(written on the 15th and 16th from notes taken previously)
Wow, what a day!
I was grateful to be undisturbed last night and also grateful to have been up early enough to snap a picture of the sun just barely peaking its face above the mountains across the valley from me.
It wasn’t a great picture (I think I’m going to invest in a decent dedicated camera for my next trip), but it was fun to get nonetheless.
I stayed for a good while at my camping spot, because as I remember, though it was sunny when I first got up and snaps that picture, clouds quickly rolled in, low clouds that I could see rolling into the valley below that even made it up my canyon a little bit.
Seeing the clouds roll in, I figured the color of Lake Tasman (my first destination) wouldn’t be as spectacular as it normally would be on a sunny day.
The satellite pictures make it look a beautiful bright blue, similar to lake Pukaki (the large lake downriver from the upper glacial lakes like Tasman), and though those lakes are still beautiful when it’s overcast outside, they don’t pop with that electric-blue color that’s so vivid and vibrant that it looks artificial.
So I hung out there at my little base camp for a bit probably veging a bit and maybe working on journal catch-up efforts a bit.
I know I worked on journal catch up efforts at least a little bit today, but I don’t remember if it was before I left my little base camp or after or both. 🤷
Eventually, and quite surprisingly to me at least, the thick cloud cover that had rolled in, that I figured would hang around the entire day, gave way to partly cloudy skies 🎉; so I decided to give Lake Tasman a shot.
🤞
I fired up my van, made my way down the super-narrow, one-track dirt road from the base of the canyon where I had parked for the night to the main road below, and headed back to the car park I had scouted out last night.
Unfortunately, as it was late in the day already (somewhere around 10:45ish, I think?), The car park was already slammed, but gratefully, there was room to park on the side of the road, and I was maybe five cars up the road from the car park.
After getting everything set and hiding my key on my car, I started walking toward the trail marker, only to turn back quite quickly to apply some preventative Vaseline.
I hate chafing and have no clue when it will strike. Sometimes I can hike all day without any issues, and sometimes it seems like it’s almost immediate that the chafing begins.
I wonder if it has something to do with the chemical composition of my sweat on different days?
Clearly I’m no expert, so my guesses are rather ignorant, but I can’t think of anything else that would be different that would be reasonable?
Maybe on some days I have a lot more salt in my sweat, and that crystallizes out of my sweat and causes friction?
🤷
Anyway, as I left my car for the second time, I started walking by an older British couple that had been there the first time I was walking by, but this time we struck up a conversation, chatting for maybe five or 10 minutes before I continued on.
They were getting ready to do a helicopter tour, which gave me the opportunity to highly recommend to them that they do everything in their power to be able to sit in the front of the helicopter (I remembering my experience from last time, sitting in the back, and having a pretty terrible view of everything. I had gotten a fantastic price on the helicopter trip, but it was still more than the value of the experience, in my opinion, because My views were so restricted sitting in the back with just a small window to look out from. People sitting in the front get to have that full front windshield view, seeing everywhere they are going and both sides of the view. I suppose it varies helicopter to helicopter, based on construction and size of windows and what not, but I think no matter what helicopter you’re in, the front seats are going to provide you the best views.).
After bidding them farewell, I started wandering up the path. I guess I shouldn’t say wandering, I was walking at a pretty brisk pace.
Wanting to see everything, I left the main path to follow a side path to the “Blue Lakes.”
Little note to anyone who might read this, there’s no need to take the side walk over to the Blue lakes. First of all, there’s only one lake. Second, it’s not blue at all (or at least it wasn’t today), third, there doesn’t seem to be much sense taking the side detour to the lake as you get a fantastic view of the same lake on the main walk up to the Tasman Lake/Tasman Glacier lookout area.
So I got back on the main trail, double stepping the several steps up to the lookout.
By the time I got to the top, it was a bright sunny day with lots and lots of blue sky. 😊
But oddly, the glacial lake was sort of a grayish yellow color. 🤔
It hadn’t rained, so I expected that it would be stunning electric blue/turquoise color, but… nope.
I should probably look up why.
In addition (perhaps because it’s so late in the summer?), The glacier is absolutely covered by some kind of black stuff. I figured that the black stuff was probably gazillions of little rocks and dirt particles from the mountains above that roll down and are blown down.
