Easter Tramping Trip!

G’day all! I’m going to attempt to keep this one shorter as sometimes I get a bit too wordy and it takes too long to read the entries. I left you with promises of more exciting adventures to read about so here it goes.

First, new words I’m learning:

Whinging: complaining

“Sweet as” and “good as gold”: yup sounds good, general acknowledgement that you understand and compliance of directions will be attempted

pugging: when a grazing paddock is muddy or has been chewed down far enough that the stalks are to the ground.

Equally, the Brits are starting to use ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ because of me. YESSSS!!!

Laura, one of the British locum vets, and I had planned to head off for a tramp for the long Easter weekend. They give you Friday and Monday off of work here for Easter so a good opportunity to go on one of the many many multi-day tramps that New Zealand is famous for. Another vet we work with is a tramping guru and was very excited to give us maps and directions for a 3 day tramp. He was very excited to send us out and I think over estimated our abilities a bit. I think we overestimated our abilities.

We set out on the Cameron River bed, a glacial fed river that is quite cold, near Lake Heron in the Southern Alps. The first day was a 17km hike through the river bed, and up over a bluff where the river gorge was impassable. We started out layered up but quickly realized it wasn’t going to be a cold journey with all the walking and heavy packs. About mid-day we decided shorts and t-shirts were more appropriate. This being my first multi-day backpacking trip ever, I was still trying to figure out what I needed to bring and what could be left behind. However the bottle of wine Laura brought and the bottle of hard cider I had was deemed necessary. There’s always an excuse to carry alcohol. It was also weight we could diminish as the days went by. The walk was quite easy at first, zig-zagging amongst the bramble trees and rocky river bed, dodging the cow poos. That is one thing about New Zealand tramps, they are usually contained within somebody’s pasture land or grazing station so you just have to close gates as you open them and walk through varying species of animal feces.

After lunch, and 4 hours of walking our feet were getting hot and sore, since we spend most of our days in gum boots ( rubber boots) or sitting in the clinic. So seeing the refreshing glacier river next to us we stopped for a foot spa and lunch. In reality it was so cold that you could dip your foot in for about three seconds before it went numb and painful. But after roasting in hiking boots and 27 C (80 F) heat, if felt damn good. I know, I’m whinging about 80 degrees, but hey hot feet are hot feet.

Now, technically we did have topographical maps, and had I paid more attention 8 years ago when the Irish were explaining to me how to read topo maps, we wouldn’t have missed the ‘up and over’ bit. It looks all innocent and logical to read but I’m terrible at estimating distance traveled so instead we carried on along the river bed where we quickly realized the reason for the ‘up and over’. Rapids, rocks, and some very fast moving EXTREMELY COLD water. Right. So Instead of finding the correct trail up and over we foraged our own up a steeper part pulling ourselves up with the long grass as handles, through the brambles, gorse, and dagger bushes. Yes, dagger bushes. The fronds looked soft enough and bendy but they were not, if you grazed the tips they go INTO your leg leaving a bloody wound. They are also well hidden by long grasses and otherflora. By the time we reached the top, our legs were a mess of pin pricks. Thankfully at the top though, we found the trail again marked by T-posts with white tops. YEAH!!

As the light was fading we finally found the hut nestled back in behind hills of rock. The proposed 5-6 hour hike took us 8 hours but between our lengthy lunch, foot spa, and the missed trail we did pretty good. Though, I was never happier to see a wooden cot and a porta-potty. The Cameron Hut is classified as a basic hut, so 9 wooden bunks with plastic mattresses, a water collection barrel, a fancy electric light, and an emergency radio that broadcasted the weather at specific times. On arrival the German hiker that had started out the same time as us was just finishing his supper. I still maintain that he ran part of the trail. As we were finishing our supper of noodles and wine, a group of 10 showed up after dark! 6 kids, and 4 adults. They brought tents and lots of gear so all was good. With so many going in and out the door in the dark it was easy to get confused as to who was who but I swore the same people were going in and out. Turns out, there were 2 sets of twins in the group so there really WERE repeats! Phew! I didn’t think I was that dehydrated.

