Prepare yourself . . . this is a long one. My mom and stepdad arrived a week ago and although I feel like they just arrived, we really covered a lot of ground . . . so much that I didn’t have a chance to write until they left town.
As I cleaned up the house and prepared a room for my mom and stepdad to arrive on Friday afternoon, my roommate Ali gave me a nervous smile and said “I may be in labor.” She had somewhat expected to be early (she was originally due March 17th on BJ’s birthday) but we couldn’t help but laugh about the timing with my parents showing up in just a few hours time. I was so excited for my mom and stepdad to come to town but realized I hadn’t warned them that there would possibly be 6 ½ in the house instead of just us 6. When they arrived I could quickly see the excitement in my mom’s eyes and the slight look of terror in my stepdad’s. We quickly moved them into their room and I suggested that we head downtown for a beer and dinner to welcome them into town and to get out of Steve and Ali’s hair as they timed her contractions. During dinner at Fishbone, we got a text from Steve that they were heading to the hospital and just 4 “easy” hours later we got a second text that said they had given birth to a baby boy, Tyler Robert Thomas Hanrahan. We met Tyler two days later in the hospital . . . welcome to the world Tyler!
While BJ worked on Saturday, my mom, stepdad, and I explored Queenstown, the Saturday craft fair and my favorite coffee shop, Vudu. We returned home to pick him up for a little afternoon wine tasting at Peregrine and Gibbston Valley wineries, a quick visit to watch a few people bungee jump, followed by a film in the Arrowtown Cinema where we watched Man on Wire, a documentary on a French street performer who illegally rigs and walks across a wire spanning between the two towers of the World Trade Center. We returned home to what would become the norm for the week . . . a little more wine and a lot of conversation until way past my bedtime.
We triple checked the forecast before agreeing on a general plan for the week. Unfortunately it called for rain, cold temps and even snow! There is really only one place to look forward to in the rain . . . Milford Sound. We packed our rain jackets and warmth, made a quick visit to the hospital to see Ali, Steve and Tyler on the way out of town, and drove straight to Milford where we had reservations on a Mitre Peak Boat Cruise, one of the smallest boats that cruises the fiord. 
We checked in and found out that so far we were the only 4 that would be on the boat and that the company actually required at least 6 people to book in order to sail. So we quickly got to work attempting to recruit two more people for our boat and luckily just 5 minutes before departure time we got the thumbs up and hopped aboard. It had been raining most of the day so far causing thousands of waterfalls to pour into the fiord, but just as we set out the rain stopped almost completely. It was just about perfect. Although we couldn’t see the tops of the mountains the clouds, mist and waterfalls were spectacular and easily made up for it. 
We ventured out into the opens waters of the Tasman Sea and had to hang on tightly as the boat bounced and crashed over waves, making for a very exciting few minutes laughing about the morbid thought of the captain falling overboard and being stuck out at sea. Just as we turned around to head back in the rain started up again and we spent the remainder of the trip, including a dunk under a massive waterfall, under a covered area on the boat. We experienced the best weather possible in Milford Sound and celebrated with a mandatory beer at the one and only bar in Milford.
We drove back to Te Anau from Milford, my mom shooting photos around every bend, where we had reserved a room and a campsite for the night at a Holiday Park. As my mom and stepdad have toured the South Island, my mom found herself constantly rolling the window down and sticking her head and camera out to snap a quick shot of something beautiful. She took so many photos from the passenger seat of the car that she unintentionally began a collection called “Photos from the Road.” Each photo usually contains at least a portion of the car, window, pavement, or fence line along the road somewhat encroaching on, yet another, beautiful New Zealand scene. We checked in to the Holiday Park in Te Anau and while BJ and I set up out tent, my stepdad decided to turn on the small space heater in their very cold, very tiny cabin. We could smell the burning as we walked back over to meet them and come to find that the heater was burning a few small markings in the carpet. We put on our Good Samaritan hats and, instead of covering up the burn with a small carpet runner, we took the fried heater to the front office to tell them what happened. The front desk staff gave us a very disappointed look and told us they would assess the damages in the morning. Apparently they thought we burned the carpet on purpose and they were going to do their best to make us pay! We went to dinner, dismissed our frustration with the Holiday Park, and spent the rest of the evening in the communal kitchen playing many hands of Gin Rummy and keeping watch for the “Carpet Burner Killer,” aka the front desk staff.
