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Other entries in Dunedin

Fortune favours the foolish

Ok so when I last put up an entry I was preparing for a multiday hike on some of the tracks near Queenstown, clearly the adventure is complete but I'm somewhat at a loss to explain the events of the last few days but here goes...
I started the famous routeburn track with an English guy named Mark who I had met in Mt, Cook and so the Trek began with an early start on Monday of last week. It was a cold morning but at least it was sunny. The first day was amazing, the tracks are pretty well mainatined by the DOC here and from 8am we hiked for a leisurely three hours to the first overnight hut on the track, stopping often to take photos of the landscape which was quite frankly jaw droppingly awesome. The hust themselves are pretty cool and fairly elaborate with kitchen centred around wood fired stoves and huge bunkrooms to accomodate the large numbers of hikers that use the track in peak season.
So we stopped for lunch in the hut and over the course of some lunch met a fellow hiker named Mike from Ireland who was tackling the track on his own. We agreed that for some company we would travel onwards together so the three of us set out from the hut straight into the Alpine zone (for those of you unfamiliar with hiking up mountains thats where the trees abruptly end and are replaced by lowlying alspine scrub, the net effect of which is that you are able to see for miles on a clear day with veiws unobstructed by trees) and snow that began at about knee deep, However the going was pretty easy as there were a few groups ahead of us breaking trail. The day was great and the sun continued to shine. As the afternoon wore on however we bagen to meet the small groups coming back down the trail with the dire news that they felt the pass ahaed over the Harris Saddle to be impassable due to the depth of snow and avalanche danger. Undeterred we pressed on and finally we got to where the cleared trail ended with deep snow ahead the only route being shown by the orange posts that stuck out of the snow about every 50 metres or so. With the weather still fine we decided to see how far we could get and I led wading through the snow that was between knee and chest deep in places. After about an hour and a half of this, we stopped to evaluate our position. It was now about 3.30 pm and we figured we had about 2 hours of usable daylight left so a unanimous decision to push on was made as I knew that we were only about 45 mins from the next hut. On we went still through virgin snow along the edge of a rigde to the right hand side of which would have been a steep fall into a glacial lake. Rounding the bend onto the saddle we were suddenly confronted by a arctic and very strong wind, that tried its best to blow us over. Half an hour later we struggled panting for breath and well stung by the wind into what turned out to be the Harris Saddle emergency shelter. Expecting to see bunks were were somewhat disheartened to see only wooden benches and a sign indicating that the shelter was designed for temporary releif for inclement weather. Still we couldnl't move on given the weather and so after a round of hot drinks on my stove and some dinner we settled in for a cold and uncomfortable night that the three of us can now definitvely point to as the most cold and uncomfortable of our lives - I say without exaggeration. It wasn't so much sleeping as it was waiting out the darkness.
The next morning we were up at dawn and out the door as fast as possible in an effort to get the heat from our bodies to warm our cold boots. It was overcast but at least it wasn't snowing or raining and there was no wind. We emerged from the hut deciding to move onwards as our tracks from the day before had been completely obliterated. After about an hour of breaking trail, we came to a buried sign pointing the way forward and another route down the mountain side into the trees. We had intended to go forward to Lake McKenzie Hut but the trail was completely obscured, we could't even see the orange posts so deciding that we'd had enough alpine traversing we headed down the ominously named dead mans track into the forest. To say that the track was rough would be to understate the condition of it. We were falling every minute it seemed and when not on out asses were climbing over deadfall or looking at the various trees for the route arrows pointing the way forward. Suffice it to say that after three hours or steep descent we had travelled 1200 linear meters. Finally we emerged onto a road and as luck would have it there was a camping and hut park just a klick down the road from the trail exit. We happily paid the owner the $34 for one of the huts and shivering and wet waited for our coal stove to heat up. Once it was going to strung up all our wet gear in the hut in an effort to dry it and ate like we hadn;t seen food in a week. We spent the night laid out in front of the stove sleeping the sleep of the noble, brave and just (and the idiotic).
The next day we had a relaitively short day if once again cold and rainy getting to the first hut on the greenstone hut where we met one of the guys that had turned back a few days before - needless to say he seemed surprised to see us alive and impressed that we had made it.
That night in the hut was good except for the Czech guy who insisted on waxing his boots and cooking late into the night and who we could all quite happily have beaten senseless and not felt the least bit bad about it.
The next day was again an early one and proved the most challenging as we were detremined to finish the hike that day. Starting at 8 we hiked for almost 12 hours and went nearly 30kms through some pretty awesome scenery. The last 2 hours were spent hiking in the dark along a 12km dirt road back to our base at the the Kinloch lodge. With aching legs we staggered the last section crossing fords and cursing at every rock that caused us to stumble painfully - needless to say that morale was low towards the end. We fianlly arrived and after a shower and a quick feed fell dead asleep.
The next day Mike had to head back to Christchurch while Mark and I spent a well earned day doing sweet F.A.
From there and almost recovered from our ordeal we headed to Te Anau which is really the gateway to Milford Sound which we went to the next day. The drive out there was amazing and the sound itself was equally spectacular despite the carppy weather. If you ever come to NZ do not miss Milford.
The following day Mark and I and another dude Hiked up yet another mountain to the the first hut of the Kepler track and back, a leisurely 16km day hike. At the end of which we discovered that we weren;t fully recovered. My Achilles tendons are still giving me greif.
I have to say though that the despite the pain and the collosal stupidity of what we had just done I wouldn't have traded the alpine traverse nor the rough road through the forest for anything.
So after all that excitement the last few days have found me making my wayaround the Southern tip of NZ through Invercargill and to Dunedin where I am now, getting my car a Warrant of Fitness before I head back west.

P.S. Sorry but for some reason the pictures of my trek won't post to the site

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