Bum bruises are not ideal on a 5 and a half
hour cross-country bus ride; especially when you have to go commando due to lack of clean
laundry. But these are just costs of doing business if you want to go from the top
of a snowy peak one day, slosh through the depths of a wet cave the next, and have the otherworldly experience of crossing an ocean lagoon at low tide in the middle of the night soon thereafter.
I stand on top of a ridge surrounded by my new best friends,
the Southern Alps. I am feeling a little sentimental. After all, this will be
my last time in these mountains for a while. I will soon be returning to The
States for a family visit to meet my hotly anticipated new baby nephew.
I blow
a kiss goodbye into the general direction of the glacial fields hanging above a
fog-wrapped braided river valley and begin my descent. These mountains have taken
me far.
I arrived in New Zealand as a day hiker attempting my first
over-nighter on the popular Copeland Track with the comfort of my best friend
for a hiking mate. We enjoyed a full-service hut with a regular kitchen and the
promise of natural hot pools. We followed the Copeland river looking up at the Southern
Alps in the distance. I felt like every fairy tale and fantasy movie had come
alive before us; the Jurassic-looking panga fern trees framing our view of the
sky blue glacial river. My back and hip groaned in pain under the weight of my
pack as I learned to bare the extra weight and my body finished healing from a
major spine surgery. I lost my “sand fly virginity” on that first tramp, too. I
amassed my first layer of bites that would later scar over in time for the next
batch of petulant pests to pick at my ankles.
I skip, reminiscing down the track, grateful that New
Zealand is so kind as to produce fantastic weather for my last (for now) mountain
hike. Several people head up-track to camp out and watch the sunset,
awaiting the unhindered starry sky. I think about what a big undertaking my
first solo hike was. I did the Routeburn, which is a Great Walk of which there
are nine. New Zealand Great Walks are insanely beautiful, packed with people at
high-season, full of helpful infrastructure like flush toilets and flashy huts,
and have tracks as wide and smooth as a highway (relatively speaking, of
course). Thus, they are great for anyone on a first solo journey.
On the Routeburn, I began hiking in the dark and made it
onto the side of a ridge where I watched the sun rise over the adjacent
mountains across the valley. I had never seen such a sliver of light against a
jagged silhouette. The first night, I met an inspiring pregnant
woman solo hiking as her “babymoon”. And of course I also met Hut Warden John
at Howden Hut. Instead of just giving patrons the 2 minute safety talk about
cooking on gas stoves, Hut Warden John provided a 45 minute story-telling
session. His talk included the history of the track and of other related and unrelated
tracks in the region (or not even in the region). Moreover, he did so while
wearing your grandpa’s slippers in the middle of the wilderness. I loved Hut
Warden John. After the hut talk, I met my first set of hiking buddies over a
game of Presidents and Assholes (That is a card game, by the way. Also popular
among international backpackers is the game of Shithead. Brits seem to be the
primary instigators of Shithead).
I sneak another “one last glance” over my shoulder to find
that the light is now reflecting off the snow in a different pattern. This
calls for another round of photos. Much to the amusement of my hiking partner, I
conduct a few seriously failed attempts at mountain top cartwheel pics (And NO,
I will NOT be posting these photos). Gigging uncontrollably, I am reminded of
other times I have completely lost it in the wilderness. Like on the start of
the Gillespie Pass with my new hiking mates from the Routeburn. For some reason
(possibly due to my exhausted state of delirium) I remembered how as a child, I would draw
spiders on the sidewalk with chalk and then run away and get scared of them. I
must have stumbled through the track laughing out loud for 45 minutes over that
memory. The others got in about 2 minutes of laughing at me followed by 43 minutes of perplexity over why I was still
laughing. Needless to say, I was quite useless as a navigator through that
section.
From there, I launched into a series of back-country
tramps including the adorable
Mount Brown community track, and Hari Hari’s wild
Whanganui River Hunters Hut tramp. Unforgiving
west coast rainforest abounded, giving me the feeling that if I stood too long
in one place, the bush would grow around me, locking me forever into the
intricate weave of panga, beech, and cabbage trees.
The tracks became trickier to navigate, sometimes with no
trail or markings at all. The huts became cozier and more rustic, each with
more character than the last. I enjoyed the take-something-leave something
culture of the un-maintained huts whereby I could access such useful items as
candles, past-due boxed wine, and sometimes even toilet paper (On a lucky day).
Notably, the swing bridges became more precarious with each successive river crossing. Initially, on the Copeland, they were comprised of six-to-eight wires with sturdy rails laid across to walk with a normal stride. There was safety mesh to hold everything securely in place. Then swing bridges became just three wires with no slats where trampers balance like tight rope walkers, steadying themselves on the shoulder-high hand wires. Eventually, the swing bridges gave way to just a wire with a pulley-held cable car. One must dangle over the river far below, working across to the other side using (in my case, non-existent) arm strength and an inadequate degree of leverage to cross. Finally, I adopted the perspective that any river crossing aid, however precarious was better than just crossing rivers by wading through them.
Staring back at the mountains, I mentally super-imposed the other summit views I had visited. I recall several failed attempts at alpine neologism. “Epictastic?”, “Fantawesome?”, “Amaziful?”, I ventured, not really capturing the moment linguistically.
Snow-capped peak-lined river valleys escalated to 360 degree
mountain saddles on the Rees-Dart-Cascade Saddle route where I was joined by a
long-time friend and fellow hiker. She pushed my climbing legs with her enduring altitude fitness. Between mountain highs (literally) on the Rees and
Cascade Saddles, we hung out with a group of rowdy middle-aged kiwis who had packed
in flasks of rum to liven things up. We taught them “
the cup game”, which they
took to in fits of laughter. We swapped stories with them over the course of
the 4 nights we spent in shared bunkrooms. My favorite was of the woman who had worked
in Antarctica for two years…As a hair dresser! Who does that?
I was so overwhelmed by the Cascade Saddle views that I
could not completely enjoy them on account of feeling like I needed to look in
all directions at all times. Fortunately, I had my wits about me enough to meet
my favorite German/American tramping couple who took what would become my Facebook profile picture and who will become relevant in a later
story.
I knock my head out of the memory lane long enough to descend to pass the Historic Bealy Spur hut where we had
set up a small campfire earlier in the morning. “Historic” is a charming way of
stating that the hut is in disrepair, has become overrun with graffiti and has
the most rustic looking log-crafted bunks you have ever seen. We stop to read the
placard which explains that the previous bunks were notorious as being the most
uncomfortable sleeping apparatuses known to man. I love tramper culture.
I still stand by my claim that the Rees-Dart is the best multi-day
tramp in New Zealand. But I will now make a new claim that Bealy Spur in Arthur’s
Pass is the most accessible ridge top 360 view to be found anywhere. Let me
explain. First, I did it in the Fall, which is probably my favorite time off year. There
are pockets of beautiful weather but without the crowds of people to
contaminate the wilderness. It is foggy and wretched
in the lowlands, but we are above the clouds on Bealy Spur. The rest of the world is tucked
away in a nebulous blanket. I cannot believe it is only 2-3 hour day hike from
the car park to the top. Furthermore, there are no scary narrow drop-offs or
vertical exposed rock or scree scramble sections. If hikes were rated on a
ratio of beauty per unit of scary multiplied by difficulty, Bealy Spur would
rank very well.
