The Heaphy Track

I have been so remiss in writing about the Heaphy Track, which Maurice and I hiked a little over a month ago. My tardiness mostly stems from the fact that a. I’m lazy and b. my pictures turned out really badly. Lotsa rain + 3.2 megapixel freebie digital camera + zero photography skillz = this slideshow below.

As hard as it is to believe, I have decent tramping experience now — another reason for my relative silence on this pretty amazing hike. I no longer find observations like gee, it is raining really hard and yet I still must walk or oh sweet Jesus I have blisters all over my heels and yet I still must walk or even though it is pissing down and the flesh shreds off my feet with every step, I find myself oddly moved by the solitude and natural beauty of this experience to be compelling reportage. (Perhaps ultimately untrue, since I still feel the need to note that all those observations did in fact occur on this particular trip. Anyways.) Although it’s long — over 50 miles — the Heaphy is classfied as an “easy” tramp in the Tramping Bible. I’ve found out the hard way that the Tramping Bible’s degrees of difficulty (ranging from “easy” up through “demanding” and topping out at “very demanding”) more accurately range from “easy if you’ve been hiking all your life” through “demanding in the sense that childbirth is demanding” and max out at “no, seriously, people die doing that.” However, for the first time, I found myself agreeing with Jim DuFresne. Even with blisters. I guess that means that I am an official badass now. (Seriously, folks, gather round, ‘cuz if I’ve learned anything this past year, it is: tape blisters at the FIRST SIGN of tenderness. Not two hours later. Not even five minutes later! FIRST SIGN. You can thank me at your leisure; donations always accepted.)

This is all to say that the most difficult part of the tramp was not the actual physical exertion but the company we were thrust into. (NB: most New Zealand trails have regularly spaced huts with bunks, a stove, and a water supply, which you pay a small fee to use/share with others.) Despite the fact that June is the middle of the winter in New Zealand, every hut Maurice and I stayed at was crammed — as in, absolutely packed, campers sleeping two to a bunk — with people. And by “people,” I mean “college students.” The first group we encountered was an American study abroad program from St. Benedict’s/St. John’s in rural Minnesota. As it happens, Maurice and I both also went to college in Minnesota, so we were both amused and bemused to find two dozen or so tow-headed teenagers with Fargo-esque accents in the middle of the New Zealand wilderness. One of their professors even knew Maurice’s brother. Crazy, mad, small little world. Then we all were joined by half of the University of Canterbury tramping club, a rowdy and raucous group, and huge fans of some long-winded game that involved repeated variations of loud animal noises.

They shared accomodations with us for the next three days.

To their great credit, they trundled off to bed not long past ten every night. But those five hours between five, when it becomes too dark to cook, read, write, or you know, do anything but attempt to ignore or converse over the din around you, and ten. . . those hours dragged.

The first night Maurice and I huddled in a corner and tried to figure out the rules of their game. “Oh, I see. Each of them has a particular noise. Like, that girl in the blue polypro is a duck. So whenever someone quacks, she has to quack too, and then pick another person and do their sound. So now she is doing the horse-with-toothache sound.”
“And that goes to the guy who’s not wearing pants.”
“Right. So it’s his turn, and he does his noise and someone else’s. I guess you try to keep it going as long as possible. . . I think this is a drinking game, actually.”
“But they’re not drinking.”
“No, they’re not. Weird.”

The second night, we noticed that they were getting a little more creative with their animal noises.
“What the hell goes FLA-flafla-FLA-flafla-FLA-flafla?” Maurice said.
“Um, I don’t know. . . I remind you that last night one of the selected animal sounds was a donkey with diarrhea.”
“Ugh. Yeah.”

The third night, our curiousity got the better of us. Maurice asked,
“Hey, sorry to barge in, but we’ve been watching you play this game for a few days now, and we just had to find out: what goes ‘FLA-flafla-FLA-flafla-FLA-flafla?’ Is it a flamingo?”
“No,” we were told. “It’s a gay albatross.”

Of course.

