nolife

Again, this day is covered through a series of talking points, so I’ll craft sentences from them instead of giving you the hacked up version. These points were written while sitting in the common room of the New Shelter Rock Hut on the Rees-Dart track – my first night on the track.

I woke up at David’s and packed my bag up as quietly as I could. I removed the items I thought I wouldn’t need – things like the road map or my bulky toiletries that I had purchased in Kaitia. Now that I had my pack, I could use the smaller items that were intended for this trip. I did not, however, take my thermarest or tent out – I figured I would use them at least once because I wasn’t sure about the huts. I worried that they would either be full or just rotten – either way, I was going to be prepared. I came to regret this prepardedness.

Moving on – I removed some weight/space and shouldered my pack. I slipped out the door and headed down the road. It was just a little while after sunrise and the mountains on the far side of the lake were lit up in the glow of the early morning sun. The air was crisp, clean and quiet. The sealed road beneath my feet wasn’t necessarily comfortable, but the idea of carrying my pack toward the track was a lovely idea.

I hadn’t gotten too far down the road with David pulled up alongside me. He said, “you’ve got plenty of walking to do later – jump in,” so with no protest, I dropped the pack in the trunk and we took off. I thanked him profusely when he dropped me off a minute later at the campgrounds. He wished me luck and headed back to the house. I made one last pass through the tiny grocery store and waited on the bus. When it arrived, it was the same mini-bus that I’d ridden in from Queenstown. It was a fully loaded trip, too.

I, and others, started counting heads and thinking back through our travel guides – the huts will sleep just the same number we’ve got riding with us. But what about the people hiking in the other direction? I knew then that I had done the right thing by keeping my tent… I was going to need it.

Before long we were on a rough, unsealed road heading into the wilderness. Then, just randomly, the driver stopped and put us out. This was, apparently, the end of the road as far as he was concerned and the start of the track for us. I dug my pack out of the trailer in the back, shouldered it and headed off.

I tried keeping pace with a German guy that I had met the night before at the pub. We were about the same age, but he had a lighter load, was in better shape and a very determined drive. It wasn’t long before I had to let him leave without me. It was at that point that I dug my camera out and started clicking. (If you look at the flickr photos, you’ll see 250 for just this one day.)

My very first picture has a Tazmanian guy walking away from me. I later found that he was the most laid back guy on the face of the planet. He was carrying hardly anything – a laugh compared to my well laden pack. Friendly guy, too.

I spent the majority of the day taking up the rear of the group. There was an older German couple and a Japanese girl. They seemed to group together out of the fact that they were somewhat slower than even I.

The beginning of the track was through wide open grassy fields, occasionally trekking through small patches of trees and over small hills. For the most part it was very pleasent except for the sun getting a little over zealous sometimes. With no shade, it can get warm. For a good while I followed a river full of “glacier flour.”

Glacier flour is pulverised rock suspended in the water and it causes the river to take on a blue-gray color. Obviously if this river is carrying glacier flour, then its glacier melt and if its glacier melt, its very, very cold. It isn’t anything I was going to go swimming in.

At some point through the grassy plains, I noticed the Tazzie weaving his way back and forth through the field. I couldn’t figure out what or why he was doing it, but he was much too far away for me to get his attention. That was one thing about the plains – you could see for ages.

Eventually I figured out what he was doing:

He was doing his best to navigate a bog.

I came to the edge of said bog and decided I’d look for a way around. I walked to the left, toward the river, for a few minutes and found nothing solid. I walked to the right of where I started, toward the hills and found nothing solid. It was obvious that I wasn’t going to avoid it. It was then that I recalled reading something about this in the track guide… it just didn’t seem nearly as bad on paper as it looked looming ahead of me.

Now let me describe this properly – it looked, from a distance – exactly like the rest of the fields. If you weren’t watching where your feet were landing, you could stumble straight into this mess without realizing it. However, when you’re at it, you can see patches of grass growing from the indeterminable depthes of water and mud. Something else to consider is that there I’ve seen plenty of cows grazing around, so who knows what else is down there.

So I take my first few steps and do fairly well. In fact the bog doesn’t last too long until I’m on solid ground. The water is chilly and the mud likes to suck you in, but overall its not terrible. At least not yet. I start off of my little island into the next section and sink to the middle of my thigh. I’m 5 foot 10 inches. That’s not a shallow pool. I drag my leg out and start to reconsider the direct approach.

