riverECHO

We had a very social week and weekend . . . which, as it may be obvious, is a bit unusual for us down here. We first said goodbye to our roommate Ali and 2-month-old Tyler last week who are flying back to the UK for two months so that the rest of Ali’s family can meet her new little boy. If we don’t see them again up in Punakaiki we hope to return to Ali and Steve’s wedding within the next couple of years. Then it was off to dinner . . . and breakfast and second breakfast . . . at our friends Brendan and Jess’ house in Gibbston. Over my last four months at the winery, I have spent a majority of my time following and helping Brendan. It has, of course, taken all of us up until our last month in the area to actually hang out outside of work. We had hoped to spend Sunday either hiking or kayaking with them as well but 18 hours of straight rain persisted and refused to let us get outside. We spent the day indoors before meeting up with another friend Nik, who we know from Alaska. Nik spent a handful of years as Points North’s primary heli-ski pilot before he and his partner moved to Queenstown. He still flies for a living, whether it’s doing tours over Milford Sound or heli-skiing around the Southern Lakes area or doing his share of med evac flights, but he definitely misses his time and the lifestyle up in Alaska. It was so nice to finally reconnect with him, especially since we have been living in the same town for the last five months.

The rain and clouds finally broke at around noon today. BJ thinks Mother Nature was trying to give New Zealand an end of the summer wash down in preparation for winter. There is a thick layer of snow on all of the surrounding mountain tops, the rivers are completely blown out and Lake Wakatipu has risen considerably. Biking was out of the question and with a fresh coat of snow we thought we could see the best views on a drive up to Glenorchy, a small small town at the head of Lake Wakatipu. We attempted a short stroll through Glenorchy’s Lagoon but the track and wooden walkways were completely under water. So we settled for a hike along higher ground, leading to some old mines and beautiful views overlooking Lake Wakatipu and the Rees and Dart Rivers. You could actually see a very distinct line of muddy river water dumping into the lake’s clearer waters. The rainfall has also refreshed the farm fields which, despite it being the middle of fall, were glowing bright green. The contrast of the green fields, the aqua blue lake waters, a few lingering leaves on deciduous trees and the snow covered mountains was spectacular.

As my mom and stepdad left town last week our weather seemed to change instantly. No offense mom and Steve, but I think you took the rain with you. We spent Saturday afternoon at a few local events. The first was the Queenstown Aerofest where paragliders, wakeboarders, and sky divers showed off their skills in the air above the Queenstown beach. The second was the Arrowtown Street Party where we drank local beer, ate local food (we sampled our first “cheese roll” which is basically just a piece of white bread rolled around a piece of cheese and grilled a.k.a. grilled cheese sandwich), and watched local musicians and fire dancers twirling fire hula hoops and whips. It was all pretty entertaining.

We woke up early the next morning, loaded our backpacks in the car and headed up the lake toward Glenorchy to hike along the Dart River. The Rees-Dart Track is a popular 5 day track with a side day-hike up to Cascade Saddle. We didn’t have enough time to complete the entire circuit and hope to get up to Cascade Saddle at some point, so we decided to just get a taste for the Dart River and hike in and out on the same track. The forecast called for two “fine” days in a row and we debated camping under the stars but then remembered our last experience with a few thousand sandflies and decided to spend the night in a hut. We started out our hike behind a group of 30 who were heading just 20 minutes up the trail to catch the Dart Jet Boat. The short walk was part of their “Safari Package” which also included a 4 wheel drive tour to the end of the road (the same section of road that we drove in our family wagon). We heard the tour guide yell out to the group to “please stop and take photos as walking and taking photos at the same time can be dangerous.” We were excited to leave the group behind and continue down the trail on our own. The track followed the Dart River for a while before climbing up and over a steep bluff. It was such a steep drop off that we felt like we could have jumped directly down to the river from the top of the bluff. We took our time on the track and at one point spent about a half an hour trying to capture a bird’s song on our camera. BJ also discovered the “foliage” setting on the camera making for some very brilliant photos this time in the rainforest.

We arrived to an almost empty hut and were relieved to be staying when the sandflies started to swarm. Taking advantage of a quite hut, we took some time to read and quickly fell asleep for about two hours! We were groggy from our afternoon nap and shook it off by heading further up the valley on what turned into a two hour stroll. We ran into a very skinny bridge that left the main trail and provided access to the other side of the Dart River. I walked across to see if there was an actual trail on the other side and found that the bridge ran right into an enormous boulder. You either had to climb up and over the boulder or down a very sketchy construction ladder that was sort of attached to the bridge. We were puzzled as to why they decided to put a bridge there and not over the handful of streams that we had forded earlier in the day. Not until we started walking back to the hut did we run into two hunters who had been searching the forest on the other side of the river all day unsuccessfully looking for deer.

