Abel Tasman Canyons office manager, Camille Visser, attends the 2018 Canyoning Festival in Nelson Lakes. This a blog of her personal experience.
“The canyoning festival was held in Nelson Lakes over four days, which I was lucky enough to be able to attend two of them. I arrived just after 8am on Saturday morning to find everyone gathered in a group at the local town hall in St Arnold. As I listened to the introductions given by the organisers I quickly realised this way of canyoning was going to be very different to the commercial trips I had been on. Instructions were given to us that we as individuals were responsible for ourselves and even though we would have ‘trip leaders’ it was up to us to ensure our own safety. This filled me with a little fear and a huge amount of excitement.
