Easter Break

Tomorrow morning I leave for the North. Our mid-semester break is next week, and I'm taking advantage of it by roadtripping around the South Island with two other Arcadia kids, Mitch and Noah. Tomorrow we're headed to Christchurch, and then on to the northern end of the South Island. We plan to spend some time up there in the sun, then work our way back down the West Coast, checking out the sights along the way and hopefully getting some tramping in as well. Due to the shortage of easily accessible, free internet in New Zealand, I will probably be out of contact for the next 10 days. My computer also crashed again -- I honestly cannot believe it -- on Tuesday, so I won't even have that with me if I did find internet.

Though I can't put up pictures easily from last weekend, I can write briefly about it. Andrew, Taylor and I drove out to Fiordland to meet up with Andrew's parents and sister. It was a different style of trip than we have taken, and the change was nice. It was certainly strange staying in a motel room and eating out for dinner, though. It reminded me of joining my family for trips at the end of a semester.

Because of the constraints imposed on us by the demographics of our party, we didn't do any terribly difficult outdoor activities. Over the course of the weekend we took three multi-hour hikes that were good exercise, but not particularly noteworthy. You just can't get very far three hours from the road. We did, however, take a cruise on the famous Milford Sound, which was really cool. Milford Sound is actually a fjord (misnamed by the English) on the northern edge of Fiordland. Our cruise was two hours long, out the fjord to the open ocean and then right back in. The scenery is dramatic -- 1600 meter mountains rising straight from the water, sometimes at an 80 degree, glacier-carved pitch. The end of the fjord gave me my first view of New Zealand's west coast as well. And we had a pod of dolphins surfing our bow wave for a good portion of the ride out, which was honestly one of the coolest parts. I had never seen it in person before, and I was standing right on the bow when they came over, meaning I was able to watch them roll about from about eight feet above.

Also this week, I've been trying to get my third paper of the semester done, and it has been a challenge. It's 3000 words, arguing for or against compulsory Maori language education in New Zealand schools. I have an about half-length rough draft at the moment which I hope to improve on over break (though it will have to be by hand). It's due the day school restarts, and hopefully will be done the day school restarts, given that I have another paper due the following Friday.

For now, though, it's time to go pack up for the roadtrip. I'll talk to everyone again in 10 days!

Reid

Three Weeks of Tramping

I switched up the layout a little bit today for three reasons. First, I figured out how to put a proper picture in the background instead of just a blue screen; second, I am no longer in Canterbury so figured the title needed a makeover; and third, learned how to stitch together panoramas in Photoshop, so making my new header. I also hoped a change would get me writing again.

As you can infer from the title, I've escaped Dunedin the last three weekends, opting for the attractions of the great outdoors over those of the city. The weeks, though filled with good food and some times almost worth noting, are not exciting enough to earn space at this time, especially when my trips have compressed my schedule. I did spend the second half of last week writing my second of five papers this semester, which kept me rather busy and resulting in me rushing off to my most recent trip.

But before I get to that one, I have two others that more than deserve note. One involved the toughest walking I have ever done; the other some of the most spectacular views I have ever had. Caution: this post is extremely long, so I would suggest reading it one trip at a time. Given my posting pace, you probably have a while to get through it.

Fiordland
By the time the 26th of March rolled around, it had been nearly a month since I had been backpacking. While I had explored parts of New Zealand closer to the roads, Arthur's Pass had been the only time I had strapped on the boots for a real hike. Andrew and I resolved to change that.

We picked our route a day or two earlier than we had for Arthur's Pass, after consultation of both the web and the tramping club. It was to be the Green Lake/Lake Monowai circuit in Fiordland, New Zealand's largest, wildest, and wettest national park. It takes up the South Island's southwestern corner and is a place of dense forest, mountain lakes, mossy streams, and inaccessible fjords.

We drove out early Friday morning, as the trailhead was a four-hour drive from Dunedin (everything is a four-hour drive from Dunedin). At 1 PM we were on the trail, tramping through a very green forest, surrounded by ferns and moss-covered logs.

Our first day's hike was about five hours, which included a 700-meter elevation gain to get over a low pass. We camped by the shores of Green Lake the first night, a great spot if one was inclined to ignore the sandflies (NZ's flying, biting insect of choice). A few spatters of rain got us into the tent around dusk, but the next morning dawned gray and drizzly.

