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Packrafting in New Zealand

New Zealand treats river journeys as national infrastructure. The Whanganui Journey is a Great Walk you paddle rather than walk: multiple days of green gorge and mist on the North Island, with DOC huts and campsites giving the trip its shape.

8 trip guides

The beach and turquoise water of Wainui Bay, Abel Tasman National Park, New ZealandNZKrzysztof Golik, CC BY-SA 4.0

Abel Tasman by packraft: walk the track, paddle the calm

Abel Tasman National Park sits at the top of New Zealand's South Island, where a long coast of golden sand beaches and granite headlands runs between Marahau and Wainui Bay. The Abel Tasman Coast Track follows the whole of it, a Great Walk that moves between forested ridges and sea-level flats, crosses estuaries on the tide and reaches beaches with no road access. Sea kayaks and guided operators have worked this coastline for decades. A packraft plays a different and narrower part here. It rides in the pack, comes out in the calmest inshore corners on the right morning, and always sits second to the track under your feet.

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Lake Taupō, New Zealand, with Mount Ruapehu and the central plateau mountains beyondNZQFSE Media, CC BY-SA 3.0 nz

Packrafting Lake Taupō

Lake Taupō fills a volcanic caldera in the centre of the North Island of New Zealand. It is the largest lake in the country, fed by the Tongariro River and other streams from the south and drained by the Waikato River at the town of Taupō, with the volcanoes of Tongariro National Park on the southern skyline.

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Lake Wānaka from the town beach at Wānaka, with snow-capped mountains beyondNZKrzysztof Golik, CC BY-SA 4.0

Packrafting Lake Wānaka

Lake Wānaka is a long, deep glacial lake in the Otago high country, ringed by mountains, with the town of Wānaka on its southern shore. The Makarora and Matukituki rivers feed it, and the Clutha Mata-Au drains it from an outlet near Albert Town. On a still morning it offers big-country paddling within walking distance of a café.

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The Buller River near Murchison, running through forested hills in the Tasman RegionNZKrzysztof Golik, CC BY-SA 4.0

Packrafting the Buller River

The Buller River, Kawatiri, flows out of Lake Rotoiti in Nelson Lakes National Park and runs west past Murchison, through the Buller Gorge, to the Tasman Sea at Westport. It is one of the South Island's best-known whitewater rivers, and Murchison sits at the centre of a whole network of rivers paddled by kayakers and rafters.

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The braided gravel channels of the Motueka River at Tapawera, Tasman, New ZealandNZFrank Exchange, CC BY-SA 4.0

Packrafting the Motueka River

The Motueka River runs north through the Tasman region of the South Island, from the hills south of Tapawera down a long farmed valley to Tasman Bay at Motueka. It is a clear, gravel-bedded river, braided in places and lined with willows, with long gentle reaches between the riffles.

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Lake Karapiro on the Waikato River, with the Maungatautari Road bridge and small islandsNZUlrich Lange, Bochum, Germany, CC BY-SA 4.0

Packrafting the Waikato River

The Waikato River is New Zealand's longest river. It leaves Lake Taupō, runs north through a chain of hydro lakes, flows past Cambridge and Hamilton, and reaches the Tasman Sea at Port Waikato. For a packraft, the interest lies in the hydro lakes such as Lake Karapiro and the broad, steady reaches around Cambridge and Hamilton.

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The Clutha River running blue through the Upper Clutha Valley, Central OtagoNZLewis Verduyn-Cassels, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Clutha River: big, fast, cold

The Clutha Mata-Au is New Zealand's highest-volume river and the country's second longest. It drains Lake Wanaka in Central Otago and runs south through the high country to the coast below Balclutha, covering hundreds of kilometres on its way to the Pacific. The water is glacier-blue, cold every month of the year, and moves fast almost everywhere. From a bridge or a hillside it looks serene. From a hull on the surface it is something else entirely.

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The Whanganui River winding through bush between Pipiriki and Jerusalem, New ZealandNZPrankster, CC0

The Whanganui Journey with a packraft

The Whanganui Journey is one of New Zealand's Great Walks, and it is not a walk at all. You travel the Whanganui River by paddle, through Whanganui National Park on the North Island, across several days of green gorge, mist and continuously moving water. The DOC hut and campsite network along the river gives the trip structure without stripping out the wilderness. Few multi-day river journeys anywhere are this carefully managed and this convincingly remote.

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About paddling in New Zealand

In the south, Abel Tasman pairs a coastal Great Walk with calm estuary corners a packraft can reach on the right morning, tides permitting. The Clutha Mata-Au is the counterweight: the highest-volume river in the country, glacier-blue, cold in every month and faster than it looks from the bank. Bookings, hut passes and cold-water planning do more for a New Zealand trip than any piece of gear, because water here is colder than the latitude suggests. A Seeka suits the huts-and-camps flat water. The big braided rivers deserve experience.

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