Road Trip... Trivia!

The epic New Zealand road trip of 2010 has come to an end.  On Tuesday morning, I arrived back in Tuateawa, where I will be working and living for the next month.

The road trip was an awesome experience.  I could probably write a novel about it, but isn't a list of trivia more entertaining?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

Life in the Van Trivia

• Road trip length:  36 days/ 35 nights
• Distance driven:  5,447 km/ 3,404 miles
• Nights in random people's houses:  2
• Nights the cold kept me awake:  1 (thank you, upstate ny)
• Total restaurant meals eaten:  3
• Cheese consumed by both of us:  5 kg/ 11 lbs (eww)
• Juice drank by Dave:  15 L/ 4 gallons
• Diet cola drank by Nicole:  not telling you
• What I think of oatmeal for breakfast:  like eating plaster
• Longest consecutive days w/o seeing the inside of a shower or bathtub:  14
• National Parks visited:  7 (Tongariro, Egmont, Westland, Mt. Aspiring, Fiordland, Mt. Cook, Nelson Lakes)
• HEY COW points:  a lot
• Favorite North Island city:  New Plymouth
• Favorite South Island city:  Dunedin
• Favorite moment:  hiking into Angelus Lake basin at sunset
• Creepiest moment:  sharing a very small backcountry hut with an insane hunter packing a large rifle

Tramping (Hiking) Trivia

• Distance hiked:  290.5 km/ 181.6 mi
• Days hiked:  24 out of 36 (66.6%)
• Trail hours:  113.5 (nearly three 40-hour work weeks)
• Average trail speed:  1.6 mph
• Approximate elevation gain:  8370 m/ 27,600 ft (almost an Everest)
• Highest elevation:  2590 m/ 8547 feet (summit of Ruapehu)
• Lowest elevation:  sea level (Tasman Sea)
• Longest day:  10 hrs (camp to summit of Ngauruhoe to camp to Whakapapa Village)
• Greatest consecutive days on the trail:  9 (Mt. Aspiring Nat'l Park to Routeburn/Caples Tracks to Kepler Track)
• Longest without resupply:  5 (Routeburn/Caples Tracks)
• Nights in backcountry huts:  11
• Nights in a tent:  1
• Named mountains summited:  5  (Ngauruhoe, Ruapehu, Taranaki, Luxmore, Roberts)
• Alpine crossings:  8
• Unbridged streams crossed:  38 (yes I counted)
• Places where my boots are held together with glue:  11
• Wipe-outs (defined as ass on ground):  9
• Foot mishaps:  2 (1 strange something between the toes; 1 ball of foot strain)
• Ibuprophen taken:  too many...  waaaaaaay too many
• Useless DoC warnings:  3 (1 bridge out, but the stream was easy to cross; 1 hill slide that was easy to bypass; 1 very muddy section, which was actually dry)
• Times I got rained on:  3 (not bad!)
• Things I daydreamed about most while hiking:  a hot shower, obscene quantities of bacon (yeah, I know) and eggs, Mumford & Sons songs
• Kea seen:  5
• Sea lions seen:  3
• Penguins seen:  17 (7 yellow-eyed penguins; 10 blue penguins)

The end...  or maybe to be continued.  :-)

My Favorite Hike

Our last hike on this road trip was a four day excursion in Nelson Lakes.  Talk about ending with a "bang"--it was my favorite hike from the entire road trip, Great Walks included.

Day 1:  We got a late start from St. Arnaud, not leaving the carpark until after noon.  The first section, the "Pinchgut Track," was about an hour of switchbacks straight up the ridge.  More like the "Knee Cruncher Track."  We then took the Robert Ridge track...  felt like we were walking on top of the world.  There were sections that had very steep, long drops on either end, and we were working our way over somewhat unstable, uneven rock piles, but I did ok.  The sun had just dropped behind the mountains when we arrived at the final descent to Angelus Hut.  It was the single most beautiful moment of the entire road trip.  Pure magic.  Angelus Hut had just been rebuilt and reopened the month before, so it was new and very nice.

