Yesterday… Hmmm…
Yesterday…
Love was such an easy game to play.
Just kidding. 🙃
No, yesterday I woke up and started working on catching up on my other posts while sitting on the railroad tracks near our little hidden falls hike, fighting off the sandflies all the while. I’ve taken to just wearing long pants, long socks, and a jacket, and that keeps it manageable. Maybe some bug spray around my neck and on my hands.
I think I got one catch-up post written.
From there, we headed back to the Devil’s punch bowl Falls to get our morning dose of Internet reception so that we could get all our communications and what not finished for the morning before likely heading back out of data range.
I was hoping to meet up with a friend that we had met on the trip, but unfortunately, we weren’t able to continue the conversation, and not knowing when we would be able to reengage, Chase and I just went ahead and headed west.
The thought that I had was that we could spend one more day in Arthur’s past sort of just exploring, picking a random place that looked like it could give us a little bit of adventure that we could enjoy, and then going for it.
So Chase started driving West, and we just kept going. We passed one place that I thought might be good, but I didn’t speak up. The further west we headed, the more I figured that maybe we wouldn’t end up stopping somewhere, but then out of the blue, chase pulled over in a spot that it first didn’t look like much, but when I got down to the river, it looked like it had some pretty good potential.
So we headed on up!
And boy was I glad that he decided to stop there! That turned out to be one of my favorite hikes, if not me favorite, of the whole trip so far. 😊
Nice job, Chase!!!
It was the quintessential creek hike–water shoes a must, and just rock hopping all the way up to–wherever it is that you end up when creek hiking. And for me, there’s no better type of hiking than creek/river hiking. It is my absolute favorite, bar none, no question, not even close. 😊
As we hiked, I watched as the canyon walls started narrowing more and more, but the water supply didn’t dwindle.
That’s a great sign of you’re me, and waterfalls are your thing. 😁
We kept hopping along from rock to rock, sometimes going in the water when it was safer.
Eventually, and what, maybe 20 minutes into the hike? I looked ahead and could see steep walls on all sides, which meant… waterfall!!!
Or an underground river coming out. 🙃
But then I saw it, a faint mist blowing from right to left.
Waterfall 😎
And this was one of the highlight waterfalls of the whole trip for me, and hands down Chase’s favorite.
I would guess maybe 100 feet tall? Don’t really have a clue, honestly, but what was so cool was that it was coming down the side of the canyon, not the front, and it had carved a channel in the rock, such that you simply couldn’t see it into you were right there!
You’d never see it from the road. You’d not even see it hiking the adjacent mountain and looking over. It was completely hidden.
My favorite. 😎😁
Chase and I stayed there for over 4 hours. Eating, writing, each taking bath in the bright blue water in the pool the falls crashed down into.
It was just a skinny little falls, but boy was it beautiful! 😊 And it was easily deep enough to swim around in.
That said, it’s labor glacier/snow melt, so… it isn’t exactly… warm. 🙃
But hey, I spent a good long time living in my car bathing in a snow-melt homemade waterfall shower, so… it was just like home to me, right? 😁
It was Chase’s first waterfall shower, and though I know he loves his hot showers, he v enjoyed this one, too.
I left him down at the button, and I climbed up the steep sides, bushwhacking up 70-80-degree slopes covered in little plants and trees growing out of the sides. Then I scaled down a sketchy place I had no business going because… even though I could probably do the scramble 20 times without incident, still, it was one slip to possible death.
But… I’m writing this, so… still here! 😅
From there, I did some pretty crazy scrambles here and there following the River Creek whatever you want to call it up, up, and up some more. The difference, though, with these was that slips and Falls or whatever would just ruin my phone in my pocket because I am falling into pools of water instead of on to rock.
I did some pretty sketchy climbs over the water, but managed to make it up and back down all of them without slipping and going into the drink. 😅
Wahoo!
Once back down to the bottom, after going back up the sketchy place I had to climb down initially, and then going down the super-teep, vegetation-packed canyon walls, i took another dip in the pool at the bottom of the falls, and then we headed down
We were without reception for a while, but once back in reception, I still hadn’t heard back from our friend, so I had apparently made the right decision heading back west instead of waiting around.
We got gas and then headed to Hokitika Gorge, where our jaws dropped with how amazingly blue the water is.
Oh. My. Goodness!!!
😍
Eye candy.
It was later in the day, so the sun had already gone over the hill, so it wasn’t as crazy blue as it would be with the Sun shining directly overhead, but it was still jaw-droppingly blue.
So beautiful. 😊
There were swing bridges going across in two places. One was probably 40+ feet over the water. The other was probably… 80? I don’t know. They were a ways, though. I’d love to have figured it out. We could have figured it out, too. I didn’t realize Chase had Paracord, but we’re gone now.
Maybe we go back. 🙃
😆
Anyway, we found ourselves a little place to sleep near there, and crashed for the night, planning to come back in the morning to see it with the Sun shining down, hoping to see so even more vibrant blue. 😊
After finding our parking place, I think i got one catch-up post written, and then I crashed.
Love to all y’all out there. 😊
Leave every and every place better than you found them.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 