Each night, as I curled up in my sleeping bag, I overheard the whispered plans and secrets of a dozen or so twenty year-olds. It was heartbreaking. I like to think my college days weren’t that long ago, but as I eavesdropped, I felt our age difference pressing down on me from the top bunk. My own secrets, my plans, were so much heavier than my extra five or six years would seem to indicate. I gave up everything to be with this guy sleeping next to me, and now I don’t think we’re in love any more, I wanted to whisper. Every day people ask me if I like it here, and every day I lie. No number of amazing views and gorgeous sunsets can make up for losing what was most important to you.

But I didn’t want to freak out the college kids, so I rolled over and tried to fall asleep.

 

Notes from the Routeburn

12-20-06, 7:45 PM

The usual bus shenanigans accompany my journey to Queenstown: long delays, bus sustains flat tire in pouring rain, people (aka “assholes”) inexplicably consume hot, foul-smelling food items within tightly enclosed space, awkward conversations e.g. :
–”I am Kurios.” [from European traveller with thick accent, as passengers mill about non-functional bus]
–”Hi, I’m Ruth.” [extends hand to shake]
–”No, I am curious how they are going to fix this bus.” [deep, profound embarrassment]

Two hours behind schedule, I stagger into my hostel with my huge and more huge backpacks. The hostel is pretty good as hostels go, not too manky smelling, new mattresses, two only mildly grody kitchens, and a cozy lounge with a big TV, movies, and lots of outdated magazines. As befits Queenstown, the walls are decorated with posters of young people dangling in midair, the ricti of joy on their faces and the graffiti-font indicating EXTREME AWESOME ADVENTURE BUNGEEE!!!! My roommate is a petite, mild-mannered Canadian girl with loads of beautiful red curly hair. Later I will discover that she snores like a fortysomething pot-bellied steelworker. For now, I introduce myself and then head out to the grocery store to buy my dinner and food for the trail.

10:00
Bed.

12-22-06
6:30 AM
I can’t take the steelworker any longer and get up an hour before my alarm is set to go off. The rest of the morning is spent removing packaging from various food items, loading up my backpack, wrapping my feet in a variety of bandages, and donning my ridiculous tramping costume (two pairs of socks, tights, gaiters, knee-length Florida retiree-style shorts, polypro undershirt, t-shirt, boots, hat). After much to and fro-ing, I pack a 500-pg hardcover novel (Brookland) and a small bottle of wine. They are really too heavy to bring, but since I’m doing this alone I figure I’ll appreciate the diversion in the huts at night. Speaking of heavy, I also pack a bunch of raw carrots. This is because I get paranoid about eating enough fresh vegetables on the trail. Before I’m finished, the hostel common room looks like the staging area for a small military operation.

12:25
After puttering around Queenstown for a few hours, I’m basically ready to get on the bus to the trailhead. Except I have to pee. Not wanting to miss my last chance at a real toilet for three days, I tear ass across town to the public restroom and barely make it back in time for the bus.

12:30
En route to Glenorchy and the trailhead. It’s been rainy and grey all morning, and I’ve been mentally preparing myself, with some disappointment, for a wet, cloudy, chilly slog and no views. My rain jacket, waterproof trousers, and pack cover are within easy reach at the top of my backpack. Except, in the last few minutes the sun has been flirtatiously peeking out between swaths of cloud and patches of blue sky are visible here and there. It’s really tempting to hope this means good weather is on the way, but I concentrate on not getting carsick instead.

1:15
Damn, the drive out is really beautiful.

2:15
The bus drops off me and the dozen or so other walkers at the beginning of the trail, and a nice English couple takes my picture. Time to get started.

2:45
The track starts off wide and gentle, a dirt path covered with beech leaves from the forest above. It’s raining, but just a tiny bit, more of a mist really. The trail drops off on the left into the Route Burn, and the trees growing on its banks obscure the mountains beyond. Every 500 meters or so, there’s a break in the forest and I get a tiny glimpse of the scenery on the other side of the river. Like a taster spoon of Triple Chocolate Whatever at Haagen-Dazs, it just makes me want more, and I take a lot of pictures of trees with mountains barely visible in the distance.

The river, though, is right up in your face, and its swirling rapids and unbelievably blue water make for nice traveling companions.