So the view was a little underwhelming given what I was expecting, and I guess that just proves how important one’s expectations are to ones experience of life.
I had hoped to maybe take a swim, but the lookout spots and the hiking trail were so far away from the water, that I didn’t really want to make the extra effort.
Somewhat surprisingly, there were four tourist motorboats (think metal row boat in size, with a motor on the rear) taking tourists all the way across the lake up to the base of the glacier.
There are also regular helicopter and airplane tourist trips, so you’re pretty much always hearing a helicopter or airplane in the distance making its loop from its takeoff location up to the glacier and back down.
The mountain and lake views are the most accessible and spectacular up this particular glacial valley, so it’s tourist central–an enormous number of people coming through each day.
After taking a handful of pictures, I just sat myself down on a rock and soaked up the view for a good long time. I also spend some time, contemplating where I wanted to go next. I was thinking that it would be really cool to climb one of the mountains near Mount Cook in order to get a view of the mountain range from super high up, looking across the snow-capped, glacier filled peaks around me (kind of like you’d see from one of the aerial shots in the Lord of the Rings).
I even toyed with the idea of climbing Mount Cook itself, the tallest one, at least up to the base of the main glaciers (it’s far too dangerous of a mountain to climb at my skill and equipment levels; and I really don’t have any interest in that kind of super-technical climbing anyway.
Eventually, I settled on a thought that I think I had yesterday of just climbing the mountain next to where I had parked last night–Mount Sealy.
It was a much shorter mountain compared to Mount Cook, but it was tall enough that it seemed like it would give great views without the need for traversing glaciers and possible crevasses. There seems to be a way to get to the top following solid rock instead of having to traverse snow or ice.
I wasn’t 100% sold on that idea, but that’s what I was leaning toward as I walked back down the trail to my van.
Total aside, why is it that pretty much every time I see public restrooms, the line for the women’s restroom is significantly longer than the line for the men’s, if there even is a line for the men’s? 🤔
I’ve got some guesses, but I won’t put them here. 🙃
As I was leaving, I saw an older gentleman hitchhiking, so I pulled over, made some room for him in the back seat, got him loaded up, and headed out.
He looked like he was probably in his middle to late sixties, maybe even 70s, and was from France. I think Lyon? I don’t remember. His English wasn’t very strong, and my French is nearly non existent, so it was a tad more challenging communicating, but we managed.
I ended up driving him a good little ways down the west side of Lake Pukaki, well past my destination, but to the first decent place where he might be able to get another ride.
Having done my fair share of hitchhiking in my life, the location you choose to request rides has a huge impact on the likelihood of actually getting one, so I didn’t want to just drop him off on the side of the highway where there wasn’t a good pull out for someone to be able to stop without having to slam on their brakes.
I dropped him off at a very large pull out, one specifically designed as a viewpoint for people, so anyone contemplating giving him a ride would have plenty of time and space to pull over.
From there I headed back to my spot through the little winding single-track dirt road up to the mouth of the canyon.
It was late in the day by that point, nearly 1:00, I think–not a good time of day to be starting a major hike, but it was supposed to rain the next day, so I figured I would give it a shot. I had made it up and down Mount Doom in great time, so maybe I could do this in a similar time?
That was my hope, at least.
I texted back and forth a bit with my sister Heather, sending her my proposed hiking route, just in case I didn’t return (though I didn’t tell her that. 🙃).
I got my pack all loaded up, stopped to eat a very large lunch (three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) and to hydrate myself a fair bit in preparation for the hike, and finally, around I think 1:40 😅, I got going.
For a hike like this, I should have started at 7:00 in the morning, but… oh well. 😅
🤞
My plan was to follow the river through the heart of the canyon and to then pick a side canyon to climb up to the ridge, and then to follow the ridge all the way to the top.
I had thought about following the river through the heart of the canyon all the way to the base of the mountain, and though it certainly looked doable, it seemed to me as though there might be some pretty sketchy bouldering spots that I might run into that wouldn’t be so forgiving were I to fall. 😅
So I mostly nixed those options from the beginning, especially the southern end of the bowl.
