Trekking with Kiwis – Off the Beaten Path

This story begins at the end of a dirt road far past the jewel-like Lake Ohau in the middle of the South Island.

The dirt road carries a two-vehicle caravan down ruts and pot-holed roads. Sometimes the road splits to mirror the braided river to our right, letting our guide/driver choose his own adventure: a mini canyon carved out of loose grey gravel from the last big rain or a mud pit or a rock-studded dirt bank.

Snow fell the night before despite it being the middle of the summer in New Zealand, and the mountains have a dusting of snow that ends in a straight line halfway down the slopes. Anticipation burrows beneath my breast bone, like a balloon is slowly inflating, lightness swirling beneath my bones. It is in New Zealand that I found this feeling–the anticipation of the challenge.

Surrounded by Kiwis and two transplants from Ireland, I’m about to head into the wilderness to cross the main divide of the South Island. It was a chaotic journey to get here, and not only because the trip was moved up by one day at the last minute in order to accommodate a forecasted inundation of rain. It was a scramble to move up my accommodations in Twizel during the high season and I don’t even have a plan yet for the day I emerge from the wilds. I will deal with that when it comes.

For now, we’re spilling out of the two vehicles like marbles from an overturned jar. Despite last night’s snow, the skies are a perfect blue and the air is the right kind of crisp that tells me I’ll start in my pants, but I’ll be shedding them for the shorts beneath within the hour.

I came to New Zealand with nothing but a backpack, but in my time here I’ve acquired a sleeping bag, camp pot, and utensils. The guiding company I’m doing this trip through provides meals of dehydrated food which we all paw through looking for our favorites. I’m partial to the Moroccan Chicken and the Thai Curry. I also take a tent on loan. As the odd man out of the group, I carry a two person tent even though it will just be for little old me.

One of the Kiwis makes a cuppa and I’m introduced to them all. We’ve got Archie, the nineteen year old guide with the curls and energy of a Golden Retriever. Then there’s Brian and Elspeth, good friends who have led their respective families on many adventures throughout the years. Deep in their sixties, I can tell they’re the kind of people who will still be laying down in sleeping bags and rising to camp coffee in their nineties.

Fergus and and Tommy are Brian’s sons, the former slings a rifle over his shoulder along with his pack, determined to shoot something for dinner one night. Tommy carries a walking stick proportional to his over six foot frame and dons a hat from his time in the service. Charles, a veterinarian, and Niamh are the Irish folks who befriended Elspeth’s daughter, also a veterinarian. Mellory, a few years my senior, is another friend of Elspeth’s daughter.

Because of the last minute change, three members of our group aren’t here: Nina, Elspeth’s daughter, and her fiancé, Jason, and their friend, Mitch. Those three have to work today and will be tramping in after work. Good thing they’re ultra runners and Coast to Coast-ers (New Zealand’s bike, kayak, run event going from the west coast to the east coast).

After a group photo with our fearless drivers, the Prado’s turn back and the trampers immediately cross the first river heading into the flat grassy plains of the U-shaped glacier valley. It feels like being set free at recess, like stepping into a story book. My pack is a delicious weight on my shoulders and my legs feel strong and capable, like they could carry me as far as I wanted to go and beyond.

Golden grass brushes the backs of my legs and seed heads burrow into the wet bottoms of my pants. The sun is shining and I’m nervous, but I’m adventure ready.

The way the mountains of New Zealand come out of the ground is one of their best traits. Because so much of the Southern Alps are glacier-carved, the mountains look fake. Flat valleys of gold and green grasses or grey stone and blue water suddenly switch to fluffy green slopes, the trees and bushes somehow only growing on the mountains themselves. The peaks, high above the tree line, are jagged rock dusted with powdered sugar. As the vehicles thread down the valley, we’re left behind in a sun-drenched paradise, striding between mountains.

After a while, we cross back over the river and head into the trees along an official trail. The small leaves on the birch trees are light green, the ground beneath the canopy splattered with patches of moss and rotten logs and brown leaf litter. It’s an entirely different world beneath the boughs, smelling of dampness and greenery instead of the dry, golden fields of waving grass.

After crossing a suspension bridge, real Kiwi tramping starts: there’s a track, but why take it?

Instead, we walk along the river of glacier melt water, dusty blue and streaming through grey rubble.

We trek deeper into a side valley and the mountains close in. Occasionally, we get back on the trail, little orange triangles leading the way, but we’re never far from the roar of the river.