Our evening in the hut was quite loud with the help of four young American girls whose high pitched giggles weren’t very fitting for our idea of a quiet night of cards, chocolate, and books. Damn, we are getting old.  But we did make a few evening-long friendships with a couple Kiwis and two other Americans from the Bay Area. It’s hard to make the switch from the solitude and serenity of the track to the social scene in the hut . . . but we sure do appreciate not being eaten alive. We hiked out the same way we came in, stopped in Glenorchy for a bowl of potato wedges and a couple beers and returned home by late afternoon to cook up a few, what BJ referred to as Dolly Parton sized, chicken breasts and watched an episode of New Zealand’s always entertaining Flight of the Concords.

BJ turns 33 today . . . Happy Birthday to my best friend and the love of my life. I don’t think it’s felt like much of a birthday for him yet as he has been glued to his computer in meetings for most of the day. We’ll get out this afternoon to celebrate with the rest of the town with green beer and some good ol’ Irish music. Is it me or is it funny that the entire world seems to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day . . . maybe it’s just a good excuse for another drinking holiday . . . but it sure does make for a fun birthday.

We were off to a slow start on Saturday afternoon and still had to drive two hours to Te Anau and then walk five hours to the Luxmore Hut along the Kepler Track. We had spent Friday evening in downtown Queenstown. Let’s just say the night started with BJ helping me with a bit of my “homework” (see the previous blog) in Queenstown Gardens and, after dinner and live music, we didn’t make it home until the wee hours of the morning. But we were still determined to get our hike on. And we had already reserved the two nights in huts along the track, so we didn’t really have a choice. We were walking it no matter what.

We started hiking mid afternoon and followed a very well maintained and flat trail around the south side of Lake Te Anau. It was a beautiful afternoon and almost on the verge of being too hot. After about two hours we began our ascent to the Luxmore Hut. Because this is considered one of the “Great Walks,” the ascent was nothing like the trails we have experienced over the past few weekends. This track was wide enough for two people to walk side by side and gradually ascended the mountain side. I was still sweating profusely but this was a breeze compared to the root and rock maneuvers we had battled the previous weekend. Just 30 minutes before we reached the hut, the track reached treeline and we were rewarded with views of the surrounding mountains and Lake Te Anau.

We arrived to a very full hut . . . 56 people sleeping in 56 bunks in the same room. Other than our 6 person hut last weekend, we had yet to experience the livelihood in a Great Walk hut. You really have to be prepared for a social evening and we met some really nice folks and even bumped into Klaus, our roomie from the previous weekend at the Liverpool Hut. The forecast was pretty grim and we awoke many times throughout the night to wind gusts banging the walls of the hut. It was raining pretty hard the following morning and we decided to wait it out until early afternoon, hoping that it would clear. There is a cave close to the hut where limestone deposits have formed a bunch of stalactites and stalagmites and we scurried up the 10 minute trail to take a peak. We didn’t make it too far inside the cave but apparently it goes on for about 2 kilometers. We returned to the hut completely drenched and spent the rest of the morning drying out, eating breakfast, playing cards, eating brunch, reading our books, eating lunch, and finally putting on our rain jackets and packs to start walking.

Perfect timing! It was still misting a bit but as we reached the summit of Mount Luxmore, the rain stopped and the clouds began to part. The track continued along a mountain ridge for the next couple of hours and although the track was pretty wide both sides of the ridge seemed to just fall away to the deep valleys below. We would get an occasional glimpse of the lake or a peak in the distance, but the most amazing part of the track was the movement of the fog over the ridgeline. The track followed the ridgeline until the end and then descended about a million “zig-zags” (what they call switchbacks) to the Iris Burn Valley and Hut. We took an evening stroll to an enormous waterfall and spent the rest of the evening indoors escaping the sandflies, eating dinner, playing cards, and laughing with our new funny friend, Collin, from Wales.