3:10

OK. According to the track guide, this portion of the trail is “flat” but I am here to tell you that it is not. It climbs for a few minutes, runs flat for a while, climbs again for a few minutes, runs flat for a few minutes less, repeats. I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast at 8 AM and I am hungry, and my pack is VERY heavy. I wish I had weighed it before I left to give myself some better ammunition for my bellyaching (this is the part where Maurice says, “Oh, does your pussy hurt?”), but my best, most honest guess is between 25-30 pounds. Yes, my pussy hurts a lot.

In other news, the only forest fauna I’ve seen so far are dozens of little field mice strutting brazenly across the trail. They must be really accustomed to the foot traffic, for some of them will even walk beside me for a while, like Cinderella’s singing, sewing micefriends or something. They’re not nearly as disgusting as mice would be at home. Probably because I imagine them to be healthy hippie mice, eating berries and leaves and living in tidy dirt homes, instead of city mice, eating garbage and swimming in the oozy pools of sludge under the subway tracks.

3:30
At some point in the previous hour or so, I’ve dropped the plastic baggie that is supposed to keep my camera dry. This is a major violation of the tramper’s Environmental Code, and I feel guiltier about carelessly leaving a piece of non-biodegradable devil’s resin in the bush than about any of the numerous nasty, mean things I’ve said about other people in the past year.

4:05
Routeburn Flats Hut, the first Department of Conservation (DOC) hut on the track and one of the four places that trampers can spend the night on the Routeburn. I’m not staying here tonight, but I stop to have a snack: hummus, pita, cheese, a few carrots, some chocolate. It’s taken me 1 hour, 50 minutes to get here (versus the signposted 1 hour 30 minutes) and I’m worried that I’m too far behind schedule. I wolf down my snack and am back on the trail at 4:15. It’s supposed to be 1 1/2 hours to the next hut, and it’s described by the track guide as a “steady climb.” Great.

4:30

Parakeets!

4:44

THIS is the part your body conveniently forgets between one hike and the next, in much the same way I imagine that ladies forget the rigors of childbirth and so get knocked up again, or the way I can’t remember what it felt like to get tattooed for four hours and tell people that I want another. Steady climb my ass, this is a 60-degree incline directly up. I feel like Robert De Niro’s character in The Mission, that scene where he does penance by crawling up a mountainside with a huge bag of clanking metal strapped to his back.
Except he killed his brother or something and I don’t know what I did wrong to deserve this. It can’t be more than 55 or 60 outside, but I’m huffing and puffing and sweating like it’s a New York subway platform in August. I curse my wine, the carrots, the two bars of chocolate, and the 500-page hardcover novel, revising my pack weight up to 40 pounds. I take tiny steps and will myself forward with my eyes, sucking down water not only because I’m thirsty, but because it’s the heaviest thing in my bag. I want it off my back as soon as possible.

4:55
A fellow walker catches up to me at the swingbridge crossing Emily Creek. “We are very lucky today,” he says to me with a thick German (?) accent. I’m taken aback for a second; right now, I can barely breathe, I’m bent double under the weight of my backpack, and my thighs feel like jelly — jelly that is on fire. Lucky is the last thing I feel like. But I take a minute to look where he is looking, and realize that while I’ve been sweating and cursing, the sun has finally, gloriously, broken completely through the clouds. I can see all the way down the Route Burn valley and up the banks to the mountaintops on either side. It’s amazingly beautiful. He’s right; we are lucky, clear skies like this are a rarity in this part of New Zealand. I feel even better when I realize that the Emily Creek bridge is the halfway mark of this climb.

5:05
Still going up; still huffing and puffing. I see a DOC officer tripping down quickly from the other direction and step aside to let her pass. “Are you alright?” she asks as she blows by me. I’m confused — of course I’m fine!–and then realize that with my red face, loud breathing and sweat-drenched shirt, I must look like I’m about to fall over from heart failure.

5:15

Noooo. Uggghhh. Here the trail abandons all pretences of “steadiness” and turns into a set of rocky, steep stairs worn into the side of the mountain. At this point I am doubting my ability to continue much longer.
5:19
I smell smoke and a chemical tang like the smell of an outdoor toilet. Something isn’t right.

