Somehow I’ve managed to sort through over 3200 photos in less than a week since I’ve been back! I’ve posted my favorite photos from my New Zealand trip on my gallery site… check it out!
The first few days back in Colorado I was whupped by the altitude and jetlag, or some nasty combination of the two. I’ve never really felt affected by the altitude before, but this time it nailed me good. Anyhow, during those days I just rested and made some good progress on my photos. Since then I’ve spent some really late nights plowing through them. Funny how it’s nearly impossible to resist this… it’s almost as fun as taking the photos!
After a seemingly endless series of flights, followed by a harrowing late-night drive through a blizzard, I have made it back home to Ouray! Thus ends my 7 week adventure in New Zealand. I woke up today to waist deep snow… oh yeah. Gotta love coming home to a place that is just as beautiful as any other place you could vacation to in the world.
It’s a bit daunting to try to ease back into the swing of things here. Heaps of emails, phone messages, print orders, and web projects to get moving on. And last but not least, 3200 images from New Zealand to go through! Where to begin??? I’ll probably start posting a few new photos on my gallery site every day or so, and I’ll hopefully be able to launch a complete New Zealand gallery page within the month.
And of course, with all this new snow, I hope to be making some turns soon. Glad to be back!
Over the last four days I’ve been hiking the Milford Track, perhaps the most famous of New Zealand’s Great Walks. This walk belongs in its own class of Awesome, and all the other “Great Walks” I’ve been on should be renamed merely “Good Walks” in comparison. This is truly a world class hike!
The Milford Track starts from an arm of Lake Te Anau and heads up a long valley into the heart of the Fiordland mountains. The peaks rise up incredibly steeply from the forested valley below, and huge waterfalls pour off from the sheer rocky faces on all sides, one after the other. I’ve never seen so many waterfalls in an alpine setting… it is a true fantasyland.
Just got back to Te Anau after 3 days in the high mountains of Fiordland. I climbed up a fairly large peak directly up valley from Milford Sound, and spent over 12 hours up top soaking in the incredible view. I watched the sunset from up there, then because the snow was still wet from the afternoon heat, I was worried about downclimbing the large, steep, and exposed snowfield. So I waited until 1:00am when the snow was more frozen to descend. It was no problem though, because the weather was calm and I had fun taking long exposures of the southern stars and constellations.
As I mentioned in my last post, the town of Te Anau is at first glance similar to a small version of Wanaka – both on the eastern side of large lakes with mountains to the west. However, while Wanaka is known for its proximity to several famous ski fields, Te Anau is the access point to three of the famous Great Walks – the Routeburn, Milford, and Kepler Tracks.
Two days ago I walked out of Te Anau and hiked a portion of the Kepler Track, up to the Luxmore Hut which sits just above bushline near a high ridgeline 1000 meters above the lake. The “Luxmore” sounds like a fancy hotel name, and actually this hut is pretty fancy as far as huts go. It has large windows and porches with views of the Murchinson mountains and Lake Te Anau, and like most of the Great Walks huts, it has stoves and flush toilets – luxury items to be sure. Anyways, the weather forecast was not promising upon my departure, so my plan was to just hike to the hut, spend a day there dayhiking, then hike back down the third day.
I’m safe in Te Anau right now after just getting back from four days on the Routeburn Track. The Routeburn is one of New Zealand’s renowned “Great Walks”, and as such it has wide trails, huge huts, lots of people, and lots of signs telling the people where to go.
Since it is a one way hike with vast distances between the start and end points, I turned in my rental car, shipped one bag to Te Anau from Queenstown, and got a shuttle to the start. The trail itself is certainly spectacular, but it wasn’t necessarily THAT much better than all the other hikes I’ve been doing here. In fact some of my previous hikes were perhaps more amazing to me. Regardless, it was indeed a great walk, and I scored great weather yet again. I purposely booked two nights at the first hut (Routeburn Falls Hut), with the intent of doing some dayhiking exploring the second day, and that turned out to be a big advantage since the second day was pouring rain for the first half of the day. Worked out perfectly.