The temperature this morning and today was perfect for hiking and the track was mostly flat through beech forest and fern groves along the Iris Burn (burn actually means stream in German?). We came upon this sign that gave us a few laughs: It reads “Native Falcon nesting area close to track. Beware of low flying bird, wear a hat or hold a stick above your head.” After 5 hours on the track we had the option to pay $8 and get a shuttle or continue walking another 5 hours to Te Anau. Although it was a beautiful day, our feet were sore and, without thinking twice, we hopped on the shuttle back to town. The kiwis would refer to our tramping style (warm huts, food in a bag, shuttle buses, etc.) as “soft.” I don’t feel the least bit ashamed.

After wrapping up a work day on Saturday, we popped over to the Queenstown Events Centre, an outdoor venue for cricket and concerts, for the first annual Peak Music Festival. The festival featured a few local bands like dDub and Salmonella Dub, a popular Kiwi band called Kora, British DJs the Utah Saints, and headliner Ministry of Sound. We heard news around 6pm that the Ministry of Sound was still in London and Utah Saints would be appointed the new headliner. Oh well. In the end, we both agreed that the two local bands, dDub and Salmonella Dub, were by far our favorite and perhaps we should have saved the cash and just seen them at a local bar. A majority of the music we have found down here seems to be electronic and Salmonella Dub, with acoustic guitar and bongos, was a live version of what you would normally hear a DJ spinning at a club. They had a lot of energy on stage and we look forward to seeing them live again.

We got a late start on Sunday. Sleeping in to 10am is a rare occurrence for the two of us but with such long days, we hardly noticed. We spent a leisurely morning at home and headed into town around noon for a hike that we have been talking about since we arrived in Queenstown. Ben Lomond peak sits about 4,500 feet above Queenstown, offering views that overlook ALL surrounding mountains. Although a popular trail, we hit it on a beautiful day and enjoyed a late lunch on the peak looking out over Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables.

Probably the highlight of our weekend in Queenstown was a somewhat unexpected visit from two very close family friends. Alan and Lili Penkower have known my dad since the 60s and are very much a part of our family. Their son, Jonathan, spent quite a bit of time living and working in Queenstown about ten years ago and they have been planning a trip down here ever sense. It was a pleasure to show them around during their first visit to Queenstown. We met up with them right before lunch and didn’t stop talking and catching up until we said goodnight just before midnight. We were only able to squeeze out a few stories from them involving my dad and some sort of riot or political march. We had quite a full day as well . . .we went to lunch at Brazz, took a stroll through the Queenstown Gardens, visited the Chinese Settlement in Arrowtown immediately followed by a delicious ice cream cone dipped in chocolate, and after a quick visit to our house, we spent the remainder of the evening enjoying dinner at Fish Bone. They are spending the next few days in the Milford Sound and we will hopefully be able to see them off on their way back through this weekend.

The four of us began the Routeburn Track at around 3pm on Christmas Day. The Routeburn Track is one of New Zealand’s “Great Walks,” which are very busy in the summer for good reason . . . beautiful locations, huge huts, and although lots of elevation gain, the actual trails are so well maintained that any level “tramper” could complete the track. It was a bit of a late start, but since the sun wouldn’t set until 10pm and we only had 3 hours to walk until we reached our first campsite at Lake McKenzie, we weren’t too worried about time. It was cloudy and misty when we left the trailhead and it actually didn’t clear up until the following afternoon once we crossed the saddle at Harris Pass. We set up our tents in a little bit of rain but enjoyed cooking dinner under a large shelter located at the campground. Our Christmas dinner: brie and crackers for an appetizer, freeze-dried-meal-in-a-bag “Chicken a la King” for an entrée, a chocolate bar for dessert, and box red wine for drink. We then strolled down the trail to the hut where we were invited to partake in singing Christmas Carols by candle light. Although we didn’t join in, we sat outside to listen while we watched the skies clear and the stars start to appear.

The following morning we awoke to rain drops hitting our tent and decided to stay “indoors” until it passed. By the time we crawled out of our tent, everyone else in camp had packed up and left except for Brad, Gretchen, the two of us, and one other camper (who packed up his tent and backpack while we were cooking breakfast and before starting off on the track, popped open an umbrella!). Our destination for day two was the Routeburn Flats campsite, a five hour stroll up and over Harris Pass and down the Routeburn River valley. Although we knew the views into Fiordland National Park from the trail were spectacular, our powers to part the clouds were squashed by the wind, fog, and rain. The skies finally lifted in the afternoon as we made our way down to the Routeburn Falls and Flats. Brad and Gretchen, with a wet tent and sleeping bag in tow, continued on down the track to their van that was waiting at the trailhead. BJ and I enjoyed the evening at the Flats campsite staring up at the enormous surrounding mountains, cooking another delicious dinner-in-a-bag, and getting to know our new friends from the Netherlands.

