Tag Archives: Tramping

Feb8

Backpacking the Abel Tasman Great Walk – Days 1 and 2

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This entry is one part of several that log my hiking of the Abel Tasman great walk in New Zealand. See the other entries for the rest of the story, or the “Index” at the end for my “trail notes”, appended as an abbreviated version of the trip.

 

Day 1 – Marahau to Te Pukatea campground

 

“Why, exactly, do I have this much STUFF?” I found myself asking, barely 20min into the trail. I had packed as light as I thought I could get away with – yes there were a good bit of “extra” things, but that was only because I wasn’t planning on going back to Christchurch before the Capoeira meetup in Montueka the following weekend. However, I still found myself carting a pack around on my back that weighed in at nearly 40kg (roughly 80lbs).

My first day on the trail was thus a rather hellish one, though the struggle in itself wasn’t actually half bad. To be honest, I missed the test of willpower that backpacking can turn into. Trying to convince yourself to walk just a little farther before you take that break. Making deals with yourself, “the next actually good rest spot I find, I’ll stop at. Not that one, its not good enough.” and so on. And so, I walked. On and on.

The Abel Tasman Great Walk is one of the official “New Zealand Great Walks”, a series of scenic trails that encompass the majesty of New Zealand itself. The Abel Tasman was named after the dutch explorer named, aptly, Abel Tasman, and it runs from the small town of Marahau to a wee little carpark at the northern end of the peninsula called Wainui. My plan was to walk the “Coastal Track”, the official Great Walk of the trail, and then head inland onto the (again aptly named) “Inland Track. The total distance was measured to be about 95km, or a bit less than 45miles – should be easy, especially since the Coastal Walk is extremely well maintained and quite level. While it has some steep parts, it never reaches above 400meters high (about 700 feet). The Inland Track is a completely different beast though – ranging nearly untended through the mountain ranges, rising upwards of 1200 meters into the New Zealand sky.

My plan was to start on the Coastal Track, since I’d have a pack full of food on my back, and then move Southbound onto the Inland Track after crossing over the Northern-most portion of the trail. That way I’d be rolling down the easy portion of the trail with the heavy pack, and the hardest portion of the track when my pack was getting lighter on my back, thanks to eating up all the food, and burning up all of the fuel for my stove.

I had woken up a bit too late to catch the bus from Nelson to Marahau (Pronounced something like “Maar-a-how”) that I wanted, but fortunately I had another bus that would take me into the same spot only two hours later. So armed with my backpack and a subway Meatball sub I jumped onto the bus… after helping the driver lift my pack, since he couldn’t do it on his own. That… should have been a warning to me. That, and the fact that I had been barely able to close the pack over all of the food that I was carrying. See… I don’t pack light, and when I pack food I make sure that there will definitely be enough… so I had enough food for the maximum stay that I was thinking of – 8 days, instead of the intended 6.

I think I either overestimated the strength of my back, or underestimated the weight of food however, and once I got off the bus and onto the trail the going was slow, even though the trail itself was quite well packed down. I had found a walking stick on my way that helped out a bit, but I still found the going nearly as difficult as I had on Mount Hutt… and that’s saying something, since Mt Hutt was an extremely steep grade.

But I did make it through to my planned campsite, Te Pukatea (pronounced “Tey Pook-ah-tee-ah”). It’s situated at the spit end of a spur of rock jutting into the Pacific Ocean – right off the beach but in a slight lee so that its sheltered from the wind. I wasn’t exploring the campsite alone though – to get to Te Pukatea I had walked through another campground and Hut called Anchorage Hut, where I had met a pair of Kiwi girls named Dani and Angela, who were originally going to camp at Te Pukatea with me, but had decided to stay at Anchorage thanks to an injury to Angela’s knee. I had met them thanks, of all things, to my hiking boots. It seems that not many people feel the need for sturdy hiking shoes on the Abel Tasman, and thus the girls couldn’t find anyone to help them hammer the stakes for their tent into the hard-packed ground. I had helped out with my water bottle instead of boots, thank you Nalgene for being unbreakable, and so we had all decided to hang out for a bit before cooking dinner and turning in for the night.

After the girls had left my campsite for their own dinner, I pulled together my fishing gear and started weaving my way into a good fishing spot. That’s right – this adventurer had bought himself a collapsible fishing pole, some hooks and bait, and now envisioned himself a real wild-man. Unfortunately for me, the truth is that I am not quite a true wild-man, and thus didn’t know the dangers and tricks of fishing off the coast. Instead of catching fish, I caught rocks. And by “caught rocks” I mean that I got the hooks stuck somewhere under the surf, and had to cut the line after a single cast. Not once, but three times in a row.

Thus, I was quite unhappy when I finally headed back to my tent; wet and empty handed. Instead of coming back with fish (and hopefully extra to bring up to Dani and Angela) I came back missing three of my five hooks, with not even a bite on the reel to show for it.

