Highest drop 28m
Public access
6-7hrs
Plenty of variety: high jumps, low technical jumps, perfect slides, back to back absiels and beautiful narrows.
Thanks to the NZCA Canyon Fund for upgrades to the anchors in this canyon.
Guidebook updates:
Several additional bolted anchors, handlines, marked tracks and KML GPS data for the approach: see the March 2025 topo for all the changes.
Finally able to give Mather the maintenance it deserves!
Huge thanks to Nola, Grant, James, Aaron & Darran for the big effort today. Spent 4 hours marking and clearing the approach route. Its not ‘perfect’ but it is pretty well marked now. See the topo for a GPX and more detailed description.
If you are heading in, please consider packing a few folding saws and keeping the ladder fern down: the more people following (and clearing) the track, the more we keep any canyoner impacts isolated to the one route!
Also did a load of upgrades to the anchors. Everything is now double bolted unlinked ring hangers. There’s a couple of re-established anchors and new handline anchors: you can stick entirely to the watercourse now, without having to bypass to natural anchors on the rim 🙂
14 bolts, and 29 hangers added, 3 bad bolts angle grinded off, 15 rusty mailions taken out and many metres of sling! What a big day!
Unfortunately, in the lower section, some of the retrievals were quite difficult (with rope friction). Be very careful with how you thread the ropes and do a test-pull before you send the last person down! You might need to pull from certain angles with 2x people to get it moving in some situations…
Hopefully next season we can get in and adjust those anchor configurations with extended chain stations…
But for now, go get it… Its better condition than it ever has been!
Amazing canyon! The slides near the start are excellent, and there are some great jumps too. On the walk in, we managed to follow the pink markers most of the way, with only a couple of slight detours.
It’s quite different from the more popular routes, which have commercial set ups. This one feels a bit more natural, with natural raps and the condition of the slinging mentioned in Dan’s last report, meaning you have to use your brain a bit more! The anchor bolts are still all in place and it is still very runnable.
The cord on the first rap looked a bit sun-kissed, so we used retrievable rapels. The cord on the second natural anchor looked okay, but we also set up retrievable rapels there.
It was a reasonably long day, so be prepared. But it was a great day out! We had an awesome time floating down the Haast River with the view of Mt. Hooker afterwards, what a great feeling. We were also super lucky with the great weather and lower flows!
Had good intentions on doing some maintenance, but a few unforeseen delays meant we didn’t have enough time to do much!
Replaced some webbing, and a couple of millions for nice ring hangers. Still a fair bit of work needed in Mather, but the canyon is still able to be descended with the current gear in place.
If you are replacing webbing, make sure you do it right! Remember to thread the webbing through the top hanger and the lower RING. When tying the knot, make it as tight as possible, so that the ring seems to be pulled upwards (ie the ‘WRONG’ direction) so that when you actually load the ring, the webbing knot will tighten but still load both the ring and the top hanger more equally. A lot of the webbing we replaced wasn’t sharing the load between bolts at all..
Finally, make sure the tail of the knot is used to ‘pad’ the webbing on the hanger. If you do, the webbing connection gets 15kN, if you don’t, only 8kN… See here for more info https://overtheedgerescue.com/canyoning/webbing-in-hangers/
Interesting trip, I did the R8 14m jump, landed incorrectly and concussed myself to the point of not remembering much of the middle section of canyon. Huge thanks to the gang of Phoebe, Bree, Jemma, Rob and Grace for getting me out of there safely.
All anchors in good condition, but when we were at R7, we watched a massive tree fall from TR across the base of the R6 TL pitch where we had been standing just 2min before pulling rope.
It fell low enough in the creek to not have affected the R6 anchors, but the landing ledge and small jump are likely be full of debris, and it’s likely the cliff above on TR remains unstable.
all anchors functional including trees/chockstones/webbing (backed up a couple but they held ok)
approach pink tape was very helpful every 5m or so on the traverse section, where there isn’t really a clear track/footpad (after climbing various branched footpads on spurs of least resistance)
Walk in was a bush bash, found pink markers closer to the entrance. Descent was good, the R3 anchor could do with swapping out for well placed bolts, However descent is still possible. Great trip, the lower section is definitely the highlight of the descent
Everything is looking great, -R3 has a singular bolt which is fine, you can just down climb it aswell if you’re able enough.
Replaced a bolt at R14 (start of C section).
Decided to slide R16, which was really fun and a fast steep slide.
Slightly higher flow than last time I was in. The access track is poorly marked and we spent as much time bush bashing as we did following the intermittent pink markers.
Replaced the webbing on a number of anchor stations. 1x new bolt on R3 (TR above old bolt holes) it could do with a second bolt but we didn’t put one in as it would be good to have a proper anchor station (chain) so didn’t want to put the second bolt in the wrong place. One of the bolts on R5 is loose and just spins when trying to tighten.
Mather could definitely do with some love from a keen crew to replace some bolts and maybe put proper steel anchor stations in.
Next team who knows how to properly replace the webbing linking the anchors should take 15m of sling to do the job. Quite a few of the bits of webbing are in dire need of replacement (recognized some from 5 years ago….)
R3 anchors are completely ripped by a flood. A new set could go nicely on the huge boulder, right of center. Scramble down on the TR wall to a nice stance. Room for a good DBA on the mossy top surface of the boulder, with good lines of absiel, no rope rub and easy retrieval!
The trees on the TL won’t last forever (small ones near the edge!)
Big tree fell in on R4, but its not too much of a problem if you stay TL of it.
There’s trees down in the line of the R6 pitch. Would be a bit ugly in high water, but easy in normal or less water..
A huge slip came in from the TL near the end of the middle section, pretty impressive to see, but didn’t effect the canyon.
A few anchors looking a big worse for wear, but nothing that stops a descent… If you feel generous and have some 10mm stainless ring hangers, there’s a few rusty maillions which ought to be changed out!
Classic canyon for sure, a bit of TLC will keep it awesome!
A crew replaced the damaged bolt in early january
Update from Boulvert Renaud 14 December 2019.
One of the bolts on R7 has been damaged and was removed. If you have the skills and equipment to replace that bolt to create a suitable 2-bolt anchor, please do so!
Update from Ben Ellis, March 2019.
J 6m btween R6 and R7 (upper section): We believe a small section of the canyon has fallen in. A few large rocks are visible from a small slip out of the photo on TR. Anchors all OK but J 6m was shallow (more of a down climb).
– R14: Top bolt spinning in hole