Location: Mt Aspiring and Fiordland National Parks
Dates: 10th February – 26th February
Trampers: Sach Knight, Matthew Battley, Sarah Daniell, Hayley Ware, Thomas (Tomothy) Andrews, Timothy (Thimas) Gray.
Author: Timothy Gray
PROLOGUE
For a long time, Sach had been dreaming boldly. He formed a plan to go to the Olivine Ice Plateau, a destination located in a section of untouched wilderness in Mt Aspiring National Park. Keen to redeem his previous failed attempt on the plateau, he recruited 5 crazy people to join him on this, his most bold and daring adventure he had planned yet.
The Journey to… umm… what’s that place called again?
Along with Amy’s group of 5 trampers doing the 5 Passes route at the same time, we all set out on our journey one rainy day in February. We were very heavily loaded with alpine gear, and food for the 14 days we would be spending in the wilderness. At our base in Queenstown we weighed our packs, finding that the weights ranged from 25kg (Sarah) to 38kg (Matt). The sight of a 55kg Matt being worn by a 38kg pack was rather amusing.
A crossing of the Dart River to skip a day of walking was amongst the first steps on the long voyage. At this point we hadn’t gone completely out of civilisation just yet. A decent track up the Beansburn valley leads to Split Rock Biv, a lovely rock with plenty of spacious accommodation. After a hard day of complaining about how heavy our packs were, dessert (and the knowledge that it didn’t have to be carried any longer) was received extremely well. Going outside for a big poo the next morning was also appreciated, as you certainly gain an appreciation for conservation of bodily mass on these sorts of trips.
Hayley’s top tips for Pooing in the Bush
~ Morning poos are the best, but make sure you’ve waited a few minutes after waking up to ensure that the bowels are fully awake.
~ Dig a small hole with an ice axe. Much more civilised than using your hands!
~ Pop a squat. It’s the natural way. Best to have something to hold on to.
~ Do your business. Make sure you get it all out, you don’t want that feeling of incompleteness that sometimes follows an unsatisfying poo.
~ Inspect your poo and give it a rating on the Bristol Stool Scale (1=solid balls, 7=liquid). Prepare your poo report to tell your fellow trampers.
~ Wipe, and fill in your hole with dirt and leaves.
The next day featured some more lovely classic tramping activities such as bushbashing. While not strictly necessary for this part, Matt, Tom and I had a good idea to try and bypass a stream by just cutting through an easy bit of bush. An easy bit of bush turned into a harder bit, a harder bit turned into an impassable bit. One benefit of our heavy packs though was the ability to transform us into human bulldozers. By running and gaining enough momentum, one can simply break through the toughest bush with ease. Since skin is cheaper than Gore-Tex, it is recommended that you use this technique with minimal clothing to maximise pleasure.
Rain can be a slight issue at times when tramping. Climbing over the Fohn Saddle on wet tussock is one of the ways this issue can present itself. Unfortunately, this turned out to be the least of our troubles as we reached the top. Curiously enough, wind is also a slight issue when tramping. This wind stimulated us to get down from the saddle, and pitch camp by the Fohn Lakes in good time (though not before wandering around in the cold for far too long looking for a suitable place to camp). Matt’s dinner featured bacon that evening, which was greatly appreciated. The rest of us gave him moral support from our warm and comfortable positions inside the tents.
The following day was extremely long, and in the interests of not boring the reader, it is simpler to say that it was a long traverse across a ledge, to a long, long bushbash, to a long streambash. It wasn’t particularly fun.
Thoughts on Bushbashing:
“Looking forward to some good bushbashing” - Sach, before entering the bush
“Hmm, at least it doesn’t look as bad as the scrub around it” - Tim, before entering the bush
“I think we should go up a bit here, we’re just off the GPS trail” - Matt, backseat navigator
“It’s easy if you’re in the back” – Sarah, from the back
“This is fantastic!” - Tom, from the front
“You guys just go ahead, I need to pee” - Hayley, trying to get to the back.
“Uuuuhhh that took so long, why are we doing this to ourselves?” - Everyone, after finally exiting the bush.