And even worse, the night did not go any better from there. I was, understandably, in a fairly foul mood thanks to the loss of my gear, and when I tried to make smalltalk with the people set up near me I was brushed aside rather coldly. I assumed it was because their English wasn’t very good, since everyone nearby was speaking French to each other. However, as soon as I lit my stove I learned just how good their English was, because they came over and started asking if I knew what I was doing, if I knew that fires weren’t allowed, and that I should probably get my stuff under control.

Now… if you don’t know how Whisperlite stoves work, it goes like this: you put a wee bit of White Gas fuel into a small catch-pan, and light it on fire. That flame heats up the fuel line, which then causes all further fuel to vaporize, and make the small blue flame that you use to cook on. The larger orange flame dies out after half a minute or so, since its only needed to “preheat” the main element.

It seemed that the Franc’s didn’t know this though, as they continued standing around and “checking up” on me until I shut down the stove and went into my tent to eat my dinner in peace and quiet.

And on top of it all? Someone had stolen my walking stick while I was fishing. Damnit.

Obviously, my first day had not gone nearly as well as one could hope.

 

Day 2: Te Pukatea to Onetahuti

“Well now, this is more like it” I thought to myself, as I relaxed by a small bend in a stream that’s called “Cleopatra’s pool”. To get here, I had taken a shortcut straight across the river that Cleopatra’s Pool runs into, skipping over rocks and wading ankle-deep into the river to get across. Of course, there was a bridge not 100meters down the trail, but I was feeling good, and wanted to make a bit more of an adventure out of the walk today.

The reason for this happiness and excitement was two-fold. One – I had woken up quite refreshed from the previous nights annoyances, and found myself packing up and leaving before any of my “friendly neighbors” had even woken up. Secondly, I didn’t have my full pack with me – instead I had taken the small sleeve used to hold my camelback out of my pack and was using it as an impromptu daypack; carrying with me the bare minimum for a day hike – my first aid kid, water, snacks, maps, my Kindle, and my notebook.

My pack itself was already at my next destination, thanks to a unique facet of the Abel Tasman that Dani and Angela had told me about – the water taxis. The combination of the Abel Tasman being fully coastal and the fact that so many tourists come here means that many “tourist service” industries have sprung up. Namely, in this case, a series of boats that can take people, packs, or food from one campsite to another for a nominal fee. I had gladly spent the $15 to have my heavy pack find its way to my nights camp on its own, thus freeing me up to take the long way around and visit a few side stations like Cleopatra’s Pool.

Since I didn’t have my insanely heavy pack, I made good time that day… even though I made an effort to take every side trip and most of the “long way” tracks. Thanks to these sidetrips I found myself meeting a whole host of people – stopping to talk to a retired couple from Auckland who were sailing around New Zealand on their own special “self-sufficient” solar boat; helping a group of girls and their quite-over-her-head mother set up a series of pictures; and even stopping to chat with a man who actually lived on track itself in a small town called Torrent Bay. I had a great time taking it easy and chatting with most people I met along the track, and even stopped for nearly an hour at lunch to read a bit from my book.

Once I did arrive at the campsite of Onetahuti (pronounced Ohh-Net-Ahh-Who-Ee) I found my backpack waiting for me at the main campsign, propped up as if to say “Hey man, I’ve been here all day. Where’ve you been?” After setting up camp and having a quick Peanut butter and cheese sandwich I relaxed and read a bit more on the beach, listening to the waves. For a moment I thought I was going to have another horrible night, since I saw the French group from the night before sitting at the sight next to me, but thankfully they were just being creepy and randomly hanging out at someone else’s campsite – it turned out that the site was inhabited by a couple from New Hampshire who were spending their retirement traveling around random countries. When I asked, they had no idea who the French group was, or why they had been sitting around the tent. Double-creepy.

Either way, I had a good time relaxing, cooking dinner, and talking with the NH people next to my camp that night. I had brought a good bit of canned chicken and pasta with me for meals, and so that night I cooked up some Linguini, smothered it in cheese-shavings, and tossed in nearly four servings of chicken – two can’s of “chicken in may”, and two cans of “smoked BBQ chicken”… to put it plainly, the combination was stellar, and I wolfed the whole thing down in less than 15min; not bad for eating down a dinner for four, am I right?

 

A quick side-story from my walk, about how not to act if you’re an American tourist:

While I was relaxing at one of the many bays on the track (this one was called “Bark Bay”, thanks to the tree-bark that the Maori had used to make their boats, or “Waka”) I noticed a confrontation of sorts getting rather heated down the beach. I walked over to make sure everything was alright, since the peoples voices were getting rather loud, and I heard the following conversation:

Obviously stressed-out American woman: “What do you mean you’re not going South? I need to go South! To the next campground!”

