The Full Blue Creek, Mt Owen

My mate Ira Lewis from the states had just arrived on the NZ leg of his year long international canyoning tour. We were aiming to start the festivities with some canyons up round Mt Owen.

We'd heard a couple of different bits of info about the access to Blue ck, from following an old and poorly marked entrance trail off the main track lower down, to hiking all the way to the top of the watercourse and doing the whole length.

Deciding that finding the old trail might be hit and miss and that the full trip would give us the whole canyon, we started up the track to Granity Hut not long after lunch on friday. Hearing the trip took about 4 hours or so, we were comfy that we'd move quickly and be out before dusk.

Took us 3 hours to get up to Ghost valley in hot weather to the drop in.

Climbing up the ridge towards Ghost Valley

Down canyon it was initially very dry, but had lots of neat little narrows, potholes and downclimbs to negotiate. Millions of midges also made the canyon thier home, so we had to choose when to breath in to avoid inhaling mouthfuls of the little critters.

Chucky and Ira enjoy the initial dry sections of canyon

On canyon right, a resurgence dumped water into the creek, turning it from virtually dry to flowing with wading pools and waterfalls. We were told the trip was 'mainly dry' so only took a little neoprene as a precaution. Now we were a little cold as raps through the waterfalls stole away our heat.

Time to get a little bit wet

Fortunately though, the water dissapeared underground again leaving us bemused but warm. The canyon upstream was characterised by sections of nice shallow slot, open v shaped watercourse and 'tree kaos' to bash through.

Above, we had huge limestone crags and walls to marvel at, but time was getting on a little so we were 'heads down' and moving quickly most of the time.


Just before dusk we spied some sort of track entrance, which we guessed was the 'normal entrance' for the canyon. Just downstream and under head torch, the canyon proper began.

Why go caving when you can go night canyoning?

There were some amazing narrows and about 15 or so short rappels. Despite being in the dark, it was incredibly beautiful. Thousands of glow worms hung on the walls as company. Most of the raps were down chockstones, debris and trees that had wedged and formed drops. Most were overhung and rather awkward. Some had bolts, others had nice tree wedges as natural anchorpoints.

One of the bolted drops, showing a little wear from flood waters

Further on we heard the rushing water of the Blue creek resurgence and were a little apphrehensive of what lay ahead. Fortunately, the narrows stopped apbruptly and there was a short section of more open down climbing before we arrived at the pool by the resurgence, very releived to be done.

Back at the campsite at 1am, we had a few beers and demolished a giant bag of corn chips whilst winding down from our adventure...