom.

Lake Creek would be worth doing if A) you had run the neighbour, Green Gully Creek the day before and happened to be in the area and B) it wasn’t unfortunately choked to death by Didymo.

The team spied more quality gorge upstream and attempted an approach but were continually bluffed out, so this is still up for grabs.

This canyon is on private land. Permission must be given by land owners before attempting this canyon via hvfarmingco@gmail.com. Drive to the base of Lake Creek along 4X4 track on TR Hunter River. On NZ topo maps, there is a trail on TR that leads to the Lake upstream. This trail is almost non-existent but follows the path of least resistance (which would likely be found regardless) to a steep ridge bordering the canyon. You want to hit it at about 600m, find a weakness and descend down to about 550m where you will meet the creek. There is no way to walk in to the creek as it is bluffed out so find a clean line to rappel in. We went in off a tree were in at about 520m.

There are many escapes from the watercourse but no escapes from the drainage until at least the top of the last 10m waterfall. It would likely be easier to just descend this and have an easy swim out than to bush bash around.

Catchment size: 17km

FD team: Peter Choate, Taylor Redd, Koro Toro, Luis Gonclaves, Kaden Anderson, Feb 2019