This was our long day. We ate our oatmeal in the misty rain, packed up the tent in a dry spell, and started walking. The track led through forest again, but, like many tracks in New Zealand, had little to distinguish it from a deer trail besides the regular orange markers tacked to trees. Andrew and I were soon soaked, due more to the trees and ferns than to the sky. After about an hour of walking I created a pack cover out of a black plastic garbage bag in an attempt to keep my gear dry.

The morning's walk was again about 5 hours, through the aforementioned forest, over a field of tall tussocky grass, and then through more forest. It was all marked trail, though the markers were few across the grass and fallen trees resulted in a couple of detours. About two o'clock we reached Monowai Hut, on the shores of Lake Monowai. The rain had dissipated, though the sky was still overcast and we were still wet. The hut was occupied by people who had come over by jet boat and were working on a game of Clue while we ate our lunch of crackers, cheese, salami, and apples.

Andrew working his way across a log bridge:

 The grass field. Kind of like walking through tundra:

 A well-delineated section of trail (note the orange triangle on the tree):

The track stopped at the hut, but we didn't. Little did we know what was to come as we tramped off down the beach at 2:45. The next two kilometers were off-track, mostly in the trees above the lake. The only problem was that the mountain that was also above the lake, meaning that the trees were growing on a substantial slope and we would be sidehilling. The first three-quarters of a kilometer wasn't bad -- we had an alternating marshy/sandy beach we could walk/wade through (our boots were long ago soaked through). The beach ran out when the shore turned, however, and our attempt to wade through the lake instead of through the brush was short-lived due to the deep water, bouldery bottom, and overhanging branches. 

We were headed for Rough Point, about 1.25-1.5 kilometers from where we ran out of beach. It took us over an hour and a half. Off-track alone have been bad enough. We were walking around trees, ducking branches, and wading through waist to chest high ferns that blocked our view of whatever we were standing on. But then we had the sidehill. This meant that not only was our footing terrible (walking on one side of your foot constantly is a pain), but we'd regularly run into something that forced us up or down, which often meant up or down straight into trees. It could be an exposed boulder, it could be a sudden drop or extremely steep section or, worst of all, it could be a fallen 20-meter tree. Naturally, these all fell downhill, meaning that going around was not an easy proposition. Oftentimes we could find a way over, but other times the tree would be at just too tall to climb over, and the tangle of branches and ferns made going under impossible. 

If that wasn't enough to make the walking hard, there was Fiordland. In Fiordland, it rains. A whole lot. One result is that moss covers everything. Another is that dead trees literally rot in place. This meant that most of the likely handholds would disintegrate -- actually disintegrate -- when you grabbed them. Any organic matter that was not alive was not solid. Branches inches in diameter fell off their trunks with a light tug. Logs six inches in diameter would cascade down the hill in a shower of peaty moss if you dared to pull yourself up by one. And there's nothing like stepping in the middle of a full-sized tree and having your foot sink in four inches. Don't try the edges.

Andrew working his way up the hill:

My track, or, more appropriately, lack of one:

 For a sense of the density. The big orange thing is Andrew's pack cover:

 Goin' through!

We finally reached the stream just short of Rough Point between 4:30 and 5. I felt like we'd finally reached our goal. Of course, we hadn't. We quickly crossed the stream to get to the ridge on the other side. And that's when we started our 1000-meter climb.

It would have been pretty manageable if it had been the first thing we'd tackled. But it was the last. We'd already been going nearly 8 hours, had just finished two hours of exhausting bushwhacking, and were completely soaked through. Not making it up wasn't an option, though, as Sunday we had to drop down the other side and then hike out what we expected to be 4-5 hours to the car after that. We couldn't tack a climb onto that day. So up we went. 

Thankfully, the walking was much easier. The trees were thinner than they had been on the sidehill and the brush almost non-existent (making me think we had been far too close to the lake for our sidehill). We found the ridge we were aiming up and had a defined ridgeline to walk up. But it was just a long way to climb, and quite steep -- the elevation gain came over a distance of less than 3, and probably closer to 2, kilometers. 

I decided to take it slow and steady, to just keep walking as long as I could, no matter how slow it got. And as I neared the top, it got really, really slow. I had been tired at the bottom of the hill, but had climbed the first half or so pretty well. As we got to the upper reaches of the forest (tree line was about 1000 meters, or 300 below the summit), though, my legs were some combination of jelly and lead. Andrew had a cardio advantage and was still moving well, though not necessarily at high speed, while I struggled along, putting one exhausted foot in front of the other. I found the only two sticks in all of Fiordland that didn't break when you put some weight on them and used them like the canes of an old man to help pull myself along. When I had to put a knee on the ground, it took about three seconds to stand up again, as my brain would fire every other muscle in my body before I convinced it that, yes, it did have to fire the quads and hamstrings to stand up.

