New Zealand Part 8: South Island Huts and Leaving New Zealand
The seasons are beginning to change and it’s now feeling like fall in New Zealand. I started seeing signs of fall weeks ago, but each time I pointed it out, Grady (jokingly) denied it and called it the “conspiracy theory”. As the signs became more obvious of the early arrival of fall it became even funnier and we both leaned into the “conspiracy theory” - using that term to describe anything to do with fall/winter. It’s made the downward shift in temperatures more fun.
The “conspiracy” was in full force when we camped near Lake Pukaki. We woke up to fall colors in the trees, snow on the peaks, and frost on the windshield.
It’s been below freezing most nights where we’ve camped in the mountains. This quick shift to colder weather has been surprising to us given that March in the southern hemisphere is equivalent to September in the northern hemisphere. We often backpack comfortably in the Rockies through September and assumed we could effectively do the same here. We have warm enough gear to keep camping, but the icy dew - foreign to us dry-air Coloradans - has made the cold mornings feel much colder. We opted to book more huts over the next few weeks to avoid packing up a wet, icy tent in the morning.
We camped at a favorite spot again in Glentanner and enjoyed great views of “The Mountain” (Aoraki/Mount Cook) all day while we caught up on our to-do lists. We slept in the rental X-trail (basically a Nissan Rogue) to avoid the dew, but slept poorly for the second night in a row. We were missing Ms. Stevens.
The next day was our Mueller Hut Reservation. We drove to the Aoraki/Mount Cook Visitor Center to pick up our hut tickets and had a chance to ask a Ranger some questions we’d written down during the Ball Pass Crossing. Some answers were really interesting and help shed a little more color on our descriptions of the landslides and route condition.
Q: Why is Hooker Lake Brown? Washouts?
A: Lots of big rain events recently. It takes time for the debris from landslides to settle, but then the blue color will return. (See below for a photo from when Grady was there 8 years ago versus recently)
Q: Why is there such rapid erosion via landslides on the lateral moraines?
A: The glaciers used to be much more thick. As they recede, they get shorter in length and height. There are photos from the late 1800s showing the glaciers being taller than their lateral moraines. Now they’re tens of meters below.
Q: What was the dead animal we saw on the Playing Field with hooves?
A: Likely was a Tahr
Q: How recently could you drive a car to the Ball Hut? (Totally washed out road now from lots of landslides)
A: 2019!! (The timescale shows how rapidly the erosion is happening. It’s also interesting that the old Ball Hut used to be much bigger when it was accessible via 4WD road and they’d bring school and ski groups back there)
We spent a lot of time reading about the climbing and glacier history of the park while we were there and found it to be one of the best Visitor Centers we’ve spent time in. One story that stuck out to me the most was about the first woman to climb Mt. Cook, Freda du Faur. She climbed it wearing a skirt in 1910. The stereotype of the time was that women couldn’t be classy, beautiful ladies and be athletic. She wanted to combat that. After she summited she dressed up to show off at the village restaurant - seeking to prove that woman can be both.
We spent so much time reading at the visitor center that we ate lunch in the trailhead parking lot and started moving at 1 pm.
Our climb up was beautiful. Mueller Hut and the entire Mt. Cook area had gotten 45cm (~18”) of snow two days prior which made the scenery that much more special. We felt especially lucky given this is a popular hut and we had to make our reservation 6 months in advance. It truly felt like a perfect time to be here. All of the surrounding peaks were snow covered, complementing the permanence of the glacier, but the snow was compacted and manageable for hiking.
We enjoyed some sunny time to relax on the beautiful deck before the clouds rolled in. We were uncertain about sunset, but it ended up being lovely. This is a popular day-hike so it was just special to be up here with so few people at night.
The air temperature was pretty mild overnight for the high alpine, maybe 1C/34F, but we woke up to howling winds against the metal hut. The 70 km/hr gusts made the air feel frigidly cold, but Grady braved it for a quick time and captured sunrise.
We had a leisurely breakfast in attempts to give the wind time to settle and the ice time to soften from the overnight freeze. Despite our good efforts, the howling winds continued for much of our descent and we were glad to have micro spikes for the icy bits as we re-entered the Hooker Valley.
