One Last Peak

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.