We finally made it above bush line (i.e. tree line), me at the point of a half-pause between every step and a few seconds every ten. The sight of open land, the lake below, and slightly flatter ground gave me a short burst of energy, and I managed to walk a few minutes at a slow, yet continuous pace, and found the energy to talk to Andrew in more than a few short, not-thought-out words. The climb wasn't quite over yet, though. There was a large tarn on the other side of the peak we where we planned to camp, as we had about an hour before dark set in. This required about 200 meters more of steep climbing. Going straight through whatever brush was in my way, no matter how poky it was, I made it to the top on a three-step, three-second rest plan. Andrew, meticulous in his time-keeping, informed me that we had turned uphill two hours before.

Then it was just a final drop to the tarn. This was almost harder than the uphill, as my legs had no power to brace me. I slipped once, but managed to do no worse than muddying my already soaked shorts. When we reached the tarn, we put up the tent as quickly as we could, as the light was fast disappearing. Both of us then stripped completely, toweled off our skin that wasn't any drier than the clothes we'd had on, and put on every layer of dry clothing we had. The rice and chicken on the camp stove had never tasted so good.

The view from bushline was almost worth the walk:

Lake Monowai, from the hills high above:

The tarn we camped by, the following morning:

Sunday morning was equally gray. We started by climbing back up to the ridgeline from the lake, then walked along it towards the track that started at bushline. The clouds closed in as we moved, reducing visibility to a couple of hundred meters. Heavy rain combined with wet grass soon had us just as wet as the day before. We found trail markers after a short while and started following them down through the tussocks. After about an hour we hit treeline and located the orange triangles posted on trunks. 

Only problem was, the trail didn't seem to exist. We were well-used to barely visible trails, so we headed down the most likely looking path, expecting to pick it up a little down the mountain. To make a long story short, we never found it. Despite not seeing a trail, we headed down, figuring that was where we needed to go. After a little while and no sign of a better trail, we decided to separate a little and look for it. Andrew went right, I went left, shouting at each other every thirty seconds to make sure we were still within earshot. 

This forest was about as dense as the sidehill the day before had been. It was a steep, heavily vegetated slope with all the same problems we'd had the day before: peaty, unstable footing, rotting logs that provided no support, and four-foot tall ferns that obscured the ground below. It was raining heavily the first portion of the hike and rather cold. I didn't want to pull more clothes out of my bag, knowing they would just get wet, so I kept walking in what I had. 

We eventually got through the first part of dense forest and found ourselves on a nose with streams flowing through deep gullies on each side. Looking at our very damp map, we guessed we had crossed the trail without realizing it and were on the left side, where we wanted to be, so resolved to follow the stream down. The steep gullies posed a problem, though. We were able to get around the head of the first one, but as soon as we got around it we were faced with another. This time we were forced to climb down a steep moss-covered slope (thankfully it actually provided good holds) and up the far side, only to be confronted with the same situation again. The tops of the slopes were also tangled messes, as the ground was caving into the gully, leaving trees at odd angles for us to fight through. After about four sets of gullies and steep up and down climbing we finally cleared the river system and were able to walk on flatter ground.

For the next two hours we walked through what felt like unending forest, headed for a lake we couldn't see. The undergrowth had become almost exclusively ferns, interspersed with areas of moss-covered floor. We aimed for the moss as it was easier walking and, as Andrew pointed out, the first 100 ferns weren't really sharp, nor were the first 1000, but once we started getting beyond that they were doing a number on our legs. At least the rain had abated. Finally, four hours after we had left the top we emerged on the lakeshore, to our surprise a good half kilometer to the right of where the trail came down. Further examination of the map showed that the trail took a solid left from the top, and despite all our leftward tracking, we had never gotten close.

At least we knew where we were. A twenty minute walk through boggy lakeshore got us to Roger Inlet hut, where we had lunch. From there, it was a 6-hour hike to the car according to the DOC (Department of Conservation) sign. Usually Andrew and I can do about 75% of the DOC time, but we were wet and ready to be home and so resolved to go as fast as we possibly could. Three hours of fast walking with little regard for mud pits brought us to the parking lot, where we stripped for the second time in two days to put on our last remaining dry clothes (for me, this was wool long underwear bottoms and a fleece top - nothing else). 