One of the coolest parts of our descent was the view it gave us of our route on the Ball Pass Crossing. Seeing it from afar makes it look impossible so it was a cool, humbling view of an amazing climb. We’re so glad to have done the Ball Pass Crossing when we did because this recent snow and high winds would have put a stop to our plans.
From Mt. Cook we returned to Wanaka, the town where we’ve spent the most time this trip. We both love Indian food and have visited several Indian restaurants in New Zealand. Our favorites are Mantra Restaurant in Arrowtown and Ashraf’s Kitchen in Wanaka so we were happy to be back at Ashraf’s again!
The rest of our time in New Zealand will be primarily spent backpacking to huts, but we do have some nights at Airbnbs and a few car camping nights sprinkled in there too. Despite our downgrade from the van to the rental, the dew on the tent would be the worse of two evils so we decided to figure out a better way to sleep in the X-trail. We thought maybe we could counteract the slant of the (not-so-flat) back seats by parking on a big downhill. After a little trial and error, we nailed it. It’s not quite our Jeep mattress set up from home, but we slept great!
The next few days we would spend hiking the Young-Wilkin Circuit over Gillespie Pass. This is a cool point-to-point route because you have the option to access the trailheads via jet boat. You can cross both rivers if you choose, but they are wide, and can be deep after precipitation. It had rained the night before our trek so we decided to go with the jet boat. We woke up early to arrive at the jet boat office in time for our 9 am boat. We nearly missed it because of another sheep delay on the road. This was a different road, but similarly the farmers were moving the sheep from one pasture to another. It’s a wild operation to watch!
The jet boat was 1000% the right call and ended up being a highlight of this whole trek! We knew the jet boat out of Milford Track was fun, but this one was so much better. We were going nearly 60 mph in sections of water that were 1-2” deep, dodging sandbars, and doing crazy abrupt turns at speed. The jet boat into the hike was about 10 minutes and the return jet boat was nearly 30 minutes - both of which were surprisingly thrilling. We had booked the jet boat as a means to an end to do this trek and thought it’d be pretty touristy, but honestly it was so fun.
The ride in was made even more adventurous by the mid-30 degree F air temperatures. It was so cold in the boat, but we hoped it would improve when we started hiking. The route started with some steep uphill sections, but mellowed out quickly. Unfortunately, our Colorado showed again when we didn’t think about wet, dewy grasses. Since most of the hiking we do at home is above treeline in rocky conditions, long, wet grass is foreign to us and we didn’t plan for it well. Walking through the meadow felt like we were fording a frigid river - especially because the morning sun hadn’t hit this part of the valley yet. My pants were fully wet up to my mid-thigh and Grady picked the wrong day to wear shorts. We initially thought that his leather boots would do better than my trail runners - as they always do, but this time we were wrong. The water went down his legs and straight into the top of his boot. The waterproofing didn’t matter one bit. We were fully saturated, walking in standing water, within an hour of starting our 6-8 hour journey. Great!
There were a few more wet meadows to contend with, but once the sun hit us, things got better. We set up an elaborate drying system while we had lunch and started the big push up to the hut.
We enjoyed a sunny afternoon lounging on the deck of the hut before the sun dipped behind the mountains at 4:45 and the temperature dipped a corresponding 20 degrees F. We were just happy to be there after the cold, wet start to the day. Fortunately our gear mostly dried during the sunny time on the porch and the best news of all was that this hut had a wood burning stove. We picked the smaller of the two bunk rooms to reduce the chance of snorers in our room and enjoyed hot tea with chocolate by the fire.
The next morning we set off early to go over Gillespie Pass. It was a long ascent up to the pass, but not as bad as we thought it would be. The primary view from the top of the pass is of Mount Awful, which is actually a beautiful mountain. I’m not sure what the person was thinking who named it. We enjoyed a long lunch at the top of the pass before the hardest part of the day - the downhill. The downhill was 4000 feet of difficult, uneven steps that felt like they were meant for 8 ft tall people. It was a challenge especially all in one big push, but a super efficient descent.