Day 2:  Long day.  We started down from Angelus Hut around 9:00 a.m. on the Cascade Track.  The first section of the track went pretty much straight down the back of the ridge.  It was slow going, especially due to my knees.  It leveled out a bit eventually, but we still had many hours walk through the beech forest.  Basically, we had to walk all the way around the big mountains.  Would have been much easier to go straight over!  We got to Hopeless Hut around dusk (5:30 p.m.).  Hopeless was an apt name.  We shared the six bunk, single room hut with a very creepy hunter.  I'm very glad I wasn't staying there alone with him.

Day 3:  Fortunately, Mr. Creepy Crazy Hunter got up before light to head into the bush, so Dave and I were able to relax with a cup of tea in the morning before hitting the trail.  We backtracked part of our steps from the previous day, following the Travers Valley.  We were only on the trail for about a half-day, arriving at Coldwater Hut in time for a late lunch.  We found two more hunters at Coldwater Hut, but they were completely different from Mr. Creepy Crazy.  The four of us had a raging fire going, and spent most of the evening talking about everything from guns to movies.  They were great company and great conversation.

Day 4:  After breakfast, we hit the trail for the last time.  We were only about 2.5 hours walk from the carpark.  The first part of the trail was more of the same (beech forest next to a body of water).  The very last part followed a gravel road, which was monotonous and boring, but it's always great to see the van after some time in the woods (and even better when the engine starts!).

The trip was great.  Arriving at Angelus at sunset...  the interesting trail down Cascade Track...  great company with the hunters at Coldwater...  definitely my favorite hike.

Check out the pictures.  The ones from the first day are stunning.  It was even better in person!

Milford Sound, Mt. Cook, & OMG PENGUINS

Yeah, so, we went out to Milford Sound.  It looked just like the postcards.  It's a pretty fiord, yeah, but I have this feeling that it's popular because the tourism industry has made it popular.  We didn't do any of the cruises or anything like that.  Maybe if we had, I would have been more impressed.

looks like a postcard

Kea, however, will always delight me.

who is playing with whom?

We also went to Mt. Cook for a day.  That wasn't that exciting, either; the weather sucked, so I didn't even see the famous mountain.  Unless you're prepared with crampons and an ice axe, there isn't a tremendous amount of hiking to be done in Aoraki Mt. Cook National Park, either.

iceberg. kinda cool, but probably not worth the drive.

On the drive from Milford Sound to Mt. Cook, we stopped in Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula.  Dunedin was a sweet little city; it's definitely my favorite city on the South Island!  I wanted to visit penguin colonies on the Otago Peninsula.  The iSite tourist information bureau told us there was a chance that we might see penguins at a certain beach.  We went to that beach and got talking to a few friendly, kind Kiwis who told us that we'd have much better luck at a different beach.  Puttered down the potholed, one-lane country road, pulled into the carpark, ran down the largest sand dune I've ever seen, and HOLY SMOKES that's a BIG and unexpected mammal!

i think that i could outrun him if i needed to

We did make it to the hide while the yellow-eyed penguins were coming back to land from fishing at sea all day.  I was totally stoked, because yellow-eyed penguins are some of the rarest penguins in the world.

OMG penguins!!!

Here are the rest of the photos, with commentary:

This Is How I Earn My Trail Legs

We just finished nine consecutive days on the trail. It would have been ten, had we not combined the last two days of the Kepler Track. I don't have my track register handy, but I think that's about 70-odd miles of trail.

Last night we got takeaway dinner instead of cooking for the second time since we've been on the road. We stayed in a holiday park, complete with showers, laundry facilities, and internet access. I took a shower last night, and I'm going to take another one today before we leave.

 From here, we're heading out to the Milford Sound for a day of relaxation. From there, we'll make our way over to Mt. Cook National Park, then start working our way up the east coast of the South Island. We've been on the road nearly a month, and we'll be back in Tuateawa in two short weeks. Time goes so quickly.

