The Holidays

I had BIG plans and HIGH expectations for xmas and new years… Didn’t turn out as expected.
I think all of my adventures up to now have been fun and left me feeling happy that I did whatever here in New Zealand. This was my first without family or friends and second holiday season with out a partner, whoa is rob aye. It makes it so much harder when you do have someone you love and can’t be with them, not a good feeling. To top it off my plans were to spend xmas and new year with a sudo friend that turned out to annoy the shit out of me and I couldn’t stand listening to her stories… In hindsight I should have dropped the couple grand on a plan ticket home and been with Mom, AQ & the rest of the boys…LAME!


All pics can be seen here.

I know all of you have missed my bitching and whinny stories so let me try and lighten the mood because it wasn’t ENTIRELY shit. After all I did hitch, tramp, dance, and beat on drums.

It all started on xmas day. I was up early and on the ferry to the south island then on a bus to Nelson to meet up with Polly (AKA treehug’n, knowitall, fake accent tote’n X Oreganite). Harsh I know but damn… We got a ride to Khurangi national forest where were started walking the Wangapeka track, sorta. It began with a river crossing, my first. River crossing here sound like a big deal and there is no shortage of people telling you to be careful and yada yada yada. Turns out they kill at least a few trampers every year. I’m now convinced of how dangerous these things are and could be with just a little bit of rainfall in the last day or fresh runoff. We looked for a calm and shallow area and crossed with locked arms. The current got strong in the middle, mixed with a few boulders Rob was on his way for a drink. Thankfully I had these kick ass walking sticks given to me by an uber tramper from Ireland. THANK YOU CONNOR!!!
With our feet dry we were off for a 9 hour climb. The plan was to take the route over Kiwi Saddle on day one and stay in the hut. NOT. We made it to John Reed Hut where Chummes ended and the route began. It wasn’t posted, there wasn’t a trail and we were scrambling up and down the mountain side on unstable footing made up of brush and tussocks. After about an hour from the hut we had covered maybe 1k of the 8 needed to make it to our planned destination. Hmm I’ve heard stories of people caught out in the NZ mountains… Spending the night on the side of this mountain wasn’t on my list of things to do. Turns our I was just saving that for night #2. Making it to Kiwi hut just wasn’t going to happen so we returned to John Reed for a nice night with a hut to ourselves.
After reading the hut log everyone that had come here either retuned the way they came or did the Kiwi saddle pass during winter with snowshoes or skies. We didn’t want to head back down the way we came so we opted bush whacking to Briggs trail. It just wouldn’t be right if I went on a backpacking trip and didn’t get lost or something go wrong.

Hahaha “Go east, we have to go east!” remember that line boys?

O I guess I should also mention that we didn’t have a map scaled for navigation LOL I had brought a large scale map and wrongly assumed that since the wirey haired girl had planned this tramp that she would have a map for navigating. O well it all adds to the fun aye! And I guess under full disclosure we wouldn’t have needed another map if we had stayed to the Wangapeka track instead of taking the more fun and adventurous Robinator option.
So the next morning we went up and down god knows how many times all the while fighting thick bush, forest, lawyer vines, cliffs for 12 hours. Around 9pm we figured we should plan on spending a night out. I found a semi flat area and built a lean-to while she gathered moss and ferns. Panic started to set in at first and then survival mode kicked in and it was on! Logs and limbs were collected for the structure and roof topped of with a few ferns. I was a nice night so we opted to use most of the ferns for the ground because it was pretty soggy. I was pretty impressed with myself after all this was my first ever lean-to, check it out! We even had some company; we had decided to bed down by a Kaka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81k%C4%81)roost and they squawked at us all night; pretty cool aye.
I found the trail the next morning after a few more hours of up and down, in and out. Polly swore she would never go bush whacking again LOL I just want to wait a bit before my next one *)
This day was pretty chill, once we made it back down to the river I went for a swim before crossing again and continues on to Stone Hut. This is where she started to get an attitude…
The next night was good fun w/ a big Moari family on a 12 day tramp for the holiday. One of them is from Welly and we’re planning on hooking up for a ride at Karapoti (one of the toughest XC MTB races in NZ).
Polly started to cop and attitude and it was all down hill for the next couple days… On our way out we met a lady named Mary who had broken her wrist the night before coming from the West Coast. Se was so lucky, turns out the hut she finally made it to after her fall had another tramper that used to be a nurse and is now a outdoor survival instructor. He ended up splinting her arm w/ cardboard, some bandages and tape. It was impressive! So Polly went ahead to call for our ride and I helped Mary.
It was actually better since I was sore and not really into pushing it. That was the best 5 hours of conversation in 5 days! Hey B, she was a sailor and has sailed nearly all the way around the world…


After we got out Polly and I decided to part ways. New Years at the Canaan Downs Festival was so so, there were some cool parts like dancing half naked around a bonfire and beating on some drums in the drum circle. Danced a bunch and then slept through the happy new year bit. And then was back out dancing around 2am. I had gone back to the tent for some food and just thought about taking a short nap around 10pm and it was 1am by the time I got up…

I hitched back to Picton on the 1st and was on the ferry on the 2nd after a hike out on the snout.



Next story is sailing in the Bay of Islands!