Crucible Lake is a popular add-on to the Gillespie Circuit and it’s one that we didn’t want to miss. We knew we could either add it on Day 2 or Day 3 depending on our timing and how we were feeling. We made it to the turnoff to Lake Crucible by 2:10 pm with less than an hour remaining until the hut. Even though the DOC time estimated 3-4 hours each way for a 4-8 hour return, we decided to go for it because we’d been faster than most DOC estimates and felt confident we would get back before it was dark. It was a steep hike, but much shorter than we expected and had a fun crystal-clear creek crossing along the way.
We made it to Crucible Lake by 4:15 pm and had about 10 minutes to spare before the sun dipped behind the mountains, putting us in shadow. Grady took a quick dip and we had some cheese and crackers while looking out over this perfect fish bowl of a lake.
As we descended the valley we quickly caught the sun and made it to the Siberia Hut by 7:45 pm. Apparently a few people we’d met the night before at Young Hut were asking “Where are the Americans?”, but we saw two people from the previous hut coming down as we were climbing up, so they let everyone know we were a-okay. Many were surprised about our motivation to tack on some extra kms and vert to the already long day!
Our Malaysian Laksa soup tasted incredible, but based on comments from other trampers, it must not have looked fancy enough compared to the meals made by our European hut mates. We were lucky to have some much needed, restful sleep in our 10-person bunk room. We booked an afternoon jet boat to give ourselves a contingency option to hike Crucible Lake on our final day. After doing all of that on day 2, we were extra motivated to hike out early. We made some quick coffee and breakfast and scooted out of the hut early in hopes to jump on an earlier boat.
The hike was beautiful with the filtered light on the trees. We’ve grown to really appreciate forest walking here and the native plants. It’s beautiful in a much simpler way - especially in early morning or late afternoon light. We spent nearly 2 hours waiting for the jet boat in what should’ve also been named Sand Fly Point, but we did catch a boat 3 hours earlier than our initially scheduled time. The 30 minute ride lived up to the hype. This time our jet boat driver even did full spins at speed! We loved the ride out, but not nearly as much as Gregory did, the man next to us. He was in his 60s with long grey hair, super short jean shorts, and a jean shirt - rocking a full on Canadian tuxedo. He was very friendly and shook our hands when we sat down, but we saw his personality shine when the boat started. He hooted and hollered at every turn and had so much fun filming the entire 30 minute boat ride. Even though he shook our hands with his right hand, he shook the drivers hand with his left hand upon exiting the boat. Impressive ambidextrousness.
We went from the Gillespie Circuit back to Arrowtown for our anticipated return visit. We loved Arrowtown when we were here a few weeks ago, but unfortunately Grady’s back was hurt and we couldn’t do much to explore so we decided to return. We had a perfect dinner at the cute white brick restaurant on Main Street we took a photo of before. The mountains aren’t as big right in Arrowtown, but the old mining town vibe with a mountain at the end of the Main Street felt familiar to Colorado.
Our trip back to Queenstown area was an opportunity to go to some of our favorite places and head back down memory lane one more time on this trip. We went back to Ferg Burger for lunch and ate it as a picnic next to the water. It was one of those perfect Queenstown days. We couldn’t stop taking photos of the same view that we’ve seen dozens of times. It felt similar to the feeling when you see your own town or street in really beautiful conditions and out of the blue, it strikes you just how special it is.
After Ferg Burger we went to get chocolate gelato from Mrs Fergs. Grady is adamant that Mrs. Fergs chocolate gelato is the best ice cream in the world. I think he might be right. We had it years ago and one other time on this trip, but wanted to get it once more before we left Queenstown. We went in, tried a sample of another flavor, and were dismayed to see the chocolate tub was empty. We asked to see if they had more, but the woman working there said they were out and wouldn’t have more for hours. Mrs. Fergs has one other small location in Queenstown so we went there. Still no chocolate so we left for now.
