Wednesday, I and a few other international students keen on getting out and hiking attended the first Tramping Club (CUTC) meeting of the semester. There we signed up for the club, met a few people, and learned about an upcoming trip on the weekend.
Someone was organizing a trip for the upcoming weekend, a 6 – 10 km hike to the Avoca Homestead in the Southern Alps. The cool thing about NZ is that they have huts set up all over the country in wilderness regions – called homesteads. The CUTC owns and maintains many of them. Often, you won’t even need to bring a tent or bedroll when you go tramping (kiwi word for hiking) because the huts have places to sleep – although it’s a good idea, just in case.
Eleven people signed up (well thirteen, but two ended up dropping out) and I knew 7 of them. Matt, the organizer of the trip, rented a bus for the occasion. Many of us didn’t have sleeping bags or bedrolls, so we had to rent from the club. I was able to borrow one from a girl named Tania.
A two hour car ride out of Christchurch brought us somewhere close to Arthur’s Pass in the Southern Alps. I’m still marveling at how close and convenient everything is in New Zealand… and how you don’t have to worry about getting eating by large animals like bears or cougars. The biggest thing we had to worry about was getting lost, and also maybe avoiding the thorn bushes of doom. (Which probably evolved specifically for fending off sheep… via inch-long thorns)
We trekked in the long way, the scenic way, across the mountains. It was gorgeous. And also, surprisingly, a beautiful day. When we left Christchurch that morning, it was rainy and miserable, so it was nice to find the sun shining in the mountains.
I think if you click on the image you can see a bigger version…
I don’t think it really hit me that I was in the wilderness, not until Carmen exclaimed at one point that it was so crazy how alone we were. I guess in Germany there would always be other people around. Here in NZ though, we were very much alone. Being from Canada I suppose I’m used to that. Even in summer the trails don’t get too busy.
For me, it felt like we were so close to civilization. The fact that we were going to be sleeping in a hut, that we only had to drive two hours to get to the mountains, and that there were no bears or cougars to be wary of, made it all feel like I hadn’t quite left the urban area yet.
But the scenery was beautiful, just like Middle Earth. It’s different from the Rocky Mountains in Alberta. In the Alberta the mountains are more… rocky I guess. Nothing grows on the tops of the mountains there except moss, but in Arthur’s Pass we were walking among thorn bushes taller than we were, with grass and snow under our feet. In Canada it’s still not uncommon to see ground squirrels running around among the rocks, doing who-knows-what. In New Zealand there was nothing. Nothing but sheep, of course. (Before the arrival of humans, there were no mammals in New Zealand. So any mammals that are there were at one point brought over as pets or as pests. Or as food.)
We walked from noon until around 5 o’clock, where we came to a river. We had planned to cross it and sleep at the homestead that was just across on the opposite bank. There are two criteria that mark a river as crossable, I learned – one, that the water be below waist level, and/or two, that a human be able to keep pace with a stick floating downstream as they walk along the shore. We couldn’t tell how deep it was, but the stick definitely disappeared faster than we would have liked.
And so we tried the group river-crossing method.
A group of 4 or 5 stands in a line facing the river, and each person links arms with the people next to them, making sure to hold on to the straps of each other’s backpack. I was one of the lucky ones that got to stay on shore while the first group attempted to cross…
They got about halfway through before the current became too strong, and they had to come back. They tried crossing in a different spot as well, but no luck there either. In the end we decided it was safer to just head back to the van tonight, rather than risk an unsafe crossing now and not being able to cross tomorrow morning.
Luckily, there was a short and easy route back – we just had to follow the road for three kilometers or so. At the van we changed our socks & shoes, and exchanged snacks and treats. (Lots of cookies went around… those Austrians really like their sweets.)
Seeing as there were 11 of us and only 10 seats, I claimed my spot on the floor with the backpacks again. It was actually pretty comfy, if not very safe or legal. But Matt didn’t crash the car, so I didn’t mind. In the end we got back to Christchurch around 8 or 9 o’clock.
Having almost a whole day more for my weekend that I had originally planned, I resolved to clean my room, wash my clothes, and finally do some homework on Sunday. Of course, I did none of the above, choosing to surf the web and write this instead.
Cheers.
Topo Map:
http://www.topomap.co.nz/NZTopoMap?v=2&ll=-43.163387,171.874489&z=14&pin=1
New Zealand Travel 