I made my way upriver, periodically having to cross the river, but great fully finding places I could cross without having to get my feet wet (I didn’t fancy a mountain climb with wet feet 🙃).
I redownloaded my pedometer (I had accidentally uninstalled it maybe a week or two ago when I was trying to free up space on my phone, and I accidentally pressed the wrong button when my phone suggested uninstalling a handful of apps), but the pedometer data wasn’t quite accurate (when I had been hiking over an hour, it said I don’t even hiking for 30 minutes or so, which got me wondering if the step counter was accurate as well. It certainly didn’t seem so, at least not at the beginning of the hike).
I followed the main river up the heart of the canyon for a good long way, crossing the river here and there, climbing up the bank of the river in one section so as to avoid avalanche leftovers, not fancying falling through weak spots, should there be any (It was highly unlikely that I would run into weak spots, but still… it was an unnecessary risk).
Hiking along the bank on the north side did prove difficult, however, as it was super steep with few spots to securely place my feet without risking sliding back down, which, although not dangerous, could have given me some pretty good scrapes as I slid.
Once I was past the large sections of hard-packed avalanche leftovers, I had to decide whether I was going to continue my plan of going up a side canyon (basically making my way up a rock slide) or to give a chance at going all the way to the end to the last side canyon before the bowl itself.
The last side canyon was obscured by the terrain in front of it, so I couldn’t see if there was a definite way up. I could see where it began, and I could see that toward the top, it curved a little to my right, but then it disappeared behind the terrain in front of it, so I had no idea whether it continued as a slide to the top, or turned into impassable cliffs.
Should I risk the potentially easier route, following the relatively gentle slope of the river in the canyon bottom up to that point, hoping that the last side canyon was doable, or should I just peel off now and head on up a side canyon that was much more of a known quantity, as I could see from where I was all the way to the ridge I was hoping to get to?
I started going up the slide that was immediately to my right, but good golly, it’s such a pain trying to scramble up rock slides.
After a little while of going up the slide, I switched over to the vegetated side of the hill, which provided more stable footing, and continued on up.
After going up a ways, I decided I wanted to risk heading over to the very last side canyon, so I crossed the thick vegetation of the ridge on that little mini canyon and crossed another slide with the intent of making my way diagonally over the ridges and slides up to that last side canyon.
The slope, however, was super steep, with long stretches where good footholds were a luxury, so I was continually concerned about slipping and sliding a long way down.
There weren’t cliffs that I could slide over and drop off, but it certainly seemed like I could slide a long way, because the ground was hard packed enough that I wouldn’t be able to dig my feet in to build up resistance.
So it was very slow going.
By the time I made it across a very wide section like that and started going up a more vegetated section, I was absolutely exhausted, not to mention that climbing up slopes sideways rubs your feet in a completely different way inside your shoe than walking up a trail does, so the bottoms of my feet, particularly the balls of both feet and the adjacent skin, felt as if it was in the pre-blister stage–and I wasn’t even halfway up the mountain. 😅
As tired as I was, I was sort of in that stage where it’s mind over body, and I picked a certain number of steps to force myself to do before taking my next break.
I did that a handful of times to get to the top of the vegetated section that I was on, and then again to get from there to the next vegetated section.
By the time I got to the next vegetated section, I had already been hiking for quite a long time, despite my pedometer indicating otherwise 🙃, and with it being as late in the day as it was, and with me being as tired as I was, I knew I needed to change my target goal for the day.
I wasn’t going to make it to the top of the mountain.
So I decided that my best option was to make for the ridge above and hope that I had decent views from there, at least enough to make the hike feel worth it to me.
I mean I guess it’s worth it anyway in that I’m getting good exercise, but intent for doing the hike in the first place was the beautiful views once at the top.
After changing my goal, I started going back across the same slopes that I had just been on, I’ll be at much higher up, with the intent of going diagonally up to my right, just as I had previously been trying to go diagonally up to my left.
Eventually, I got to a rocky ridge that I felt like would be a great place to go up, so I didn’t have to fight with the rock slides, but as I started climbing up the ridge, I ran into my own problems there.
There seemed to be two main different kinds of rock. One solid that I think was maybe a type of granite, and another was fractured and loose all over the place.