We woke up in Te Anau to a cold bite in the air and snow capped peaks in all directions. We planned to dedicate much of the day to seeking out a few good fishing holes for my stepdad. First stop was on the river side of the Control Gates at Lake Te Anau. While he fished, my mom and I went on a short hike through the rainforest along the Kepler Track and BJ read his book in the sun. My stepdad had a couple bites but was quickly learning just how difficult fishing is in New Zealand. I suppose the country is world renowned as a fishing destination because of the challenge it poses . . . they don’t call it “catching” for a reason. 
We continued on down the road back to Queenstown, stopping in the town of Athol at Stu’s Orgasmic Fly Shop for a little advice, and hit up a number of different well known holes along the Mataura River. We could see the huge trout just hanging out below the surface and watched as my stepdad’s perfect cast floated a fly directly over the trout. But no bites . . . not even a little nibble. It’s as if they were laughing at us for even attempting to trick them. While my stepdad continued to test the trout, my mom, BJ and I kept ourselves thoroughly entertained by taking close up photos of flowers and bees, reading and building small cairns along the water’s edge.
We had contemplated spending a night in the Aspiring Hut up the Matukituki Valley the following night but the combination of the rainy forecast, lack of time, and a snoring habit helped us change our plans to just a day hike up to the Rob Roy Glacier. The first section of the walk is out in the open, along pasture land, and the sideways blowing rain had us drenched in no time. BJ and I were pretty willing to turn back to the car but my mom encouraged all of us to keep going. Once we crossed the river we thankfully found tree shelter along the track and continued up to the glacier. Since my mom and stepdad had only seen Franz Joseph Glacier from distance on the west coast, they were really excited when the trail ended just below the calving Rob Roy Glacier. It was completely worth the initial dousing of rain! 
Of course as we returned to the car the rain softened and the clouds lifted so that my mom and stepdad could get a feel for why the Matukituki Valley is one of BJs favorite places in New Zealand. That evening we dined at a small Thai restaurant in Wanaka where we happened to run into our friend Smiley, who we hadn’t seen since Brad and Gretchen were in town. He joined us while we ate and, being an avid fisherman himself, reassured my stepdad that the New Zealand trout are very smart fish. As we drove back over the Crown Range to Queenstown we encountered the worst of the forecast . . . It was actually snowing on top of the pass. There was barely a dusting of snow on the road and normally, like all winters in Jackson, we would have cruised on through at high speed, but I felt out of my element as if I had never even seen snow before. I quickly threw it into 1st gear, white-knuckled the steering wheel, and clenched my teeth as we inched over the pass in our two wheel drive family wagon. It’s funny to think about now.
We woke up the following morning to dark clouds, a little rain, and snowcapped mountains around Lake Wakatipu. I cooked Breakfast Pie (bacon, mushrooms, onions, eggs, and cheese, all under puff pastry), we drank lots of coffee and even got in a group video Skype call in to my little sister Anni who was hard at work, like always, at UCSB. But this only delayed us until about noon when we finally decided to face the weather and get out of the house. We drove the winding lake road up to Glenorchy to fish the Caples, Diamond Creek, and Rees River. We, of course, started out the afternoon with a very necessary cappuccino at the Glenorchy Café and then made our way to the Caples Trailhead. We had assured my stepdad that it was just a 5 minute stroll to the bridge, but after 15 minutes, realized we had quite a ways to go yet. 
He backtracked towards the car to fish an area that had caught his eye while my mom, BJ and I ventured on a bit further to the bridge we had remembered. Thankfully we did not see as many fish as we had expected . . . my stepdad made a wise choice but still encountered the same smart trout of New Zealand. After a cold day (I was hiking in long johns, my puffy jacket, and a rain jacket), we returned to Queenstown for my parents last night in town and went straight to the Cow for a yummy warm pizza dinner. It was hard to believe our time together was coming to an end and we prolonged saying goodbye by spending another late night catching up on life, work, my stepdad’s partial retirement, and looking at photos from Fiji. As my mom and stepdad departed yesterday morning, I felt like they had just arrived but looking back over photos and remembering funny moments all over the southland it is clear that we really packed a lot in to their limited time in the country. We decided that if we aren’t back home in a year, they would come visit us again wherever we are. I plan to hold them to it!
