Top Ten Rivers in Tasmania - Upper Wilmot River

The Upper Wilmot is possibly the most brutal, difficult and most committing river in Tasmania (in my opinion). The only river that would match it might be the Dove Canyon, which I haven’t personally paddled.

This is an easily accessible river that has only ever been paddled twice, for very good reason.

Where the Lea and the Iris rivers meet at Lake Gairdner, the water is diverted by pipeline through the mountain into the dams of the Forth River. From the Wilmot dam the usually dewatered Wilmot River travels roughly 30km downstream to Spellman’s Bridge.

These 30 km feature numerous long, committing and extremely difficult rapids, most with serious consequences. The rock is very sharp and scratchy and the river is pushy and difficult. The vast majority of these rapids are walled in with extremely high cliffs and are impossible to portage and extremely difficult to scout.

That being said, the huge cliffs and the committing nature give this river a really awesome feel, if you can get onto it you should, it’s amazing.

You need approximately a foot of water going over the dam to paddle this river. From the start the river quickly hits the first gorge. Get through this and keep on pushing to the second gorge, because that’s where you’re going to spend most of the day. The very last rapid in the gorge has a massive boulder in the centre that you need to get to via a dodgy eddy to scout. Below this the river mellows somewhat, although there are still some very good grade 4 rapids and there starts to be a lot of trees starting to grow in the river (it rarely flows after all). The good thing is that there is almost no wood in the main gorge and everything is paddleable.

If you get to do this river, allocate AT LEAST 8 hours on the water, if you get in trouble out there it would be almost impossible to get out and often when you can it’s on the side of the river that is much further away from everything. Take a strong crew and have fun!

(If I’ve talked this river up a bit, it’s because you can’t afford to take it lightly, don’t get on the river at 3 in the afternoon and think you’ll get through, it’s never going to happen, we pushed REALLY hard and still took nearly 7 hours.)

http://www.loungefilms.com.au/kayaker/explore/displayimage.php?album=search&cat=0&pos=13

The Loungekayaker website seems to have been replaced by some prick´s personal business website, but this used to be a link to some photos on there.

http://www.webspawner.com/users/billshep/wilmotriverwalk.html guide to walking into sections of the gorge

Cheers

Harry