Upon our return to Dunedin after dark, my room transformed into a massive drying rack as I hung up just about everything I had brought. My boots would take four days (two in front of my space heater) to dry. The open sore I had given myself on my left hip during the last portion of the hike would take a week to heal, and climbing stairs felt way too difficult until Wednesday. Besides slightly battered bodies, Andrew's camera was a casualty of the hike -- it fell out of his waist belt pocket while we were contorting our bodies to get packs around trees and up slopes in the gullies. My camera had been buried in my pack since the morning to keep it from getting completely soaked, explaining the lack of pictures the second day.

It was a trip I won't soon forget and ranks among the most intense of my outdoor experiences. At no point was I worried about my safety, but the climbs combined with the bushwhacking combined with the rain made it a much more challenging experience than I had been expecting. It is one of those trips where the enjoyment (and I did enjoy it) comes from knowing you will have done it, not necessarily the actual living it.

Aoraki/Mt Cook

The following weekend we were ready for more backpacking, though we hoped for something slightly lower on the intensity scale. Taylor returned to the group (she had gone to Arthur's Pass but had been in Queenstown for the Fiordland hike) and we went north, to the tallest mountain in New Zealand, which I will refer to as Aoraki for the same reason I call Denali Denali. 

We again left Friday morning for the four hour drive. The day was stunning, as were the vistas. The last hour of the drive we watched Aoraki get closer and closer as we cruised along the western shore of a massive lake.

The view from the visitor's center parking lot:

We had planned for a two-night backpacking trip, but the visitor's center staff dashed our hopes. Unless we were ready for serious mountaineering, there weren't any mid-distance hikes in the area. Instead, we were pointed to a day hike in the direction of a hut and another hike up the next valley over that could be turned into an overnight. With plenty of daylight left, we drove over the campground we were going to stay at the first night, then headed up the hill. The views were spectacular:

The climb took about two hours and our stop at the summit was short lived due to the bitter wind blowing over the top. We quickly hiked down and set up camp. It had so happened that most of the other Arcadia kids had been planning a trip to the same place that weekend, so they showed up soon after we got down and we hung out in the public shelter making dinner and playing cards together. The night was notable for two reasons. First, the stars were as good as any I have ever seen. It was a cloudless, moonless night, hundreds of miles from any real population center. The sky absolutely glowed, and you could trace the Milky Way from one horizon to the other. Also, it was extremely cold, the coldest it's been since we've been here. I didn't wear enough clothes in my sleeping bag and had a chilly night, and the tent was rimed with ice in the morning.

We got up and out, however, and drove 20 kilometers to the next valley over, where there was the opportunity for a one-night hike. After packing everything to go backpacking, we were determined to do so. The sun hadn't cleared the peaks when we got to the trailhead and the air still had quite a chill, so we quickly changed into our hiking clothes and got moving (Andrew managed to break the driver's seat of the car while trying to wiggle out of his long underwear with the steering wheel in the way). 

The day reminded us why you never let a little cold weather discourage you. By the time we reached Ball Shelter, where we were going to return to camp, the sun had risen and the day was hot. We passed by the hut and headed for the ridgeline behind it. For the second time in two weeks we missed the trail and found ourselves beating through alpine brush and clambering up scree to reach the ridge.

The valley we were hiking up:

Taylor, looking over the glacier that sat between our path and the mountains on the other side:

Missed the track again. Big surprise:

Steep scree slopes and incredibly sharp grass tufts started to discourage us, but we made it to the ridge where we found hints of an old trail. We could also see the back side of Aoraki and, mesmerized by its grandeur and slowed by the sun, we stopped for lunch in a spot that would be hard to beat. We ate our crackers, cheese and salami below a glacier-covered 10,000 foot peak, basking shirtless in bright sunlight, cooled by a light wind, and listening to the regular thunder of ice and rock falling down the face in front of us.

Andrew and I, intrepid explorers we are, decided to follow the ridge a little farther up to see if we could spot the trail and to check out views from higher up. The first few hundred yards were tough walking, skirting the base of rock outcrops and beating through more vegetation. As we were tiring of it, though, we found the elusive orange triangle marking the trail. From there, of course, we couldn't stop until we'd gotten to the top. We had left our packs and Taylor at the lunch site, so we were able to hike quickly up the trail and across the boulder fields to where the ridge flattened out. From there, the mountain was literally in our faces. We sat on large rocks overlooking the glacier between us and the face, listening to the now-constant sound of avalanching rock and snow and eating the two Snickers bars I had brought up (after Fiordland I vowed never to be short on chocolate).