Fortunately for the masochists amongst us (i.e. all of us), this was not the last of our lengthy bushbashing experiences on the trip.
The next day was a lot more fun though, as we made it into the... umm… ah yes, the Forgotten Valley! There was a little bit of a bushbash to get there and a lengthy streambash, but the nice thing about this valley is that it makes you forget the pain it takes to get there.
The can’t quite remember valley eventually leads to a fantastic bivvy rock, named the “what’s this place called again?” Biv. By this point, I was feeling extremely diseased from a cold I had caught from Hayley, and was quite looking forward to a rest. Rest is certainly what we achieved for the next four days.
On the ceiling of the rock there was an ancient inscription which described exactly how to cure the plague that I was suffering from:
How to cureth thy plague:
Thou wilt require:
Oil of chilie of the orient
Water moste holie
Bloode of the virgin
Taketh thy moste Holie Water, and drinketh. Drinkest thou much, and thou shalt exorcise thy demons from thy urine.
With thy nourishments of Pasta, poureth thy Oil of Chilie generously upon’t. Thy mouth will burn, and thy tongue will suffer, but thy plague shalt begone!
Where have you been? Sleeping under a rock?
The time spend under the rock was well spent. Sitting in a sleeping bag all day and only leaving to pee and poo, eating tramping rations and feeling glad that they’re in your stomach and not on your back, and reading War and Peace are some of the activities that were enjoyed under this rock.
Rock Musings - Is this all a game?
Advances in computer graphics mean that real-time rendering of photorealistic terrain is commonplace. And yet, video game developers in 2018 have not embraced this technology and realised the potential of a Tramping video game.
A FPS type walking simulator, coupled with a business simulator would be the ultimate video game for the New Zealand Tramping community. Trampers starting the game can choose a selection of tracks around the country (limited to the Great Walks for the free version, all DOC tracks and huts for the ad-supported version, and all backcountry areas for the paid version). Players can level up their in game trampers with fitness level, navigational skill, and pain threshold. After each track has been completed (anywhere from 1 hour to 6 months, the game runs in real time), the digital tramper can upgrade his/her gear, engage in social tramping activities, and attend UoA Engineering lectures. The player must balance a number of factors and address a number of issues relating to their tramper, whether they be critical hunger levels, excessive temperatures, or insufficient grades leading to poor academic standing from the University.
NZ Tramping Simulator will be available on Steam in early 2019.
On day 3 under the rock, the weather finally cleared up enough for us to emerge and head up to the Olivine Ice Plateau for a little bit of a look around (minus our packs). The route up was surprisingly easy, and we briefly made it to the ice. Unfortuantely we had to turn around before reaching the plateau itself due to some scary looking clouds coming in, and the threat of it getting dark by the time we got down to the bottom. We decided that for better or worse, we would leave the rock the next day.
Next day comes around, and ah crap, it’s bad weather. We implement the escape plan, which was to go out via the Four Brother’s Pass, to the Diorite Stream, and to the Pyke Valley. The rain starts pouring down rather unpleasantly that day, save a couple of moments in between such as the time we saw a few wild Kea teasing us.
The rain just kept going until we finally made it down the other side of the hill to where we would be camping that evening. A disappointing dinner later, and we were in our tents.
That night, a cyclone hit!
At around midnight, Tom left the tent to pee. He described the conditions outside as, “It’s like a fire hose!”
I decided to stay as snug as I could inside the tent this whole time, and offered moral support to Tom on his mission. Sleep was difficult that night with the sound of the wind whapping (yay I made up my own word!) the side of the tent. Everything was uncomfortably moist, both inside and outside the tent.
The next morning was a slow start as we recovered from our exciting night. A long bushbash down to the Pyke valley led us to a rather swampy swamp, which after leading the group astray briefly, led into the densest bush lawyer you could possibly imagine. The reward at the other end of this insanely slow-paced day (we only travelled 4km!) was the first hut of the trip.
How to slow down your Matt:
Purchase your Matt for $10 at the Warehouse, or get an inflatable Matt if you’re feeling fancy.
Take him tramping for many, many hours. Do not let him eat or rest!