We met Brad and Gretchen at the trailhead the following morning and before heading back to Wanaka, they drove us about 30km down the road to the beginning of the Caples Track, which meets up with the Routeburn Track about an hour from the trailhead, where our car was parked. We had decided to save $100 bucks on a 225km bus ride back to our car and walk the 30km over the mountains instead. The Caples River meanders through a wide open green valley until the mountains tighten and the green pasture land turns to thick rainforest. A side note for any anglers that may be visiting us (ahem…Steve!): Every time we just looked at the river we saw another huge fish just below the surface; I don’t fish but seeing the size of these things sure made me wish I knew how. The day was beautiful and warm, some of the best weather we had experienced on the trail yet, and after about 4 hours on the trail we camped at the end of the wide green valley in sandfly heaven. We actually retreated to the tent very early just to keep the “flying teeth” away . . . so early that after we realized we forgot our deck of cards we played a game of “Can you name all the 50 states and capitals?”

Today we woke to experience a similar system that is hitting Jackson Hole, although while it falls in feet of snow there, it falls in feet of rain here. It was a soggy long day on the trail, through the “rainforest flats,” up the “don’t-get-your-foot-stuck-under-a-root” ascent, over the “damn-I-bet-there’s-a-really-pretty-view-over-there” saddle, down the “slip-n-slide” ravine, and across the “I-know-it’s-just-around-the-corner” valley. During the final hour on the track, BJ asked “So, what Great Walk should we do next?” Tired and wet, I replied “I suppose we should get on the waiting list for the Milford Track . . . what do you think?” BJ giggled and said “My next Great Walk is from the dry car to a bar for a beer and some good food.”

This weekend was a first for us in New Zealand. Instead of packing up the car and continuing our travels south, we had to ask each other the question “What should we do this weekend?” After a week of mostly work for BJ and some work, as well as a handful of walks to town and local hikes, for me, we decided to jump in the back of Brad and Gretchen’s van and cruise to the north end of Lake Wakatipu where the lake’s edge meets the mountains. We had a track (the Kiwi way of saying trail) in mind called the Rockburn, not to be confused with one of New Zealand’s “Great Walks” called the Routeburn. The sign at the trailhead actually states “Note: This is not the Routeburn track.” We plan to go tramping (a Kiwi term for hiking) on the 3-day Routeburn track over Christmas. Anyways, our track led us along a steep and slippery route through rainforest, passed treeline, and along a very spongy and sometimes bouncy route to the top of Sugarloaf Pass. From the pass we tramped up the closest ridge to find a few lakes that we saw on the map. Although the lakes were quite small, we were surprised with 360 degree views.

  We stayed in a DOC (Department of Conservation is kind of like our NPS and tends to have the cheapest camping options) campsite and enjoyed a huge pasta dinner and campfire. We awoke to the sound of raindrops hitting our tent this morning and it took a lot of effort to pull ourselves out of our sleeping bags. We quickly dismissed the idea of going on another hike and although we had brought food to make breakfast, driving about 30 mintues down the road to Glenorchy for eggs and coffee sounded like a great rainy day activity. A note on Kiwi coffee . . . If you simply order a “coffee” in New Zealand they will always ask you what kind. A “long black with hot water” is basically an Americano and the closest thing you can get to a coffee unless you make it at home. A “flat white” is basically a latte but you can still order a “latte” from the menu. When I asked a barista what the difference was between a latte and a flat white, she couldn’t give me a straight answer.

This evening brought a brief stint of sunshine which lured us outside for a hike and a tour of Arrowtown, a quaint suburb of Queenstown. We found a ton of tasty looking restaurants and a classic Kiwi cinema. Most movie theaters in the country have two types of screening rooms; one has regular stadium style seating like we have in the states while the other has couches, pillows and serves wine, beer, and dinner. We hope to catch a flick at the Arrowtown cinema soon.

Although we have not been writing much lately, maybe you can all catch up by way of our photo albums. We will try to at least post a link to each photo album as we upload new images onto Flickr. It seems that we don’t have time to do it all and we have been slacking lately on keeping the actual text up to date. We just returned from a longer weekend in Glacier National Park late last night. For now, here is the gallery of our time up there in Northern Montana.