If you have good eyes, you can spot Andrew on the rocks looking up at the mountain.

The ridge we came up. Lunch is over the last bump visible:

We made our way down on the trail, found where we had missed it (it was marked, but not obvious), and made our way back to Ball Shelter, where we set up camp and put on some warmer clothes to compensate for the disappearance of the sun. We had a good dinner and hot chocolate to go with it, then spent some quality time rolling boulders down the moraine wall onto the glacier. We got some pretty good ones going and could see the sparks they made as they struck other rocks in the half-darkness.

The next morning we had an easy two hour hike back to the car, allowing us to get back to Dunedin early.We didn't get back quite as early as expected, however, because about 40 km down the road we started hearing a strange flapping sound coming from the front left tire. Unable to identify it after pulling over, we continued to the next town, where we had to get gas. While we were filling up, Andrew took a closer look at the wheel and discovered the hanging strip of rubber and wire that had come off the inner edge of the tire. I solicited some advice from handy-looking older men filling up their trucks at the next pump over. They said they didn't think the tire would last long and pointed us towards a repair shop just down the street. We motored cautiously over and gave the owner a call at his after hours number. To our great relief, he said he'd be there in fifteen minutes (remember, this was a Sunday afternoon; the same problem we'd had in Invercargill). Sure enough, before we'd even finished a quick snack he had arrived, pulled on his work suit, and had the car jacked up. As he pulled out the lug nuts, I asked him how much distance we had left on the tire. "A few hundred meters," he replied. 

The other tire had significant wear as well, so half an hour later we were out the door with two new front tires and 300 fewer dollars. We thanked Russell profusely for coming to work on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, then drove over to the pizza place he recommended ("Shawty's") and had the delicious pizza Andrew and I had been craving since we passed up Pizza Hut for terrible cheap chow mien the week before. With a once-again functional car, the rest of the drive to Dunedin went smoothly, and we arrived home on Castle Street to the unsurprising but always smile-inducing sight of Kiwis playing beer pong on the sidewalk.

Matukituki River

Andrew's family arrived in Dunedin for a visit last weekend, holding him in the city. Without my reliable tramping partner I was required to go a different route. Luckily, Otago has an active tramping club with trips going out just about every weekend. An email reply and an appearance at a meeting had me a spot on one going to the Matukituki River in Mt. Aspiring National Park. 

We left Friday evening this time, not long before dark. The drive was, as you could have guessed, about four hours. Most of the route I had covered on the trip to Queenstown a few weeks back, but the last 50 km were along a dirt road, complete with unfenced pastures and stream fords. There were five of us: one other American girl, plus two New Zealanders and one Australian studying here. Two of the locals were graduate students -- Paul the Australian was doing a PhD in computer programming, and Jen the Australian (and trip leader) was doing a one-year graduate program related to wildlife biology.

Penzy, the driver, other New Zealander and a third-year, was telling us how another tramping club trip had hit a cow on this road a year or two before (I mentioned the unfenced pastures). Soon after we found ourselves in the middle of large herd of said cows. They were covering the road, showing little inclination to get out of the way of the car. Most would give us a good stare then slowly amble out of the way. Others were crossing the road behind us and all were making lots of noise. It was almost creepy, if it weren't rather funny.

Just down the road, however, a lone cow would cause more problems. It was standing on the right side of the road, and we were cruising on down the left at a very moderate pace -- about 30 kph. The cow starting walking beside us, then literally jumped right in front of the car. Penzy slammed on the brakes, but too late. We slammed into the cow, which rolled onto the hood and into the windshield before sliding off the front, jumping up, and sprinting away. After we got over our sudden shock, we got out to assess the damage: one shattered headlight, a side mirror hanging by wires, dents in the hood and side, and 

a few stray cow hairs jammed into cracks. But the hood still opened, the car still ran, and with the help of some surgical tape the mirror was back on. While we were looking, the rancher drove by in his pickup. He seemed like the real deal: gruff but friendly, deliberate and slow movements and speech, carrying one of those massive spotlights, with a rifle barrel pointed out the front window. He checked we were all right, didn't seem concerned about the cow, and drove off down the road.

