Packrafting the Narcissus River
In March 2026, Col and I took Manuka up to Lake St Clair for a week to sail around the lake and do a few walks and things while we were there. On the 21st we decided to visit Narcissus Bay and explore the Narcissus River by packraft.
The Stats
- Water level: No known gauge
- Grade: 1
- Distance: 3.6km (traveling upstream and back from the jetty in the river mouth)
- Time: 2hrs 20mins
Location
The Narcissus River flows into the northern end of Lake St Clair in central Tasmania and is a feature of Tasmania's Overland Track, with a suspension bridge crossing the river just prior to reaching Narcissus Hut, which is the end of the track for many who choose to get the ferry service across the lake back to Cynthia Bay.
Colin crossing the suspension bridge in April 2017 when we hiked the Overland Track
The River
Our original plan had been to hike up the Overland Track and raft back down the river, but looking at aerial photos, the river looked like it was probably pretty dry just downstream of the suspension bridge, despite the volume of water we remembered at the bridge location itself. As a result, we decided to paddle up the river to see how far we could get.
After tying Manuka up at the jetty (hopefully out of the way of the ferry) we set off upstream. The river near the jerry has a deep channel, but very quickly we could see this disappeared, with large trees sitting on the bottom meaning it would have been impassable with a bigger boat.
We were able to paddle this without issue, but soon encountered small grade 1 rapids that we we were unable to paddle, mostly due to there simply not being enough flow. We dragged the rafts up these and continued on, regularly dragging over rapids as we progressed upstream.
We only made it 1.8km upstream before we got sick of the portaging, meaning we stopped about 400m short of the suspension bridge.
But on the return journey, we did manage to paddle down some of the rapids we had dragged up.
In all, it was an enjoyable day out and a very pleasant part of the world to explore. After rain, I'd expect the river would be paddle-able from the suspension bridge down, with a very gentle grade and some pleasant grade 1 rapids – although a reasonable short trip.