Kiwi Boat driver: “Ma’am, I know. You’ve told me this. But the Boat you’re looking for already left”

American: “But they didn’t stop! I was sitting right there waiting, and they didn’t stop!”

Kiwi: “Right, but you have to wave them down. You didn’t make a reservation, so they didn’t know that anyone was waiting for them. The next boat will be here in two hours, you’ll just have to wait”

“But I’m meeting people! They’ll be worried! You have to fix this NOW!”

“I can’t. I need to leave now, just wait and make sure to wave down the next boat”

“But… They didn’t pick me up! You have to fix this! Why can’t you just take me there yourself?”

“Ma’am, we’ve been discussing this for 20minutes. You just need to suck it up and wait. Yes, next person please”

 

Jan29

Hiking Mt Hutt, Part 2

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Thursday 26th

 

“The wind blow, I’ll lean into the wind

My Anger grows, I’ll use it to win”

-”Defy you” by The Offspring

 

I can’t help but remember the above lyrics as I go chasing my hat down the road, trying to catch it before the wind carries it off the edge of the cliff. I finally catch it half a meter from the edge of the drop-off, before the brutal winds carry it off the half-kilometer drop. (Ed Note: Sorry, Ben’s been in New Zealand too long, he’s using Metric now) I’ve been walking for barely an hour, yet this wind makes it feel like I’m at the end of a marathon, and the upward grade of the trail doesn’t help – Mount Hutt is 2190 meters high; 7185 feet. Yes, that is nearly 900 feet higher that Mt Washington, which towers over the Presidential range back in New Hampshire at 6288 feet high.

The trail that I’m taking is an access road for the ski fields up near the top of the mountain. Its graded gravel and boring, but the upside to it is that everywhere has amazing views. Seriously, there is not a single bend in the path that doesn’t hand me a perfect view either of the towering peaks around me, or the green lowlands that I drove through not two hours before. I love it – there’s no roots to trip over, no boulders to slide out from underfoot, and so I’m able to let my eyes wander around and take in the views surrounding me.

It’s tiring though… very quickly. The road is only 9km long, and it ascends nearly 2km – giving a hiking grade of nearly 20%. Not bad in the short term, and kind of nice because its pretty consistent, but its akin to hiking up some of the steeper mountains back home. Not something I’m used to, having spent most of the last few months rock climbing and playing Capoeira instead of doing serious mountaineering. However, Strength and perseverance (and the help of some bread and apples and cheese) have treated me well, and by the time I find myself chasing after my flying hat I’ve only been treking for an hour, but have burnt up nearly three Kilometers of the nine.

 

But that pace didn’t hold true, unfortunately. It took me nearly five more hours before I was up at the last campsite before the main mountain, looking at the intimidating peak – no grass or scrub brush, just bare rock and loose dirt. Setting up camp in the shadow of the mountain was excellent, and cooking dinner was even better. I made myself a dinner of instant three-cheese pasta with four servings of canned BBQ chicken and a quarter pound of cheese sliced into it. Yep… an irrefutably amazing meal if ever I’ve eaten one… made doubly so by the pineapple juice that I had brought as a drink.

I finished cooking at the perfect time though, because right after I packed in my stove and sat down in the tent to eat the wind picked up to a screaming howl, and it started raining. Thankfully my tent is amazingly warm and dry, and so I wasn’t too worried about the wind or rain… at least I wasn’t until the spine of the tent started bowing out to the side from the wind. It held fine though, and I tucked myself into my sleeping bag for a cozy yet early night of sleep, dozing off before the clock even struck 10:30.

 

Friday 27th

 

I woke up with a strange feeling of Deja Vu. “I’ve been here before, I know it! But whats am I remembering, and whats reminding me of it?” Well… it turns out I was remembering my trip with my buddy Big T a few years back, when we roadtripped down to Virginia and got snowed into our tent. As to what was reminding me – the quiet insulated space of my tent was a dead ringer. The wind was muffled to the point that it didn’t seem to exist, and my tent was warm but with that clammy feeling of condensation just out of reach.

Yep… the “rain” I had heard pattering against the tent walls the night before had switched over to snow sometime during the night, and I had a pretty 10cm (~4in) of fluffy powder to greet me when I stepped outside. The air was crisp and biting cold, I would later learn that it was just about -2C out, or 28 F. Not too cold, but far enough below freezing that the snow wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Instead of packing up my gear and heading upwards, I decided to leave the bulk of my gear in the tent, and let it dry out a bit in the sun while I walked up the last kilometer or two towards the summit. When I left my camp I was hopeful that I’d still be able to summit, but when I got the first view of Mt Hutt peaking around the corner, I knew in my heart that I wasn’t gaining the summit today. In place of the rock and dirt mountain of the previous evening, I was faced with a peak straight out of the North Face videos – an imposing knife of white snow and black rock tearing into the low hanging clouds.