We spent that night on the concrete floor of a shelter at the trailhead. It was cold again, but my new inflatable pad made a surprisingly comfortable bed, and I had enough clothes on in my sleeping bag to stay plenty warm. We got up early the next morning and headed for the Matukituki. The hike started with a few miles of pasture walking before we entered the park itself. It was cold until the sun came up, but then it developed into another beautiful day. As usual, the scenery was stunning:

Fog lying low over the fields in the morning:

We hiked along a sun-dappled forest track for about three hours afterwards before coming out onto a river flat that was absolutely jaw-dropping. The crystal-clear Matukituki River braided its way through wide sandbars (some the first I've seen) between steep, forested mountains. At the head of the valley thundered a massive waterfall that we could hear from kilometers away. A rocky, snow-covered mountain crowned the entire vista. I could have died happily in the sun on one of the bars. It was hard to believe it was real. The pictures don't come close to capturing it, but they are something:

After lunch we had to move on, though. We walked up a side stream, walking on large rocks the entire way. After about an hour and a half of steady walking up that, we got above treeline and turned for the saddle we were aiming for. The up was steep, though not terribly hard. As we got higher, though, we were forced to walk sidehill, often along scree, as the land sloped away towards a stream. This walking got a little tougher, but I happen to really enjoy walking on scree and boulders (as long as they aren't too loose), so I had a good time with it. The sun had sunk behind the peaks around 2:30, unfortunately, so the walking was chillier than it had been in the valley bottom.

Aspiring Flat is visible in the background:

 According to my mates, the rock was schist, which is that flaky kind that basically turns into dirt when a thin strip gets wet:

Rachel, the other American, wasn't in quite good enough shape to make it all the way to the saddle (the total climb from the flat was somewhere in the 1200 meter range), so we made camp a few hundred meters short, Paul, Penzy and I resolving to get up early and tackle Sisyphus, the mountain just past the saddle. After a big pasta dinner and some hot cocoa, we went to bed at 8 o'clock, our alarms set for 5.

We got up in the dark (really not that hard to get up at 5 when you go to bed at 8). Guided by headlamps, we took off for the saddle, guessing at the route as best we could based on what we remembered from the night before. We found ourselves on a steep sidehill with the same schist underfoot, some of which had incredibly slippery ice frozen on. Mixed in were patches of snow we had to punch across. Most of the time I had both hands on the rocks beside me as I took steps, as the slope dropped off steeply to my right, with a three meter bluff about 20 meters down (the bluff was why we were so high up the mountain wall -- we had to get around it). It was slow going, and at one point Paul took a quick break and set down the little pack he was carrying only to see it tumble down the slope and off the bluff, where it thankfully stopped on a flatter portion. He climbed down a manageable part of the bluff and luckily managed to find the pack after a ten minute search.

The going was extremely slow, as every foot fall needed to be tested and the short sections of snowfields required punching in foot holds.

Paul outlined against the slowly brightening sky:

Penzy working her way across some snow:

The walking eased up just before the saddle and we made it up just as it was getting bright enough to turn off our headlamps.We admired the view for a few minutes and looked down the other side of the saddle, which was impossibly steep. Then we headed for the peak of Sisyphus, which was only a little above us. We were up top twenty minutes later, watching the rays of the still hidden sun striking out from behind the mountains to our east, lighting up the mountains around us with an ever brighter pink:

There was a fog river pouring off the glacier high in the mountains. It went on for hours, clouds just pouring down the mountainside then melting away:

We wanted to get back to the car at a reasonable hour, so we didn't sit on the top for too long. Going down we found a much easier route as we could now see where we were going. I couldn't help taking a picture of where we had gone up: it was above the darker, steep section you can see in this photo, just below where the rock actually becomes sheer. No one would ever, ever think to walk there if they could actually see where they were going. All part of the adventure, I guess.

The walk out was uneventful. We followed the same route, first dropping down through the alpine grass, then down the creek and the river valley. The views were just as good as they had been the day before, and we even got some rainbows:

The drive home was similarly uneventful. I arrived in Dunedin just as my flatmates and Andrew's family were finished up their dinner of curry and naan, so I had a bite to supplement the Subway sandwich I'd gotten on the drive.

That completes my long summary of the last three weekends. I'm still hoping to write about other things, but these are by far the most exciting, and with my weeks functionally reduced to four days, time can be hard to come by, despite the shortage of schoolwork. Thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll be back before two weeks. Our mid-semester break is the last week of April, and I hope to get at least one more post in by then.

Reid