Carefully place your Matt in a cold, fast flowing stream.
Watch him struggle to lift his pack out of the fast moving stream.
Your Matt has been successfully slowed down. No longer will you be chasing after your Matt!
Retrieve your Matt, and sleep on him/it (best to check which pronouns your Matt is comfortable with first) that evening.
Bruce, the man, the legend.
Bruce is a hermit who lives alone in a small hut in the Pyke Valley. Once the president of the Canterbury University Tramping Club, he decided to pursue an alternative lifestyle sometime in the 80s, and has been living in the backcountry trapping possums ever since. Since 2010, he has been living in a small hut by an airstrip near Lake Alabaster.
Bruce usually gets around on his small inflatable boat, and gets his groceries and mail delivered by helicopter. In his hut he’s got electricity from a generator, a satellite phone, a camera, a laptop, and a hard drive full of 500 movies. He invites many of the trampers on the Pyke Route into his hut for cups of tea, especially if they’re single ladies!
Bruce’s Ladies:
Belgian Girl: “whoa, she was really hot”! Stayed with Bruce for 4 days before heading off.
“Wild Child”: Used to be insecure about her breasts, but these days loves showing off her implants to Bruce.
Girl walking up to Mueller Hut: wearing jeans, and nothing else.
We saw Bruce going along the river in his boat while we were wandering along the track. He was quick to invite us aboard, 3 at a time. Over the next few hours, Bruce shuttled us across the river to his hut, and then on to the Lake Alabaster Hut at the other end of the lake. For the most part the journey was filled with Bruce spinning yarns to us about his life, and filling me (Tim) in with what he’d been up to in the 3 months since I had last seen him. One point that was the exception was when the boat sank. Fortunately we were close to shore, so bailing out the boat wasn’t too difficult, and we were more careful about the water splashing dangerously close to the sides of the boat from then on!
Civilisation!
The track from Alabaster Hut is pretty easy as tracks go. Tom and I had fun closing our eyes and seeing how far we dared to walk on the straight sections, on average we could go for about 15-20 steps before caving to our subconscious telling us that this was a silly idea.
The end of this day marked our re-entry into proper civilisation. Gunn’s Camp, on the Hollyford road, provides accommodation in the form of lodges and campsites primarily for the massive numbers of tourists going to Milford Sound who can’t get accommodation there. Of interest to us though were the hot showers (!!!) available. A small shop selling overpriced junk food was also very sought after.
Getting to the Glenorchy side of the mountains (where we were meant to be picked up from) from Gunn’s Camp requires going over the Routeburn Track, which starts at The Divide, on the Milford Road. Getting here therefore required a little hitchhiking. While planning our route and finding prospective drivers, Tom and I had the idea of hitchhiking just a little further, to Milford Sound. The others weren’t too fussy about this, so we split up.
As it turned out, going to Milford Sound wasn’t a bad idea at all! It was a perfect sunny day (a Fiordland Miracle!), meaning great sightseeing could be done. The highlight was going into the shop, and purchasing delicious, hot, steak and cheese pies. After 12 days of tramping, money is cheap, so we hardly noticed how overpriced they were.
The rest of this day was similar for all of us, we headed up Key Summit, took a few photos, then headed down to the free campsite off the Greenstone Track. The others were rather jealous when they heard of our pie adventure.
The Routeburn Track is considered one of the best walks in the country (if not the world), and rightly so. The scenery is stunning, and the track is extremely well maintained. We passed many of the guided trampers, and made friends with one of the guides who gave us chocolate in exchange for the story of what we’d been up to for the last 2 weeks. With stunning weather and scenery, this was one of the more pleasant parts of the trip overall.
Tom’s Tramping Song:
Up up up to the mountains!
Into the mountains we go!
(repeat n times)
At the end of the track, the shuttle came and picked us up to take us back to Queenstown. It was the end. 2 weeks of tramping had taken us through some of the most delightful untouched wilderness the country has to offer, and although we failed in our original goal of reaching the elusive Olivine Ice Plateau, we did achieve the only real goal of tramping, which is to have a fantastic time!
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