'There was no plan' - 100 days in Fiordland exploring new rivers

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Three Kiwis went off-grid, paddling, hiking and fishing for kai to sustain them. The footage they captured of the adventure is now an award-winning film.

Nine to Noon

17 June 2026

5 min read

Nine to Noon

17 June 2026

5 min read

Caption:The Hiddleston/MacQueen Award for Best NZ-Made Film, along with $2,500 in prize money, was awarded to Dan Sutherland for 100 Days in Fiordland.Photo credit:© Dan Sutherland

Going whitewater hunting in one of the most remote parts of the country might seem like a massive logistical undertaking.

But Dan Sutherland, one of a trio of men who did just that, says once they arrived, they basically winged it.

Sutherland, along with Ethan Roadley and Daymon Nuhaj, set off in Autumn 2024 and spent 100 days off-grid - paddling, hiking, fishing and filming the adventure.

100 days in Fiordland

Nine To Noon

“We had no real plan. The plan was no plan,” Sutherland told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.

Sutherland has turned the footage into 100 Days in Fiordland which won Best New Zealand Made Film Award at this years' Mountain Film Festival.

Once they had their sea and whitewater kayaks in situ, the group improvised their way through the next 100 days, he says.

The trip almost went off the rails at the first hurdle.

Starting off in Lake Hauroko they paddled down the Wairaurāhiri River to the coast where they met “sub-optimal” conditions, Sutherland says.

“We had to kind of punch out the river mouth bar at the Wairaurāhiri and it was quite punchy surf and so getting out of there we kind of got hammered a little bit.”

What followed was an arduous eight-hour sea kayak into a 20-knot headwind.

Sutherland had little kayaking experience, let alone sea kayaking. His body was “ruined”, he says.

“I was flattened, like my legs were jelly getting out just because I hadn't used, them my arms were cooked… that was probably one of the hardest physical days I've ever had.”

Burning through all those calories meant gathering their own kai on the journey, he says.

“We didn't get a crazy amount of crayfish but a lot of blue cod we had pretty much blue cod every day.”

They went too hard on the food supplies early, he says.

“We ran out of everything and then we just had salt and blue cod and it was like, oh this is pretty average but it's not too bad, then we ran out of salt… this is actually quite grim - like saltless fish is not that great as it turns out.”

At the next food drop they rationed more carefully.

“We got a bit excited in the first month I think just kind of smashed all our food reserves but definitely when you have to go out fishing even if it's raining and whatnot and cooking over the fire there's something pretty, pretty cool about it.”

Co-adventurer, Nuhaj, died in a later kayaking accident on the Milford Sound. Putting together the film, watching footage of his mate, was difficult, Sutherland says.

“That kind of killed the motivation for staring at endless hours of well just him and the whole trip and everything and I just didn't really know what I was making anymore.”

But he pushed on with the project.

“Just committing to doing it seems to be the hardest part and then if you go and get amongst it, day to day it's often not that bad or maybe hour to hour. That was one thing, and it still annoys me now, after going through that…like just go do more hard things.”

The Mountain Film and Book Festival runs from 19 June – 26 June 26 Wanaka and Queenstown, and online from 24 June through to 31 July. For a full list and where to view visit mountainfilm.nz.

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