Waterfalls stream in silver down the cliff faces, joining the main river. In a random, steep valley, massive rocks lay littered among the grass like something out of the Narnia movies. Moss clings to the grey rocks, basking in the sunlight. The field is dotted with yellow starbursts of flowers. Soon, the banks are steep, often dotted with rock fields and skree. We stay closer to the river even as it condenses, the current picking up and the water growing white and vicious. It still glows in calm areas, deep and jewel-toned.

Five river crossings. Ten. A hundred. We skip back and forth, my shoes and socks soaked as I balance on boulders or stride directly through the near-frozen water. The forest rims each bank, steep, bristly, and near impenetrable. I feel like a wanderer, everything I need in my backpack and nothing but open space ahead of me. The lack of trails makes everything a possible trail, as though there are a million destinations and an inch of difference may lead me somewhere entirely unexpected.

At the same time, the only natural way to go is to follow the water, and we do. Most of the Kiwi’s carry a water bottle, but Brian and Tommy have only battered metal mugs hooked to the straps of their pack and they dip them down into the water whenever they’re thirsty, slurping up the cold water. My water bottle has a filter, but I do the same, never filling it more than a few sips full.

Sometimes we thread back into the trees, walking on spongy leaf litter, thin black trunks rising upward rather than out, making it easy to walk between them. I’ve learned, in my time here, that scale insects feed on the tree sap and excrete a sticky, sugary substance called honeydew, which then encourages the black moss (sooty moss) to grow. Birds also feed on the honeydew, like the shimmery blue tūī and the musical korimako and the brown and red kākā (forest parrot).

We pick through thickets of bush, truly embracing the term bush-wacking and then spend the next two hundred steps just wading through water. At one point, the river is deep enough that we link arms, the water swirling around the hem of my shorts, tugging at my legs, keen to sweep me away. The uneven rocks beneath send the line of us lurching side to side, but together we stay upright and get across.

Late in the afternoon we reach Brodrick Hut. It’s a little tin can, nothing more than a fireplace, two small tables, and six bunks with thin mattresses. Beyond the hut, the end of the valley is in sight, a half bowl with sheer mountainsides, typical of a glacial valley. Clouds move in, grey and close. The hut sleeps six and is empty, so I don’t bother with my tent, instead claiming a top bunk, but others pitch tents and we heat water for drinks and later heat more for dinner.

I’ve been backpacking before, but only hunting. I’d also done a few overnights in some of the huts in New Zealand’s extensive network, but this is smaller, more intimate.

When night falls, everyone turns in, eager for the early morning that will have up climbing up and over a saddle, crossing to the west coast of New Zealand.

The next morning we rise with the dawn. Clouds have cleared and the light of the morning illuminates the valley in soft tones, the river a length of silver snaking through the stunning scene.

We’d gained elevation yesterday and the foliage reminds me of what I saw on the Routeburn track: bushy, with a rainbow of green shades. Dry grasses curl over the tops of my boots and we wade through patches of prickly bushes that reach over our heads. Nina, Jason, and Mitch arrived sometime in the night and they add an additional sense of adventure to the trek.

There’s something about Kiwis, I realize, that makes me feel right at home. And I figure it out as we weave through bushes and then pick our way over massive rocks in dry run-off river beds. It’s this: they’re MacGyvers. Nothing has to be the best, it simply has to be good enough. And if something was good, but isn’t anymore, we’ll just tape it up until it’s good again.

Back home, I am surrounded by people–even my parents–who have the best gear. I can’t leave the house without seeing Arc’teryx and Sitka and Patagonia and Fjällräven everywhere. People are decked out in LuLu Lemon and Vuori and all these brands that I didn’t even realize I knew.

I’m the type of person who owns a nice Patagonia vest only because my company bought it for me for Christmas one year. I’m the type of person who has duct tape on my shoe on this very hike because I’ve walked it to tatters. My best shirt is a brand-less find for seven dollars from a thrift shop. My visor looks like the beach after a storm, the outline of each retreating wave visible by the detritus left behind (except, on my visor, it’s the white sweat lines left behind).

Here, among these Kiwis, I don’t see people wearing the newest, brightest, best clothes even though they are clearly outdoors people. They have the right gear, but not necessarily the most expensive gear. Most of it is good quality, but they’re using it until it breaks, and then will repair it to use again until it is truly unfixable.