I continued upwards though, set on at least gaining the ski resort, if not attempting the peak itself. I did make it, and spent almost an hour exploring around the closed up ski lodge and the surrounding areas. The clouds and snow had started moving back in though, and so I started my way back to the camp when I lost sight of most of the main peak.

The walk back down the trail was slightly painful, thanks to the steep grade tearing into my knee, but the difference in scenery was impressive thanks to the snows. I took my time walking down, making sure to take a good number of breaks so as to keep some energy in reserve for playing Capoeira later on in the evening after I got home… but even with the slow pace I found myself looking at the car from one of the switchbacks, barely two kilometers away, at 13:00, barely three hours after I finished packing up camp. In told, the whole walk back took less than half the time that the walk up took, though I admit that I was sweating something fierce by the time I sat down to start the drive back to Christchurch.

On the way back I made a few stops – primarily searching for views and information. The views I found off a small bridge over one of the many gorges that I drove over, and the information I tried to find at the official Mount Hutt lodge. For the views I parked the car at the head of the bridge and clambered my way down to the riverbed below, finding a rather neat little river-height booth and some neat views of the mountains (Ed Note: that seems to be a theme here, doesn’t it?). The trip to the Mt Hutt Lodge was less successful though, unfortunately, since they didn’t have any useful information and their menu consisted entirely of $20 + items… with the main meals being nearly $40 each.

After the failure at the Lodge, the rest of the ride went quite quickly – I relaxed, listened to the radio, and thought about plans for what I’m going to do next.

Jan14

Taking a walk up my mountain

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I enjoy hiking, and I do enjoy hefting up a backpack full of gear and food and starting out on a walk up into the mountains. So you can imagine that I felt a bit strange when, barely an hour into hiking up a mountain named after my family, I was bored and wanted to turn back. Mt Hutt was the mountain, and the problem with it was that I was hiking up a gravel road, instead of through forests and on ridgelines like most ascents.

I had first seen signs for Mt Hutt while driving out to Castle Hill, and as soon as I saw them I knew that I had to get myself up that mountain, if only to re-claim it for the Hutt clan. So one Saturday morning I found myself packing up a lunch, throwing my backpack into the car, and heading out onto the road towards Castle Hill… this time with no interest or intent on climbing. Instead, I turned off onto the “Scenic Highway 2”, and started the drive out towards Mt Hutt.

The drive itself took a bit longer than I expected, but soon enough I saw a sign saying “this way to Mt Hutt, 5km”, and so I started looking around for the mountain itself. I had done by due dilligence the night before, researching the mountain looking for any trail information or historical facts about the reason it happened to share my name. Unfortunately all I could find was that Mt Hutt was one of the larger commercial (non back-country) ski mountains in Canterbury, the province that Christchurch is in. So when I was driving up, you can imagine my confusion when I not only didn’t see a ski lodge or chairlifts, but I didn’t see a single ski slope either.

As it turns out, I had accidentally driven to the back side of the mountain. I honestly don’t know how the heck that happened, but as I parked and started walking up the gravel roadway I started to get the sinking suspicion that this was not the part of the mountain that I was interested in hiking up… and this wasn’t really the day to be tramping my way up the mountain anyways. The day was pretty overcast and gloomy, with a bit of rain out on the mountain peak. Never the less, I had driven all the way out to this mountain, and I had no intent on backing out until I had reached the top. As I went further and further on though, the day started getting worse and worse, until finally the rain started falling in earnest, and the visibility started dropping like it was going out of style; where I had originally seen a sharp mountainside with a snake of a road winding up it, now all I saw ahead of me was a dark raincloud slowly boiling over the side of the mountain.

I had packed in my rain gear just in case, but I had almost no interest in using it at this point. I think it was the fact that I could see the road still stretching onwards to infinity in the distance, but for one reason or another I found myself stopped at the side of the road, eating my apple and cheese and trying to make up a reason to head back down. As a general rule I don’t like backing down from challenges, but when I find myself trying to think up an excuse, any excuse, why I should stop doing something, I feel that I should usually listen to my hesitance as a sign, and stick to the safest route. In this case, that meant turning myself around, putting on my pack cover to keep my gear dry, and heading back down the foggy path.

To keep myself entertained though, I decided to try taking a side path down the mountain this time, instead of the gravel road that I had taken on the way up. I found myself a beautiful ridgeline path that started on a small hill, running roughly parallel to the main road, and decided it looked as good as any way to head back down. On the way I saw some rather amazing little sights – a gravestone for someone named Tim Hutt, who I have not been able to find any information on; A small man-made pool hidden in a small saddle between two lower peaks; and many many interestingly named mountain biking trails. The views were amazing, and I was forcibly reminded of how amazing New Zealand looks, especially from the heights of a mountain.