In the morning, the plan was to go over the saddle of the southern mountain and head to the hut on the other side. Our legs being less than up to the task of a long day of climbing again through the bush, we thought, well there’s a glacier just up the side of this other rocky mountain, lets just climb up there and have a look. Again, our navigation and perspective skills not being the greatest, we ended up CLIMBING UP boulders crawling across scree (loose rock that slides). Going up really wasn’t that bad, just one foot in front of the other, onto the next rock. Occasionally looking backward saying, gee we’ve climbed pretty high! Let’s go higher for a better view. Eventually we made it to an area that was literally all scree with only a few solid rocks that we clung to with our lives. Just as Laura and I were taking a rest on one of the more grounded rocks, a huge gust a wind came over the summit and threatened to take our coats and bodies back down the mountain. Laura and I looked at each other and decided it was time to move. Did we take the hint and go down… NO! Up again! We SWORE there was a glacier up here, it was on the map! Finally we rounded the first saddle and duh duh dah! No glacier but there was a large glacial lake and a wisping of snow around it. It was the clearest blue water I’ve ever seen! Freshest water you’ll get I suppose. Right, the actual glacier might just be a bit higher. More assent along a rocky ledge, and there some something that looked very much like a pipe near the next summit. Well if there’s a pipe up there, SOMEONE must have gotten up there so away we went. We did find a large compacted snow pile that I suppose you could pretend is a glacier. Though a quite small one. Right, up again, this time hugging the rocky walls and pulling ourselves up, over, through, and around precarious areas of rock. No ropes, no picks, no equiptment whatsoever. Choosing the correct rock to hold onto that didn’t move was a bit of a trick. Turns out that pipe was just another damn rock. In the words of Homer Simpson, DOH! However this was said, while clinging, spread-eagle like against a rocky wall with the hut in the distant view being about 1mm by 1mm. Perhaps we’ll call it a day. Going up was one thing, but getting down again was a completely different game. I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to soiling myself before. But after the scared feeling, comes an sense of survival and get down the mountain. I did stop at one point and have the last of my cheese sandwich in case it was my last meal. Better to fall to your death full than empty right?

We made a successful journey back down the glacial lake and stopped to fill up our platypus packs. The best tasting water ever, although extremely cold. Back onto the scree we decided the best way to move quickly on scree was by sliding down it! Laura decided to slide on her bum, which resulted in some very ripped trousers, but gave us a good laugh. I decided skiing via boots was a better as I still wanted to keep my trousers intact. By the time we made it back to the large rocks to climb down we had had about enough of rock climbing. I always forget that going down is so much harder, it doesn’t seem like it should be.

Finally back to the hut we celebrated life with our liter of hard cider. We made supper while the cider was chilling in the river tied to a rock. Who needs a fridge when you have glacial water!? The rest of the hut crew was happy to see us alive and even the German, Torston, had given up the climb before we had. It earned us a round of high fives and lots of ‘we’re hard core!’ Though I think blatant stupidity had more to do with it than hard coreness. The weather that had been threatening all day with clouds and a few sprinkles, finally gave in and the rain and clouds covered our little valley just an hour after our arrival back to the hut. Phew!!!

We spent the night playing sharades with the camping families and Torston, while sipping our hard cider and relaxing our very very tired legs. Many jokes were made over Laura’s torn trousers and our river fridge, but it was a great night in the hut. That night I just about froze to death in my poor excuse for a sleeping bag. First night it wasn’t as cold but second night, I had every piece of clothing on including my rain coat. I woke early just so that I could start moving and get warm again. I must look into a better sleeping bag.

Easter morning we were awoken by the mom’s from the other family saying ‘Happy Easter’ and handing out chocolate eggs to the kids. They even gave Laura and I a chocolate egg each. Considering that we were just about out of food, and breakfast was going to be tea and half a granola bar we were happy to add the chocolate egg in for more calories. I think we might have been drooling a bit as they all sat around the hut eating their hot porridge. I’ll remember porridge for the next trek. The rain was still steady, so there was nothing to do but pack up and get going for our 6 hour walk out. Donning our water-proofs, we headed out. We found the correct trail this time at the junction and found where we were supposed to go up over the hill. We only strayed a few times when the foot trails were confused with the livestock trails that went into the gorse forest. We’ll just pretend we wanted to get a look at the wild beef cows… A few snags and dagger bushes later we found the river mouth and finally the car park. We were soaked through but quite happy to peel a layer off just get our feet out of our boots. The recovery had to be quick as we were white water rafting the next day!

I've also just realized I've managed to delete the rest of my photos from this trek. DOH!!! Sometimes computers just don't tell you when you don't have a hard copy!