We decided to go to quiz night (trivia) to try our luck. We were hoping for some obscure theme like American pop culture that we’d have a leg up on, but honestly just thought the experience of going would be fun. The place was a Tavern on the water and it was a great place to watch the early part of sunset. Sadly, they recently stopped doing quiz night so we missed that. We’re not giving up and going to find a quiz night in Christchurch!
After dinner, Grady decided to call Mrs Fergs to see if they had restocked on chocolate. For context, this isn’t the type of place you’d normally call. There are often 2 dozen people in a tiny shoe box of an ice cream store all frantically trying to sample, order, and take Instagram photos - with a line of people behind them often out the door. Someone answered though and told Grady they had chocolate. It made our night. We drove the 15 or so minutes to Mrs. Fergs and there was no parking around. Grady decided to drop me off and he’d come back to pick me up so we could take our ice cream to the park. I walk in and for the first time, Mrs. Fergs was empty. Instead of doing the usual routine they’d expect of sampling a few varieties and ordering a scoop I walked in and immediately asked if I could please order a triple scoop of chocolate. There were 3 women working behind the counter and after a few seconds of silence, one asked, “Are you the one who called?” I said, “Yes! That was us. We love this ice cream.” And then she recognized me and said, “You were here earlier too, right?” I told her we even went to the other location after they didn’t have chocolate and decided we’d come back later. I proceeded to tell her way more than she needed to know about how it’s my husbands favorite ice cream (mine too) and we’d been wanting to come back after having it many years ago. I think between the years ago comment, 3 visits to Mrs Fergs in one day, and calling to ask if they had chocolate in stock, she thought we were crazy people. We were just really excited about this ice cream! I managed the melting ice cream while waiting for Grady to pick me up. We scurried over to the lakefront and caught the most beautiful sunset with our gelato. It was a perfect way to say bye to Queenstown for now.
Our next adventure of the trip took us over Haast Pass again. Even though we’ve driven Haast Pass a few times, it continues to be cool each time. I think the most remarkable part is how the sheer vertical walls along the pass are fully covered in vegetation. There are trees, ferns, and bushes growing where it looks like nothing should be able to grow. We planned to drive up to Hokitika with eyes on hiking into Mt Brown Hut the next day. Once you go over Haast Pass, you’re on the West Coast which is one of the more rural areas of New Zealand. There are only 36,000 people total living on the West Coast, which spans a distance of 600 km long. It is the most sparsely populated region with only 1.55 people per square kilometer! Driving along the West Coast is quintessential, rural New Zealand driving and it made the 6.5 hour drive feel beautiful and relaxing.
We reached out to our Milford Track friends, Charly and Nick, because we knew they were also on the West Coast. Sure enough, they were near Hokitika. We decided to all meet up at a campground where they were staying. Grady and I booked the last remaining site available and somehow, when we arrived it was the beachfront site right next to them. It was ideal! We all cooked dinner together and had a fun night catching up on our travels. We couldn’t believe it when they also had van problems in the small town of Fairlie too… What are the chances! Thankfully theirs had a better outcome.
The next morning we packed up our bags to leave for Mt Brown Hut and discovered that our backpacking cookware was missing. We racked our brains for where we could have left it and realized it must have been at Siberia Hut when we packed up in a hurry. We couldn’t believe that we left it because it felt very unlike us. We called the jet boat company to see if anyone had turned it in or mentioned it and they said that a guided group was taking a helicopter in that day and would check for it. Our fingers were crossed it would turn up. In the meantime, it meant we didn’t have any way to cook food at Mt. Brown Hut so we needed to revise our food plan. A few pounds of fruit, cheese, bread, and chocolate later and we were back on the road to the trailhead.
The muddiness at the car park should have been an indication of conditions to come, but we pressed forward. It was steep in sections, super muddy in others, and actively raining most of the way up. We couldn’t believe how much mud there was. Once my trail runners were fully saturated with a combination of water and mud, I just gave up and started walking through the mud pits - some of which were up to my mid calf. Grady’s leather hiking boots managed to stay somewhat dry, but as the trail progressed he required increasingly elaborate acrobatics to skirt the mud pits. We were both feeling spent and lacking motivation with the bad weather and muddy conditions.
