14 Days Rafting the Franklin River

[alliecat]

I'm on leave till next Wednesday but if you send me a pm to remind me I can dig out the data from that site once I'm back at work.

Before the automatic gauge went in, hydrographers had to camp out at that hut and walk down to take multiple readings every day. They have some interesting stories usually involving lots of snow and dwindling supplies.

Cheers,
Alliecat

[north-north-west]

A fascinating read.

And rather scary to think how close we came to not having it to read about. You were very lucky to get out of there with only a few minor injuries between you.

[Son of a Beach]

Yes, it's certainly not the kind of thing to consider lightly. I refused the invitation the first few times because whitewater scared the crap out of me. Now that I've done the trip, whitewater still scares the crap out of me. But I would consider doing it again one day - hopefully a bit better prepared next time (mentally, at least).

[alliecat]

As promised, here's some data on the Franklin over the time that Nik and his friends were on the river.

franklin_at_fincham.png (12.59 KiB) Viewed 17571 times

The black line is the river level at the Mt Fincham track (where that helipad, sorry, "tent platform" is...). The red line is the cumulative rainfall. Things were pretty quiet on the river until that big rainfall even starting late on the 5th of Feb. You can see how fast the river rose by more than 2m. To put that peak of about 3.2m into context, it corresponds to a flow of about 90 cubic metres per second - that is, 90 thousand litres per second of water flowing down the river at that point. Downstream, the flow would have been greater!

So from Feb 6 on, it woulo dhave been much more "interesting" on the river. I'll have to go back an read the trip report in more detail now.

BTW, this is a great example of a typical tassie river - really fast level rise in response to rainfall and then a slow decay over several days. In lots of places (with deep or dry soil and porous underlying rocks), rivers rise much more sedately in response to rain. But not in Tas!

Cheers,
Alliecat

[Son of a Beach]

Wow! That's amazing. Thanks heaps for putting this together and posting it here, alliecat. It's very much appreciated.

I was wondering if I might have overestimated the levels by which the river rose, but it looks like our estimates were quite accurate and even a little less than what the real levels were (for both the first smaller rise of 40 cm while at the Irenabyss, and the much larger rise of 2.4 metres while at Rafters Basin). I guess that's because our rough measurements at those two points were taken at wider basins in the river, but the Fincham gauge is on a fairly normal narrower stretch of the river.

I reckon that immediate 3.2 metres must have been while we were alseep at Rafters Basin, and then the next day when we were rafting it must have been that gradual rise back up to 3.0 metres. Wow... we were complete loonies trying to raft that river at 2.7 - 3.0 metres!

I'd better add that graph to my blog report.

[alliecat]

You're welcome Nik. It is amazing - and somewhat frightening - when you see just how fast a river can rise. And when you have a feel for the volume of water that is flowing it gets even more scary and impressive. I think you guys were very brave doing that trip, but it was an amazing and very worthwhile experience I'm sure.

Hmm, might have to check the prices of the guided trips...

Cheers,
Alliecat

[mr majestik]

was just about to turn off the computer, then saw this thread and hated being at home and having to go to work this arvo i definately want to go.

[Nick S]

Great read Nik, thanks for taking the time to write it up. Just spent the last hour reading all the episodes..
Although my experience of white water is limited to to derby river darby races, I'd still love to do this one day.

[Son of a Beach]

Yeah, the Ringarooma River at Derby on a set of truck inner tubes with about a thousand other people had been my only experience of 'white' water up until the practice run for the Franklin. Mind you, that Derby River Derby is rather dangerous too. One of our team members suffered a rather horrendous injury in one of those Derbies.

[cjhfield]

Thanks for a great trip report Nik. I really enjoyed it. It brought back memories of my trip down the Franklin 30 years ago. The rafts you used look much longer than the ones we used and ours had no inflatable floor so we had to use a lilo . We had some damage to the floors - one was a split nearly the full length of the raft but they were easy to fix sewing them up and then gluing on a patch - no needing to be airtight it was never a big deal. We had no damage to the air tubes that I recall. We made our paddles much as you did but using marine ply and I think we used a paddle leash to stop them drifting away. Many of your hairy moments sound very familiar. I remember the campsite above the Cauldron was pretty minimal. We had flysheets to go over our lilos but the tree roots still left the surface pretty 3D. We were stuck there for a day when the river rose I guess a couple of metres. Some days were physically tough - I remember the slow going getting round rapids and I remember that high portage over Thunderrush which took I think 4 hours. But I think your description captures the fact that it was mentally and emotionally tough. All that problem solving and anxiety and self doubt. I remember the relief being spat out into (I think) the Mousehole ( is that now Rafters Basin?) and drifting in slow circles after an adrenalin filled roller coaster run after the rain.

I lived in my bib and brace wetsuit for 2 weeks. The one thing we did well was the food. We prepacked our meals in 3 heavy duty bags that I had made at a plastic bag place I found on one of my bicycle back streets in Sydney. The bags lasted me about a decade of bushwalking and ski trips. They were sealed with tape and everything for the nights meal was in the bag. One of us was a great cook and introduced me to the delights of Lup Chong - a sweet Chinese sausage - which has been the mainstay of my trips ever since. We cycled through 4 or 5 different meal bags but the Lup Chong went pretty early on. I think we had 3 weeks of food. The pile of gear at the Collingwood bridge was stunning.

You brought back a lot of good memories. Thank you.

Chris

[tas-man]

I have been catching up with forum posts and have just spent the last hour reading your trip blog from beginning to end. What a fantastic experience - and evocatively written up! Thanks Nic for sharing your story with its highs and lows.

[Son of a Beach]

I've spent some time migrating the blog articles of this trip report into a single PDF. It's now available for download at the link below.

It's 29 MB so will take a while to download. There's 75 pages of trip report including lots of photos.

Trip Report: 14 Days on the Franklin River - A Rafting Adventure Journal

[Travis22]

Really great read and what an adventure!!

I wasn't going to post up a trip report here as I didn't think anyone here would be interested or more to the point I thought someone would crack it with me posting a rafting trip report on a bushwalking forum

November 2013 some friends and I rafted the upper snowy river.

I can repost it here on this forum or if anyone is keen to check out my basic report with pics it's located here;

http://forums.overlander.com.au/viewtop ... 19&t=79659

Travis.

[Lizzy]

Great report Travis! I for one am always happy to read any type of wilderness trip & love the pack/rafting ones
Cheers
Lizzy

[Son of a Beach]

David, who was on this trip, has just self-published a book of his Franlkin River photos from our adventure and the (modified) text from my blog posts from our Franklin River rafting expedition. So it's co-authored between the two of us.

If anybody is interested, you can preview and buy the Franklin River Rafting Book at Blurb.

Because they are print-on-demand, rather than a bulk published edition, they are a not cheap. But David tells me that there is no mark up on them, so no profit is being made.

They would make great Christmas presents - I've bought a whole lot of them to give as presents.

David is an excellent photographer, and there are some great photos in the book. So it makes a great coffee table piece.

[Travis22]

Looks like a great book Nik, very nicely put together guys. Congrats.

Travis.

[Son of a Beach]

Thanks Travis. David's done most of the work. Apparently he's found a missing comma in the new Franklin River book. He's a bit annoyed about that.