I managed to get myself in a section of ridge that was nearly universally that more fractured kind of rock, which meant that I couldn’t trust it completely for footholds, and I had to be super careful using it for hand holds, as the rock could break away at any time leaving me
It had seemed like it would be a much more pleasant way up, bouldering instead of climbing up a rock slide, but with the type of rock that I was dealing with, and the consequences of a fall being… a fair bit more than I was comfortable with 😅, it was quite nerve-wracking and very slow going.
As I climbed through several quite precarious situations, I looked at the rock slide below with longing. But for as much as I climbed, it seemed as though I barely got any closer to it, as it wasn’t really safe to down climb, so I was side climbing, but side climbing was basically the same as going up, so I continued to stay at nearly the same distance between myself and the slide below.
I was definitely not comfortable.
I think dying from a fall where I was was unlikely, but serious injury definitely seemed possible.
Fun fun fun. 😅
Eventually, gratefully, I managed to make it safely down to the slide, which I followed for a little ways, before starting to climb up that rocky ridge.
I felt like I could follow the ridge right next to the slide, thus minimizing the possibility of getting injured if I fell off, but after little ways, that wasn’t realistic, and the route naturally took me up the side of the side toward the top of the ridge.
This time the makeup of The Rock was sort of a mix. There were nice solid sections of the more granite type of rock mixed in with sections of the fractured kind of rock.
It was a lot safer, though still not super comfortable, but on I went.
As I made it over to the other side of that ridge, again finding myself in somewhat tricky situations, though not quite as bad as before, I don’t think, I stopped to take a rest and noticed that I still had some reception (I hadn’t had reception for any of the hike up the heart of the canyon down by the river, but the higher I got, I started getting a little bit of reception here and there, so I had messaged my sister a few times, I think before that point, and I sent her another message here, as I stopped to drink some water as well.
Foolishly, I think I’d only stopped to take a water break maybe three times? And the only food that I brought with me was a can of beans, which didn’t seem very appetizing, and which I didn’t want to take the time to eat.
I had figured that my three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches would have done me just fine, but I was very low on energy and recognized that I was pretty dehydrated, despite having tried to cool my body off periodically at the river soaking myself in water.
I thought at that point that I was maybe 30 minutes from the top of the main ridge, which I figured would give me a view of the mountains surrounding me.
There was just one small little Rock slide to walk across and then a small mini ridge to climb up, and then I’d be at the top.
Gratefully, what I thought was going to be a 30-minute walk turned out to only be an eight-minute walk.
And there I stood, at the top of the ridge, looking down on the canyon below me.
It was a relatively sharp ridge, so there wasn’t a whole lot of space at the top before it dropped off on both sides, much more sharply on the other side than on the side I had just climbed up.
It was already late in the day, so I figured I only had maybe 30 minutes to hang out at the top before I needed to head down if I hoped to get back before dark, so I snapped some pictures and took some video and just sort of stared off at the view.
Sadly, clouds had once again rolled in, so I could only see about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way up the large mountains surrounding me, the rest of them shrouded in clouds.
That was mildly disappointing, but what happened next would wipe away that mild disappointment, as what followed was an experience that I will remember for the rest of my life:
As I was standing there at the top of the ridge looking around, I started hearing loud calls from what I figured was probably the ubiquitous local hawk species.
There aren’t really natural predators of any kind in New Zealand, at least in the animal kingdom, the only natural predator being a native hawk species. There might be more than one, but I think maybe there’s only one? They’re probably more, but I think maybe only one is native?
I have no idea. 🙃 I believe I’ve been told that there is a hawk in New Zealand that’s actually native to New Zealand, and that’s what I figured I was hearing.
For whatever reason, I decided to try and mimic the call I heard. So each time I heard it, I would try and mimic it. There were actually multiple birds up in the sky flying about and cawing loudly.
Again and again I tried to mimic the sounds, and then something totally unexpected happened: The birds that I was trying to mimic came closer and closer and eventually perched on part of the ridge maybe 15 or 20 meters away.
They seemed curious.
In all, four of them came over and all landed together in the same spot, loudly cawing, as I loudly attempted to mimic them right back.
As they had come closer, I had realized that they weren’t hawks at all: they were some sort of species of alpine parrot, a sort of solid olive-green color on the outside, except when they opened up their wings to take flight, showing stunning red-orange patches on the underside of both wings.