Over the last four days I’ve been tramping in Mt. Aspiring National Park near Wanaka. I started in the Matukituki River valley, an idyllic mountain valley with green grass, turquoise river, soaring glacier-clad mountains, and waterfalls pouring down from the sides. The bottom of the valley is used for sheep grazing, and while I normally am not too fond of these helpless little creatures, they sure do a good job of mowing the lawn, so to speak, resulting in beautiful grassy meadows.
Today I jumped out of a plane! I’ve never been skydiving before, so I thought I’d give it a try since I’m in New Zealand, the land of X. Like all skydiving newbies, we did a tandem jump, meaning that I was harnessed to a professional jumper who actually knew what he was doing (or so I would hope).
After donning our skydiving clown suits, we got in the plane and flew spirals up to 15,000 feet, where we then bailed out one pair at a time. When it was my turn, we sat on the edge of the hatch with my feet hanging out the plane and my head tilted up towards the sky. Off we went. Honestly I was not one bit scared until we were actually out of the plane in midair and freefalling… then it sunk in real fast and was definitely terrifying to realize the situation, as I looked at the earth far far below. We did a roll/flip out of the plane and as I fell backwards I could see Lake Wanaka and the snowy peaks of Mount Aspiring National Park and practically all of the Southern Alps – upside down. I will never forget that!
We freefell for 60 seconds and 10,000 feet. What an incredible feeling. After the initial rush, it became more relaxing (relatively speaking) and we did some spins and whatnot, generally just rocketing downwards with my arms out wide, cheeks flapping in the wind, checking out the incredible view. The parachute was deployed at 5,000 feet, and then all became calm and slow. He let me steer for a little while, and I went into some gut wrenching spirals. Anyhow, all too soon we landed softly and it was all over. Good stuff. Ranks right up there on the crazy list with the Olympic luge in Park City.
For the last four or five days I’ve been hanging around Arthurs Pass, one of the three mountain passes that crosses over the South Island mountains here in New Zealand. The first two days were spent mostly lounging about the hostel as it dumped snow and the wind raged outside. I did get out for a fantastic little hike during the storm, when there was snow covering the forest – quite a strange sight to see.
With a clearing forecast, three days ago I left for a big hike. I hiked up the Waimakariri River valley, a wide, flat braided river valley, and after fording the river twice, I slept the first night at the Carrington Hut. Day 2 I hiked further up into the mountains and stayed at the Barker Hut, a high-level hut set on a rocky outcropping in the center of a large snowy cirque. Day 3 I woke up pre-dawn, hiked up a nearby peak with crampons and ice axe, watched a nice sunrise from up top, then hiked all the way back out to the car.
The mountains around Arthurs Pass are a bit smaller than the enormous beasts around Mount Cook region. These mountains are similar in scale to the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, though of course they are much different in character. It looks like there would be some great skiing/snowboarding to be had around here in the winter. In fact, around the Barker Hut there were loads of great 3,000-foot lines, with nice smooth spring snow topped with about four inches of spring powder. I wish I had had my snowboard up there! (Can’t imagine carrying it all the way up there though).
I’m heading back down the east side of the range today… not sure exactly where though. I have about two days to kill, then there’s a nice three day forecast of clear weather. I’ll probably set off on a tramp in the Wanaka area during that time.
Yesterday I went on one of the most memorable backpacking trips of my life. With a weather forecast clear of rain for all of New Zealand, I was excited to get up high and get some views of the Fox Glacier and the west side of Mt. Cook. My plan was to hike a steep route trough the forest and camp on a high ridge above treeline. I set off under clear skies and started the grueling route through the forest – so steep that some of it consisted of climbing up what can only be described as root ladders.
When I finally got high enough to see through the forest canopy, I was disappointed to see a completely overcast sky. By the time I got to the ridge above treeline, it was completely socked in fog. I was bummed, but I set up my tent anyways and ate some food. After studying the map, I decided to do a long hike further up the ridgeline… what the hell, it may clear up later I thought. Hiking out the ridge was challenging in the thick fog, but with careful map and compass work and a bit of intuition, I made my way out. Several times when there were drop-offs I had no choice but to sit and wait for a bit of clearing in the fog to see where I needed to go next. I kept going though, and as I hiked higher and higher, I noticed that the clouds were becoming brighter. Sure enough, I eventually popped out above the cloud layer into bright sunshine and a glorious clear day, with huge views of the gleaming white peaks! I was so stoked.