So, yes, we got our multi-day backpacking trips. Two of them, actually, and we did them consecutively. It hurt, it was beautiful, and I'll never forget it. From here, I want to go see some cute, chubby penguins and climb a few more mountains. Don't worry about me, Mummers. That's the update!

Kepler Track

We finished the Routeburn/ Caples on Sunday morning, making it back to our van in time for lunch.  We ate, unpacked, and went back to Queenstown and the DoC office to check the weather to plan for our next adventure.  What's that?  Another break in the weather?  If we left the very next day, we could start the Kepler Track outside Te Anau, and we'd have good weather for the climbing day and the alpine traverse day!  Were we crazy enough to start another four day trip, after six consecutive days on the trail?

That's a stupid question.  Of course.

Here were the highlights of the Kepler Track:

• Dave's turn to get sick.  He got it worse than I did.  He's still sniffling.
• The alpine section of the Kepler wasn't as magnificent scenery-wise as the Routeburn, but I liked it even more.  Instead of traversing the ridge on the slopes, you spend a lot of time walking across the tops.  You get to see both sides and feel a bit of the exposure.  
• The second night, we enjoyed really nice evening conversation with the other folks staying in the hut.  It was all young people:  Canadians, Germans, Aussies, a Brit, a Kiwi, and us Yanks.
• We ended up doing the Kepler in three days.  The last day, it was supposed to rain and I hadn't washed up at all after nine consecutive trail days.  I was ready to be out of the woods.  We were going to combine the last two days (17 km x 2 = 34 km, or >21 miles), which was completely do-able, as it was through a flat river valley.
• In the end, our last day was about 25 km/ 15 miles.  We came out at a different trailhead and hitchhiked back to the start.  Dave ended up getting a ride with some of the Germans that had been in the huts with us.  He picked up the van and then came to get me.

Here are my favorite pictures:

Routeburn/ Caples Tracks

After our long day in Mt. Aspiring National Park, we went to the Department of Conservation (DoC) office to check the weather, which would inform our hiking plans for the next few days.  Amazingly, it looked like there might be a good break in the weather!  We decided on the Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand's “Great Walks,” with a return via the Caples Track.  We did a food shop, got a fuel canister, and arranged for trailhead transport...  four hour after deciding to go, we were on the trail!  It was awesome how everything pulled together.

We took five days to hike the Routeburn and Caples together (starting from the northeastern end to the west, picking up the Caples to the southeast).  Rather than a day-by-day account of all five days, here are the highlights:

• I got sick.  On the first day, I could tell something was brewing.  I woke up in the middle of the first night with a fever and bloody, green snot on my hanky.  Uh oh.  I was really lucky:  Dave took all of my group gear, including food, and I was able to carry on.  I was only feeling unwell for two days.
• We spent two nights in the huts with thirty-odd high school students.  They were part of an outdoor education class (New Zealand has outdoor education just like US high schools have physical education).  They were enthusiastic, well-behaved, funny kids, and their teachers, especially a guy named Ray, were very nice.
• I didn't get rained on.  Considering the amount of rain that Fiordland gets, that was freakish.  The rains started late one day, after we had already reached the hut, and we managed to wait them out the next morning, setting off late for the next hut.
• One night on the Caples, we stayed in a hut with three Germans, a Brit, and four hard-drinking, ribald-humor-loving, tough-guy Kiwi hunters.  I knew it was going to be a special night once the Kiwis started pushing the Jagermeister on us.  :-P  They reminded me a lot of the “type” of person you'd find in Upstate NY.  Made me a little homesick.
• The Routeburn track was beautiful.  The alpine day traversed a ridge in full view of magnificent snow-capped mountains.
• The Caples track was fun.  The fourth day of our trip we had a long descent through some pretty gnarly track.  It was covered in slippery tree roots with more unbridged stream crossings than I could count.
• I had the most spectacular wipe out of my entire life.  It involved a very deep stream, a slippery bridge log, my hiking poles sinking waaaaaay down into the bog, a mad scramble for the muddy banks, and going knee-deep into mud.

Here are the best pictures from the trip...  not representative, just my favorites.