Now, at this point I’m still wearing my khaki pants. I had only carryied my khakis and my kilt into the country, and that morning I didn’t feel like climbing into the kilt, so I decided I’d hike in the pants. Now the only pants I have, as well as the boxers underneath, are soaked with water and mud. Yuck. Here I am, on an island in a bog soaked, a little chilled, and rather pissed.

I look back and see the German couple and Japanese girl stopping for a snack before they traverse the muck.

I look down at my mud soaked pants.

I pull out my kilt.

The khakis come off, the kilt goes on. Comfortable covered, the boxers go too. Both find a place hanging on the outside of my pack and I shoulder it on again.

“I will conquer this,” I say and I dive in. As you can see above, that wasn’t my last knee deep experience, but I did start to figure out a system of not sinking. I just had to stop and look for the largest clumps of grass, because they grew in solid batches, able to support you for a few moments.

Amusingly enough, sometime near the halfway point, a guy appeared on the horizon and was headed straight for me. He managed to navigate the bog with amazing speed and grace. When I asked him how, he said I’d figure it out after I made it through the rest, implying there was plenty more to come.

After the bog, everything went back to normal for the most part. I had one stream crossing:

I believe it was 25-mile creek. And it was just as cold as I expected. However, it was a great chance to wash off the mud I had collected and dried all over my legs. Interesetingly, there is a plaque a few feet aware from the crossing commemorating the death of a couple, emphasizing the danger of the backcountry and nature’s power.

I made it through the crossing just fine and continued on. Eventually the track took me into a beech forest, then out into an avalanche field. There was no threat of avalance, or even snow, but you could see huge rocks that had been shifted by the great weight of the snow and ice of the past. It was rough terrain, rising and falling, in addition to scrambling through all of the smaller rocks that would deposit in the gullys.

Eventually, after hours and hours of walking I caught a glimpse of a tiny cable. It appeared to be stretched between two poles and I instantly recognized it as a wilderness radio antenna. A few steps later I saw the roof of the hut. I was so happy to see that hut… the hike seemed to have lasted for ages.

My pace instantly quickened and I prayed that the track couldn’t be too much longer – I so wanted to sit down, eat, and sleep. Lucky for me, it wasn’t too much longer. I crossed my second swinging bridge of the day and found myself at my first DOC (Department of Conserveration) hut.

I don’t have any pictures of the hut up close or inside, so I’ll have to describe its layout: There are two main buildings. On the left (visible in the picture above) is the common area. The entrance is on the long visible side. The left side of the room is the kitchen, with a long counter and two sinks. In the middle is a wood burning stove and a pair of large picnic tables. Next to the tables are some trough style bunks. On the other side of the wall the troughs are on are warden’s quarters.

The second main building is connected by a boardwalk. There are two rooms, each connected to the boardwalk. These rooms have 4 sets of bunk beds (8 mattresses) and 2 mattresses on the floor. Apparently these mattresses on the floor are normally stored in the warden’s quarters, but they’ve been needed so much, they just stay out. The bunks in the common area aren’t actually counted as beds as far as the DOC is concerned – I suppose they are leftovers from an upgrade. At the far end of the grounds from the common building are the toilets. Because it was still warm the flush toilets were in operation, as well as the plumbed sinks. They had winter (drop) toilets just up the hill from those.

I took a seat on the boardwalk, removed my muddy shoes and peeled my muddy socks off my muddy feet. I sat them out to dry with everyone elses then went in to claim a bunch. I ended up with the top left bunk next to the door. I slid my big, warm, wooly socks on and headed into the common area.

I wrote for a while, talked for a while, signed the register, then collected my food stuffs. I have no idea what I ate that night, but it wasn’t anything very gourmet. I remember speaking to an Israeli solider briefly – he was interested in my stove. (Its very, very small.) I also talked with an Australian couple – Neal and Sylvia.

Somewhere along in the meals and disscussions, someone noticed that the sun was setting, and we stumbled out into the grassy courtyard. After snapping some pictures and generally marvelling at the amazing scenery, we returned to the commona area. It was a nice night, with candlelight illumenating the room as it got darker out and the murmer of voices as people got to know each other.

It was really nice seeing everyone fall in together, realizing that for the next few days we were only going to see one another and you never knew if you might have to depend on your neighbor for some lifesaving action. There were no strangers there.

Eventually I retired to my bunk, only half believing I was actually there.