5:20


I round a bend in the rock stairs and stumble right on to the front porch of Routeburn Falls hut, my stop for the night. I’m there? Impossible. It’s supposed to take an hour and a half to get here, and it’s been just over an hour. I’m so pleased with myself that I kinda wish I had someone along to brag to.
(Ed. Note: Actual track times as provided by DOC are 1.5 -2.5 hours to Routeburn Flats hut and 1-1.5 hours from Routeburn Flats hut to Routeburn Falls hut, so I was both too hard on and too pleased with myself. The day’s climb, although probably not at a 60 degree incline, is 550 meters, approximately 1800 feet. That’s about 500 feet more than the height of the Empire State Building (1250 feet) and very close to the height of the proposed Freedom Tower (1776 feet).

5:30
I settle into my bunk and take a few minutes to soak in the view from the hut porch. The hut is perched on a bluff and overlooks the Routeburn Valley all the way back to the Humboldt Mountains. Words like “awe-inspiring” and “breathtaking” and “amazing” seem inadequate and overused; plus, I know that this pales in comparison to what I’ll see if I’m lucky tomorrow. Still. Alone on the porch, with something so unabashedly beautiful in front of me and a lot of baggage behind me at home, I tear up a little.

6:15
The Routeburn Falls hut consists of a living/cooking area separated from two bunkrooms by an outdoor passageway. Each bunkroom sleeps 24 people and is divided into six slots, three on each side of the room. Each slot has four bunks in it, two up and two down. The effect, especially given how cold it is, is not unlike that of a carefully-organized walk-in cooler. There’s only one other person in my slot, a hearty, balding middle-aged dude — prime snoring demographic. The kitchen area is warm with the heat of 15 or 20 people cooking their meals and a woodburning stove chugging away in the corner. The ceiling is festooned with a huge “Merry Christmas!” banner (several different languages represented), and there’s a standard-issue informational bulletin board on which is posted the weather forecast and several newspaper clippings about search-and-rescue missions on the track. There’s one I’ve definitely seen before, recounting how an Israeli couple, visiting New Zealand fresh from their military training in Israel, attempted the climb up to Harris Saddle in bad weather wearing only t-shirts and sneakers. They had been repeatedly warned by DOC staff not to proceed on the trail until they were properly equipped, but they pushed on anyway, and within half an hour one of them had severe hypothermia. They had to be helicoptered off the track. This particular story is posted in a lot of backcountry huts, not without some amount of schaudenfraude. The message seems to be — no matter how badass you are, how much mountain experience you have, or how many years you’ve spent in the military, the weather here can kill you in a matter of minutes. So don’t be stupid. And if you insist on it, rest assured that the details of your stupidity will be retold to countless generations of trampers, including exactly how many thousands of dollars it cost to airlift your sorry ass to a hospital.
Duly noted. I spend the next few hours cooking my dinner, drinking some of my wine (it’s now redeemed itself from the climb and seems like the most excellent idea ever), and trying to read but being distracted by the view outside.

9:40
After food, the wine, two cups of tea, and a long conversation with an English guy who has been living in Japan for several years, I’m beat. But I’m not ready to go to bed yet. It’s only just beginning to get dark; today is the longest day of the year. I go outside to catch the last glimpses of sun, disappearing in a pink haze behind the mountains.

10:00
Bed. It’s freezing in the bunkroom, literally, I will learn the next morning. I wear a hat to bed and stick my nose under my armpit when it gets too cold. Nice.

(to be continued)

 

What are these birds you speak of?

I am back, and well, let’s just say that I am going hiking again this weekend. Thus there is no time for a proper Routeburn Track post until I return (again) in 2007. If you are too anxious to wait a few more days, you can get a preview by flipping through my pictures, all 210 of them, below.

Routeburn Track

Happy New Year, everyone. 2006 didn’t do some of us any favors, but a little bird told me 2007 will be better. Until then!

 

Cue the Stevie Nicks

Walking past a Bivouac store (think North Face, EMS, REI, Tent Trails, etc.) last week, I knew something had changed. There was a SALE sign in the window, and first of all, well, I noticed it was there, and second, I thought, Hmm, a sale. . . maybe I should go in and see if there’s any good stuff. Good stuff like, oh, carabiners and hiking socks and warm yet lightweight and quick-drying undershirts and ginormous nylon backpacks and amazingly ugly boots. I was on my second pass through a bin of garishly-colored merino wool T-shirts (30% off!) before I thought, Not so long ago I wouldn’t have darkened the door of a Bivouac even if they promised me boundless intelligence, devastating beauty, and independent wealth in return for crossing the threshold. And now I’m looking at all these fugly shirts for a second time, hoping to find my size. It was a moment.