The morale improved once we arrived to the hut, even though there was no view. We were fully engulfed in a cloud and it was spitting rain. We were just hopeful the conditions would improve as the afternoon went on. A group of two arrived shortly after us to the hut. As a 4-person hut, we spent a good bit of time together that evening playing Old Maid because those were the only cards they had in the hut.
All of the huts in New Zealand have “Intentions Books” where you sign in with your name, where you’re from, what your plan is, and any comments on track/hut conditions. We were fortunate to open this Intentions Book early because that’s where we learned of the rat that lives in the ceiling. Some of the other trampers named him Ronnie the Rat, but there were tons of entries ranging from “Rat in the roof” to “Something is living in the ceiling” and “Rats!” It was alarming, but thankfully there were no visible signs of the rat. I had a lot of questions though - none of which were answered: “How does the rat get in the ceiling? What food is up there? Does it go out for food and come back? Can it get into the hut through the stove?” Eventually, I ignored it and was just thankful the rat stayed in the ceiling.
For 30 minutes before sunset, we got a little peek at a view. We even saw the sun for a brief moment! We would’ve celebrated anything with greater than 20m visibility so we felt lucky to see the clouds open a bit to this view. The temperature dropped quickly so we returned to our sleeping bags, but the sound of the rat running around in the ceiling was unsettling as we were falling asleep. Ear plugs were essential to get any sleep with all of Ronnie’s commotion and tom foolery up there. We knew we’d be motivated to get out of there early the next day.
We woke up for sunrise, but there was no sunrise as we were in the cloud again. We decided to just hike out and head into town to grab breakfast and coffees. The way out was at least equally as muddy and wet, maybe even more so than the day before. We booked it back to Hokitika and enjoyed coffees and pastries at a family run cafe. We made a quick stop at the grocery store and noticed the National Kiwi Center across the road. Kiwis are a highly endangered native bird that are an emblem of New Zealand - they’re the reason why many call New Zealanders, Kiwis! We really wanted to see one during our trip, but hadn’t seen one in the wild yet. They are incredibly rare to see, but we held out hope. With only about a week left here, we figured this was our last chance to see one in person. The experience definitely exceeded our expectations. You pay an entry fee, but it wasn’t very crowded. There were only two Kiwis at the National Center presently, but we were able to see them acting as they would in the wild. It was an environment of bushes, diggable soil, plants, and seeds - a lot of their food sources. Kiwis are only active at night so they had the lighting set to invoke nocturnal behavior. Instead of watching them be fed by a trainer, or eat out of a bowl, we watched them dig, poke in the ground looking for worms, and even fight each other. The two Kiwis were both males (unintended, they seek out one male and one female) so they needed to be separated by a fence given they are territorial. We watched them try to fight each other through the fence and seeing them in a more “natural behavior” for being in captivity, was really cool. Plus, these two Kiwis will be released later this year to predator-free zones and they’ll bring a new mating pair of Kiwis in with hopes to improve the population. The most impressive part though was their size. We thought they’d be the size of a normal large bird like a Weka or Kea (cantaloupe sized), but they were huge (size of a massive watermelon) and looked prehistoric. They’re related to dinosaurs which is so cool. It was well worth the visit!
Our original plan was to head up to Angelus Hut for another backpacking trip, but the forecast called for -6C temperatures and snow with low visibility. We decided with that forecast and our Mt Brown experience, we’d rather cancel and just enjoy soak in the last few days in New Zealand. There were two options for getting back to Christchurch - north, or back south through Wanaka and over to Mount Cook. Our call to the jet boats team was successful and the guided group had found our cookware! They dropped it off at a helicopter company in Wanaka. With better weather on the southern route, and the promise of getting all of our cookware back, we opted for that route. We drove back down towards Wanaka and spent the night in Haast. For our third trip along the West Coast, the conditions were different again. It’s amazing how this scenery looks so different in different conditions - even though it’s really long, it’s not a bad drive to repeat at all.
