A beautiful and relatively easy West Coast River. Great for a cruisey day’s paddling, between hitting the Arawhata and Waiatoto. 😉
The Jackson would make a great and easy bike raft trip or of course you can hike, hitch (if you’re lucky!) or car to car paddle.
It has a great side trip up to Lake Ellery enroute. Another diversion is heading over Martyr Saddle and checking out Monkey Puzzle Gorge, also worth a look.
Thanks to Alan Swann for the pictures and info.
View Larger Topographic Map
Drive in
2km north of Haast township, take the Jacksons Bay Road at the Yellow petrol station and head south towards Jacksons Bay. It’s about a 20-30 mins drive from Haast to the Arawhata River bridge takeout, about 35-40km, then a further 12km on gravel road alongside the Jackson River. 45mins total drive time from Haast.
The Arawhata River bridge is the take out, leave your retrieve car at this location in the lay by on its south-west side and either bike, hike, hitch or drive up (2 cars/ retrieve driver) the Jackson River road towards Martyr Saddle.
We started about 500 metres north of `the Big bend` marked on the topo. It’s a roadside paddle so you could start at any point, Lindsay Flat or Teapot Flat are other obvious choices.
On the water
With a drop of only 80m over 12km and a relatively small catchment, the paddling is usually relaxing. Some short sections of grade 2 exist in the upper reaches around boulder gardens.
Large trees are the main hazard, some of which span the entire river. It is obvious that in spring or high flows, the upper reaches would be more continuous grade 2 and the hazards would require a lot more care. In March, in low flow , when we paddled it was predominately grade I with only one small grade II boulder garden near the top.
The rivers flow rate certainly picks up and is considerably more in the lower reaches with 22 small streams adding water as you paddle.
A side paddle upstream to Lake Ellery is definitely worth a look and gives a contrast to the Jackson. (Apparently, this is used by jet boaters so be aware of this hazard and also downstream from Island Flat where jetboaters access the Arawhata)
Once the river meets the Arawhata, The Jackson becomes a much larger volume river and runs for about 1-2k to the bridge.
Apres-paddle
Check out ‘The Craypot’ at Jackson Bay for awesome seafood by the sea.
It isn’t always open, the Hard Antler pub in Haast is a good plan B (burgers and beer).
Gauge
Visual. Look in the river as you head up the road. Easy as.