I had another such moment late last week when I realized my temp job would soon be over and the chances of me finding more work over the holidays were pretty much nonexistent. Well, I thought, I could sit around at home and feel sorry for myself, sleep in, watch some DVDs, and gorge on Christmas cookies, or I could spend the last of my meager funds on a three-day hike over a mountain saddle, at least one day of which is guaranteed to rain buckets, climbing and descending over 1000 meters through 32 kilometers and 32 avalanche paths. And I could do it alone. So, everything is booked and I leave tomorrow to hike the Routeburn.

Tramping has a way of gilding your memory so that all you recall of a trip is the beautiful views and this moment here:

and not so much the previous four days of rain rain rain god could it possibly rain MORE? my feet sure hurt these blisters are wicked WET COLD rain rain jesus christ is that SNOW? up up up up up my thighs are on FIRE up up more hooooooooo shit down down down ow ow KNEES ANKLES down down WET, etc. But not this time. Those retiree-length shorts have plenty of pockets and room for a small notebook w/pen. So I’ll be thoroughly and accurately documenting my trip for a warts-and-all post here later.

I’ll be back after Christmas.

 

You Tell Me

If there’s something more perfectly awesome than pounding beers on the deck of a boat, enjoying some (very rare) warm sunshine:

in one of the most beautiful places in the world:

after a 33.5 mile hike through torrential rain:

and snow!

then please clue me in immediately.

I think I might be hooked on this “tramping” thing. Or at least, the “drinking beer afterwards” part.

 

53:38

This is the last bend on the last lap of the Sri Chinmoy 10K* run in Christchurch yesterday. The fourth runner coming this way is me. I finished ahead of everyone else in the picture and crossed the line at 53:38.

You didn’t know I was a runner? I wasn’t, until I moved here.

(Due to technical difficulties, this picture was staged after the fact. Try to imagine three other runners right near me and more sweat! )

*10k = 6.2 miles

 

New Zealand: Days 1-30 (Part 2)

First, some remainders of our trip to the Nina Valley. These pictures have been selected for maximum visibility of odd tramping gear. In this one I’m showing off my gaiters:

I think this gesture means “Take the goddamn picture already!”

We saw lots of perfectly-shaped ice crystals like these. MR (he of the books about freezing to death in the Arctic) was beside himself with delight.

The following weekend, we climbed Mount Herbert, an attraction in our own Banks Peninsula backyard. Mount Herbert is in no way a mountain; it’s 919 meters to the summit and we began halfway up. So I really have no excuse for throwing the fit I did. Well, I have one excuse. MY HIKING BOOTS WERE FUCKING KILLING ME — somehow the 9 mile hike through the Nina Valley had failed to adequately break them in. Also, I had been in New Zealand for three weeks at this point, and it had just started to sink in that I was not on vacation; in fact, I now lived in this strange isolated place on the other side of the world and would for some time. With each step, my left ankle bone was ground to a finer, bloodier point, and my mood grew more and more surly. At three hours to go before the summit, I was in full-on tantrum mode — not screaming, bitching, throwing shit, but my own personal tantrum mode, which is (for better or for worse) more like an aggrieved teenager. Lots of heavy sighing, eye-rolling, under-breath mutterings, and obsessing over the nearest concrete symbol of my spiritual sufferings. A cow had kicked the bucket by the side of the track, which served nicely in this situation. Here’s what I thought, for 2 1/2 hours:

(left foot steps) OUCH
(right foot steps) I hate it here.
(left foot steps) MOTHERFUCKER
(right foot steps) Dead cow.
(left foot steps) OUCH OUCH
(right foot steps) Figures the only interesting thing in this whole country is a fucking dead cow.
(left foot steps) OH, GOD IT HURTS.
(right foot steps) I miss New York.
(left foot steps) OWIE OWIE OWIE.
(right foot steps) Why did I ever come here?

