Packrafting & Canyoning - Overland Track, Tasmania
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- Опубліковано 20 лют 2013
- A five day trip, from the Never Never in the Walls of Jerusalem, down the upper Mersey River through Cradle Mountain National Park. Tasmania, Australia.
Had wanted to do this trip for the past 6 years or so! Finally got to do it last summer with a great group of people. An absolutely awesome trip! The weather was perfect but unfortunately the river level was low - you can't have it both ways in Tassie.
The journey, pretty much a circuit, involved two days of walking in and then three days negotiating the river, waterfalls, rapids and canyons back to Lake Rowallan.
The trip included abseiling four major waterfalls - most of which are easily accessible along the internationally famous Overland Track. We also paddled some fun drops but nothing too serious. Despite the fact that the paddling looks fun the trip is more of a walk/canyoning trip than a full on paddling trip as a lot of sections of rivers are heavily inundated by fallen trees and timber.
Although we are pretty sure we are the first packrafters to descend the river, amazingly two kayakers (kayaking was my initial plan) had already completed it! Both the walk in and river/canyon trip would have been epic so huge kudos to them!!
Awesome music (no copyright infringements intended) by:
Empire Of The Sun - Walking on a Dream
Ou Est Le Swimming Pool - Dance the Way I Feel
Huge thanks to Alpacka Rafts for their support of this trip!
Enjoy!
That's a sweet trip!
Tassie ....probably the adventure tourism and mountain biking capital of Australia... My beautiful State...wouldn't live anywhere else....Thanks Mark for your amazing vids ...You nail it mate...
Mit dem Abseilen durch den Canyon ist die Tour ein richtiges Abenteuer. Die leichten Packrafts bieten sich hier natürlich an. Schöne Grüße ronactive
holy-shit-balls that scene with the abseiling and the packrafts below is so cool
Cool vid....about to get my first seyvlor inflatable.....
Oh, that is so awesome!
Guys you are nuts! Completly! ;)
Fernando Paiva da Silva 😁
Looks epic! So good.
Epic!
This is the Tasmania I wanna see!
Hi Mark. love the video! Just wondering what level you would say the river was for the majority of the trip? Thanks!
Hi Ella. Thanks. I assume you mean level of difficultly such as the whitewater grade of the river. It is a really hard one to give it a single grade. The vast majority of the trip saw us wading in the river and climbing over and under trees rather than actual paddling. Going through the waterfall sections is technically quite challenging if you opt to use ropes and abseil down them however you can actually walk around the falls. There were a couple of grade 3+ drops/gorges but most of the paddling is much easier than this. Although the paddling is not hard the actual trip is pretty committing and there is a lot of potential for it to be dangerous if the river is up at all. Likewise if the river is too low it would make for a very challenging and non-enjoyable trip. Hope this helps. Cheers
Hi Mark, just want to ask, is this a commercial tour? If so, do you have a website for more info?
Hi Shimon. Unfortunately not. It is simply a packrafting trip with experienced friends. It was in fact the first major trip I did once I moved to Tasmania and one I had been researching for many years prior to completing it. I was actually back at these waterfalls this week with my secondary school students whilst walking the Overland Track as I am an Outdoor Education Teacher. A couple of times a year I run packrafting courses for Paddle Tasmania which is a non-profit organisation that promotes paddling in Tasmania and Australia. You can check out their website: tas.paddle.org.au/ although we haven't released the dates for the second half of 2018 yet. I run a website called: packraftingtasmania.com.au however this site is purely focused on promoting safety and education as well as the sport of packrafting and Tasmania. Let me know though if you head to Tassie to packraft.
Mark Oates Thanks so much for the reply, Mark. This May I paddled with Ben from Australia here in Japan and he told me about you. Very interested in visiting Tasmania in the near future!
I look forward to paddling with you sometime - either here or in Japan. Perhaps you might like to come over for a 3-day advanced packrafting course that I will be co-running in October? We won't be abseiling down any waterfalls but hopefully we will paddle some small ones :)