Kaumira Canyon, Hunters Hills, Sth Canterbury

After one of Grant’s students at a SARINZ course mentioned some ‘beautiful waterfalls’ at Mt Nimrod reserve, he emailed me a photo of the drops.

I just so happened to be down that way for work in a couple of weeks so suggested we meet up and do the waterfalls for a bit of fun after work one night.

We met at the Hunters Hills under a cold grey drizzle and wondered what we were thinking. “Just a couple of 10m drops not far from a good track.. We’ll just take a couple of 25m cords.. we’ll be sweet..”

Solid bedrock looks promising...

The first little drop

An hour later we had reached the solid bedrock of the stream above the top falls. We hadn’t really expected anything else up there, but were pleasantly surprised by a handful of small obstacles that we rappelled, slid, jumped and scrambled around.

Grant enjoys a tiny slide


Scrambling down into a shallow pool

Beginning the double leap Arch waterfall

Arch Anchor

Grant had estimated the double drop fall to be about 15-20m high, but with a pair of 25m cords we were about 6m short of the bottom. Instead we rappelled to the curious arch halfway and used that as our rebelay for the bottom half. With a longer set of ropes, you’d have the chance for a rather unique rappel through an arch…

From the base of the falls we wandered a short distance to the crossing point of the Mt Nimrod Track. We weren’t expecting anything much down stream, so planned to just wander back to the cars via the watercourse as an alternative to sweating back over the hill.

We were rather surprised then, when a few minutes rockhopping later we arrived at the top of a lovely waterfall that lept into a very large deep green pool! Time was getting on, so we agreed to leave it and come back in a couple of days. I couldn’t resist going down for a look, so set a line to rap and jug back up on.

Top drop in Lower Kaumira Canyon

Returning for the lower half of the trip we were filled with excitement. The drops were all very beautiful and arrived in large deep pools. In several spots the rope could be rigged for “extra fun”, ie to access ledges to jump or rigged short so as to slide the lower half of some smooth drops.

This waterfall can be slid from where the canyoner is shown

Grant aims for the safe landing zone between the rocks and tree branches

There wasn’t much walking between drops, but there were a

nice handful of little jumps and slides into pretty pools.

Chucky sets off to Rap Slide the last major drop

The last major drop from below

A small bumpy slide to finish..

The gorge ended pretty suddenly, but we only had 15 minutes of rock hopping before reaching a 4WD track that lead back to the Carpark..

A fantastic beginners canyon, not too much water, not hard to get to, short beautiful drops and easy natural anchors..