Upon our arrival to the helicopter place in Wanaka we were surprised to find that the cookware wasn’t there. The kind woman working there helped us to track it down and it turns out it was dropped off at a different helicopter place in town. It was a bit of a scavenger hunt, but we recovered it! From there, we started our journey back to Christchurch. We camped at the same spot near Lake Pukaki near Mount Cook as we mentioned at the beginning of this post. Two weeks ago when we were there last, the leaves were turning to fall. Now, the leaves were more vibrant and there was more snow!
We stopped at Lake Tekapo in the morning, somewhere we visited when we were here years ago. We had some of the best flat white coffees of the trip and walked around all of the places we’d been before. The lake and the church on the lake were just as beautiful as we’d remembered!
We drove past the cemetery where the van died and past the mechanic shop in Fairlie. We did a fly by on the lot and were happy to see the van wasn’t there - it would’ve been alarming if it still was. We had breakfast in Geraldine and noticed my shuttle driver, Will, at the restaurant who drove me from Fairlie to Christchurch. We went over to say hi and thank him again and even were able to return his phone charger he’d given me to help ensure I got back to Fairlie safely. It was absolutely wild that we bumped into him again - in a really small town no less! It’s cool how small and connected things feel here at times.
Our first night in Christchurch was spent in Sumner Beach, right next to the city. I found a fun seafood restaurant on the beach here that I was excited about so I booked us somewhere to stay nearby. It must’ve just been posted to Airbnb because we snagged a great deal on it, but sadly the hot tub we were so excited about wasn’t working. The views were still incredible and the restaurant was amazing. It was a fun, nicer way to round out the New Zealand leg to our trip after a lot of driving the last few days.
From there, we ventured closer to the city center and made sure we had everything we needed for Bali and Nepal. We ran out of data on our international plan right as we were searching for dinner options nearby. We passed by a busy authentic Chinese restaurant with a fun atmosphere so we decided to try it on a whim. The menu was entirely in Chinese and we were the only ones not speaking Chinese. We thought we might be in over our heads, but there were pictures on the menu so we decided we could handle it. Turns out, maybe not so much. The place was great and food was delicious, but the chicken we ordered got the best of us. We both like spicy foods, but this one was a doozy. We were sweating and our faces were red trying to finish it. It was memorable to say the least!
Sadly, we reached our last day in New Zealand. We spent the day walking around the University of Canterbury where Grady studied and the Ilam Student Apartments where he lived. We remembered this area really well so it was fun to walk around and see it again. There were tons of modernization changes to the buildings on campus though, almost as much as in the city center of Christchurch itself. We went back to our favorite local restaurant, Dubba Dubba for lunch. It’s effectively a Moroccan chipotle and the food is incredible. It was mid-afternoon so we thought we’d just split one large “Morrito Bowl”, but it was so good that we went back and ordered a second large.
After our Queenstown quiz night fell through, we were determined to find one in Christchurch and found that one of the best quiz nights in Christchurch was on Monday nights - it was perfect. We set high ambitions - our goal was not to get last place. We started off with a false sense of confidence when the questions centered on car makes - many of which are popular in the US. Things went downhill from there. We shined for the questions about It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and the Golden State Warriors, but the round to list 10 people in the New Zealand Arts Hall of Fame got the best of us. We succeeded though - we got second to last and we were proud of it!
In some ways we’re sad to leave New Zealand, but in others - we feel like we had so many amazing experiences here and are ready for the next part of the trip. We love visiting New Zealand and are already dreaming up a return trip with ski objectives in mind. We’ve decided we’re going to write a post about a lot of our general impressions and experiences in New Zealand - with some of the cool nuances to life here that we don’t want to forget. For now, we’re off to Bali for several days before we begin trekking in Nepal. We’ll share more soon!
For our last round of new words / expressions in New Zealand - Works: Construction, Domain: Park (as in sports field), and “What’s on”: What’s happening? We’ve loved the unique expressions they use in New Zealand for some commonplace things to us at home. There are a few we hope we naturally keep in our vocabulary like heaps (a lot), wee (a little bit), puffer (puffy jacket), and Maccas (McDonalds) among others.