Off to a late start on Saturday afternoon, we arrived in Wanaka around 6:30pm and decided not to bike in to the Aspiring Hut as planned. We enjoyed sizzling fajitas and margaritas in Wanaka, our first Mexican restaurant experience in New Zealand, and then drove out to Raspberry Flats Carpark, the trailhead for the Matukituki Valley. This would be our fourth visit to the Matukituki Valley since we arrived in New Zealand . . . you would think we like it or something. It was already dark enough to need a torch (what the silly Kiwis call a head lamp) so we ignored the “No Camping” sign, locked our bikes to the front wheel rim and set up our sleeping bags in the back of the car.
Our plan to wake up just before sunrise not surprisingly failed and we finally managed to get up, eat breakfast, pack our backpacks and start biking just before 9am. The trail may not be a trail I would ever just ride for the sake of riding, but it sure made the relatively flat track into the hut a short one. We had a few adjustments to make initially with our pack-bike set up. Walking with a big pack is straight forward. Biking with a small camelback is comfortable. But biking with a big pack is somewhat of a challenge. The back of my helmet kept hitting the top of my pack and standing up on my bike to better absorb rocks or bumps was pretty much out of the question. It also totally screwed with my center of balance, throwing my weight way over my handle bars which wasn’t very desirable for going downhill. However . . . we had a lot of fun doing it, slightly enjoying the worried look that would overcome the cows as we passed.
We arrived at the hut a little out of breath and pretty sweaty but we had barely begun what we had set out to do for the day. We quickly downsized to one pack with rain jackets and lunch, tossed our bikes in a grove of trees to hide them not from bike thieves but from the kea, or mountain parrot who enjoys eating rubber, and changed gears to begin our assent up to the Cascade Saddle. Cascade Saddle is the crossing between the Rees-Dart Track and the Matukituki Valley and usually ascended from the Dart Hut as a side day trip. The hike in to just the Dart Hut takes at least two days and seeing as we only had two days to spare we chose the one day straight up the mountain option.
From the hut we started off on a steep but hands-free trail in beech forest and before we knew it we had reached bushline and were looking down into the narrow valley we had just ascended. As a side note, most tracks in New Zealand are marked by orange arrows nailed to trees when you are in the bush, or orange posts when you are above bushline. It’s not the Yellow Brick Road down here, it’s the Orange Post Track. We had prepared ourselves for the section between bushline and the ridge which we would have to reach before descending to the saddle itself. The shortest distance between the valley floor and the saddle was a straight line up a giant rock wall, so to access the saddle the trail had to skirt around it entirely. But we may as well have been scaling the rock face because each orange marker was directly above the previous. 
Switchbacks (or zig-zags as they like to call them down here) did not exist on this track. But I don’t want it to sound like we weren’t enjoying ourselves. It may have kicked our butts and we may have been breathing way too hard, but I still had enough energy and pizzazz to do a little “Pylon Dance” when we reached the pylon marker at the top of the ridge. It was here, at the pylon, that we realized what a treat we were in for. Matukituki Valley was behind (or below) us, the Dart Glacier was starting to appear and Mt. Aspiring continuously fought the clouds that tried to envelop it. But we still had another hour ahead of us before we would reach the saddle so we trucked on . . . and it was totally worth it!
My words won’t do it justice but what we saw, or experienced, at the saddle was truly breathtaking. There was a strong wind too, which really did seem to take my breath away. So it literally, and figuratively, was breath-taking. We were standing on a cliffs edge that dropped straight down to the Matukituki Valley. In the distance Mount Aspiring’s snow covered summit peaked through the clouds. On the other side of the saddle we stood at eye level with the entire Dart Glacier, blue ice and all. All we could do was spin around in circles, attempting to digest the view in every direction.
We spent about a half hour at the saddle before starting back up to the ridge and then down down down to the hut where we spent a quiet night hobbling around, playing cards and reading with just a handful of other trampers. We woke up with tight legs and took the morning in the hut to drink a few rounds of coffee, eat a huge pot of muesli and read in front of the hut’s huge windows that faced up valley before getting back on our bikes for the descent down the valley and through the cattle to the carpark, homeward bound from another @$$ kicking and inspiring New Zealand weekend.