Repeat ad nauseum.

By the time we reached the top of Mount Herbert, I was ready to kill the real reason I came “here.” This is me, wishing the worst on MR.

I mean, look how fucking happy he is! It’s like he likes climbing and New Zealand and shit. Loser.

My reward for reaching the top was a tamarillo. Would you like to know what a tamarillo tastes like? Do not read further if you are squeamish, because a tamarillo tastes like come. Tangy, sour, alcoholic come. With seeds. Really, could life get worse?

I guess the view was nice and all:

And we saw some neat-o stuff on our way down:

And we were together. Which (previous three weeks aside) hadn’t been the case for a year.
So, could life get worse?

Yes.

Grade: A (for doing something for luuuvvv) / D (for that something being mountain climbing)

 

New Zealand: Days 1-30 (Part 1)

Thursday the 20th was my one month anniversary in New Zealand.

************************************************

“Welcome to Christchurch ‘International’ Airport! Baggage didn’t come through? Why don’t you fill out this form. Distinguishing characteristics, very good. Purple with duct tape? That shouldn’t be hard to find, now, should it? Contents? Everything you own? Oh, you’re moving here. Very good. No worries, shouldn’t take long for it to turn up. Only a few places it could have went! (Ed. note: Ain’t that the truth.) Cheers!”

I kid, I kid. Mostly. They did lose my baggage. But the very nice Air New Zealand man was nothing but helpful and made no cheeky remarks about my bedraggled appearance and clearly borrowed clothing. I’d like you to perform a mental experiment for just a few moments. You are flying into JFK. Your baggage doesn’t come around the conveyor with all the other suitcases. You approach the customer service window, eyeing the airline employee who looks disgruntled by the challenges of her cell phone game and the long line of similarly-situated and irritated fellow New Yorkers. What happens next?

I’ll speculate that the outcomes of your mental experiment did not include the promise of immediate delivery of your baggage to your doorstep — indeed, so promptly that you asked if they hold off until you could grab something to eat. To which request the airline happily complied. New Zealand 1, New York 0.

Moving on. So this is the little town which is now my home:

Lyttelton, Canterbury, New Zealand. Pop. 3100.
Another view:

And this greeted me as we emerged from the tunnel between Christchurch and Lyttelton:

M.R. (New Zealand 2, New York 0) painted it, and it warmed my icy, stonelike heart. Also,a huge rainbow blossomed over Lyttelton the day I arrived. I am totally not shitting you. Apparently they happen all the time here. (New Zealand 3, New York 0)

All was not sweetness and light forever, though, as soon I was frogmarched into the Great Outdoors. Those of you who know me well will also know that I have a strong, stated preference for appreciating natural beauty through the mediating device of a window pane, or screened-in porch, or even better, through a documentary that will lull me to sleep within ten minutes. I car-camped once and found it mostly taxing and unpleasant. One of my biggest fears about this move was that I wouldn’t be able to adequately pass as a seasoned outdoorswoman who can splash through knee-high rivers without complaint, enthusiastically debate the merits vs. shortcomings of various kinds of tents, and find joy in gorp and warm brackish water — or almost worse, that I would, and discover too late that my own personality had quickly and quietly slithered out of notice. It’s good, then, that nature appreciation started out easily on my first weekend with a day trip to Arthur’s Pass and Castle Rock:

After climbing to the top of these rocks, I took a seat and looked pensive, no doubt second-guessing the life of hiking and camping I had signed myself up for:

The beauty that is always nearby makes it difficult to second guess for too long:

It’s easy to think twice, however, when confronted with the ridiculous hiking costume that is customary here, a get-up that includes long johns, gaiters (yes, much like a character in a P.G. Wodehouse novel), and shorts , even in the dead of winter:

But the next weekend, I sallied forth on my first real tramp. And despite the silly-looking (and, OK, completely necessary and useful) gear, I seem to have had a great time.

I like to think of the moment in The Little Mermaid when Ariel gets her voice back when I see this picture:

(Angelic singing)

I found the hike challenging and was chastened to discover that apparently a six year-old has done it with only a few boosts over the deep puddles!

To be continued. . .

Grade: A (for New Zealand as bucolic natural paradise)