They, like me, line their packs with a large plastic yellow bag to keep any rain out. Niamh and Charles also have duct tape on their shoes. Nina’s shirt has a massive hole on the shoulder, like big enough to stick a hand through. We are all mismatched, and we don’t care because that part doesn’t matter.

The majority of the people recreating outdoors in Colorado give off an unconscious sense that money and expertise are required to be out there doing what they’re doing. No such stigma exists in New Zealand, and there is no chance of that here in the middle of the Southern Alps.

We set off into the valley, following what very well could be a game trail, but it is an official trail with orange posts marking the route. After a short time, we turn into the thick brush and begin to ascend. Each step forward is twice as steep up and I grip the woody stems of the bushes around me to haul myself upward with each step. We inch up the mountain. There are no switch backs, only straight up, seeking higher and higher ground.

I used to hate uphill, but here I reveal in it. With every step I can feel the muscles in my legs, the slight burn in my chest. It’s doable. It’s exhilarating.

We climb. We rest and take in the view. We climb.

We emerge from the bush line to rock–massive slabs making up the mountain and piles of fallen boulders shattered into smaller pieces.

Eventually, we’re walking on battered grey stone and I get a sense of deja vu, but really it’s just because the ground beneath my feet is how I’ve always imagined the rock-strewn slope of Mount Doom from the Lord of the Rings.

Our whole group stretches out as we go our own pace. Fergus (hunting) and Archie are ahead of me, but otherwise I’m making excellent time with my ascent. I’m almost to the top curve of the saddle when a spot of vibrant yellow splashes into my vision. In a wind stripped and rocky environment high in the Southern Alps, a flower blooms out of the dry, rock studded earth.

A smile stretches across my face and I quick step up the curve to stand upon the main divide of the South Island.

At each end of the saddle, a rocky mountain patched with snow stretches higher and upon the saddle, rock slabs heave like waves. I’m among the peaks, above the clouds.

Fergus emerges from the rocks, a grin on his face. He’s shot a chamois, so we trek over to se it. It’s tiny, lying there smaller than a deer.

My family have always been hunters, but hunters bound by laws and seasons and boundaries. This is raw and real, the way an expedition would have been a hundred years ago.

We start the descent, the hardest part of the trek yet ahead of us.

We skid through patches of steep scree, taking different routes so as not to send mini rock avalanches skidding down upon those below us. We drop down to walk beside a thin stream of water from the snow melting on the mountain tops. It grows larger the further we walk in the treeless environment.

We stop for lunch along the roaring stream, and then begin to climb. We can’t follow the river all the way down to the valley floor, Archie says, for reasons he will reveal later. Instead, we go straight up the side of the valley, striving for the top of the ridge. I weave among the trees and dig the sides of my shoes into the dirt. Hands wrapped around tree branches save me from sliding into the people behind me.

As we reach the top of the finger, the first view of the Landsborough River appears above the trees, a new series of snow capped peaks trace the horizon.

We descend along the line of the ridge. On each side, it drops. Though forests and trees surround us, sometimes the drop is sheer, nearly straight down for eighty feet. The path that can hardly be called a path (it no longer has any markers, but is the official unofficial way to navigate this mountain) is slick with mud and dirt and now I hold onto trees to stop from sliding forward. Knees take the brunt of my weight and that of my pack for hours as we descend steeply.

This is by far the worst part of the hike as I’m never sure when the ground will give way beneath my next step and send me sliding down the path. Most of us resort to sliding on our butts at one point or another. At least the forest is green and lush and full of little surprises.

Eight hours after leaving Brodrick hut, we reach the end of the steep, crossing another stream and spending the last hour hiking beside a river until we reach another field of golden grasses, scraped flat by a glacier over 20,000 years ago. Here waits Creswick Flats Hut.

We unpack and again I claim a bunk in the 4-bed hut. Tents spring up in the grasses around the hut and Tommy starts a fire. We go swim in the Landsborough, the cold water an instant shock, but it feels nice to wash off the mud and sweat.

I pull on my warm clothes and we sit on the deck of the hut feasting on our dehydrated meals and enjoying bites of fire-cooked chamois. Everything in my body feels delightfully achy. I’m spent, and glad of it.

As dark falls, we disperse into our sleeping bags, and my thoughts turn to tomorrow.

And the adventure continues… Click here to read about it!