And they weren’t small parrots, either. Looking at them, I figured they were probably somewhere around 14 in length from tip of tail to top of head.
It was super cool to see them curious as to who and what I was, but it got even better. The more I tried to mimic their sound, the more curious they seemed to become.
After initially perching themselves 15 or 20 meters away, one took flight and perched itself maybe 10 meters away, and the others followed.
They kept calling and I kept replying, and once again, hopped up into the air and then came over to within about 5 meters of me, this time only two of them.
Each time they perched in a new spot, I took photos and video, hoping to get decent pictures and decent video of the experience.
Finally, the two apparently most inquisitive of the four came even closer, landing on rocks no further than 3 m away from me!
It was so cool!
I wished I had had some sort of food to give them to better communicate who I was and what I meant by my mimicry, but all I had were beans. 😅
It was amazing to me to see these beautiful creatures so close to me, so curious, so inquisitive, and so… unconcerned.
So comfortable were they that perched just 2 to 3 m away from me, they began to preen themselves as if there were nothing in the world to worry about.
Man, I wished I could speak parrot!
The sun was going down, but I didn’t want to interrupt the experience for even a moment, so I just sat there, taking videos, taking pictures, making noises, talking to them, etc until finally, I guess they got bored and decided to fly off, which was both sad and good at the same time, as it took away the significant draw that was keeping me on top of the mountain when I should have been heading down a good little while ago. 🙃
Such a cool experience. 😊
… and now it was time to book it down. 😅
I figured going down would be a heck of a lot easier than coming up it had been, gravity assisting me, and being able to slide down at least some portions of the rocks slides.
And I was correct that it was indeed faster, but it didn’t go nearly as quickly as I had hoped.
I was exhausted. The muscles that needed to do the heavy lifting were worn out, as they were muscles that weren’t used to that kind of hiking, and my knees hurt with every step I took downhill.
Yes, it went quicker, but I had to down climb some of the same rocky ridges that I had previously up climbed, and that was slow going at times.
And then I had to be vigilant about going down the rock slide, so as to not be injured or killed by rocks from above that decided to come down, a possibility that was much more likely because I would be disturbing the natural resting places of all the stones with every step that I took down the slides.
I made it easily down the first rocky ridge and rock slide, the ones that were quick on the way up as well.
Climbing down the next rocky ridge was easier and safer than it had been going up, but still technical and relatively slow going.
I could feel the weakness in my legs each time I stepped, as well as the continual jabs of knee pain with each step.
Once again, I ended up dealing with some more precarious sections, but this time I wasn’t as worried about stepping on mini rock slide areas, so I was able to make better time, albeit still slow.
I was grateful when I made it down to the major slide that I had contemplated falling all the way up before adjusting my strategy.
Down, down, down I went. Looking up periodically to make sure that I was safe from errant flying rocks coming from above.
Most of the rock slide was made up of rocks bigger than the type that I could sort of ski down (jump, slide, jump, slide, etc). Down climbing a rock slide that you can’t ski down can be quite slow going and a little dangerous for the ankles.
Certainly, I have quite a bit of experience in my life in that type of climbing, but despite how experienced you are at placing your foot in safer locations, there’s always a chance that a rock might shift differently than how it appears it might, which could result in a sprained or broken ankle.
Somehow, I’ve managed to train my body such that my whole leg reacts if my brain feels my ankle start to roll, so if my ankle does actually start to roll, then often that leg will completely give out as a safety precaution so that the entire weight of my body is no longer on that ankle.
I’m not sure exactly how or when that developed, but it does mean that instead of sprained and broken ankles, I usually just end up with scrapes and maybe bruises.
I don’t know if I could count on that bodily reaction every time, but I’m grateful for it as often as it does happen.
Down, down, down I went, occasionally running into areas that were a little less comfortable than others, such as where the little mini canyon narrowed almost to a point, which would mean that any rocks coming from above would be much more likely to find me. 😅
Gratefully, I never had so much as a single rock from above come down to where I was. 🙏
In my experience, it’s not all that common that a rock will dislodge and gather enough speed so as to make it a fair distance down a rock slide, but it is possible.
Boy did that rock slide seem like it just kept going on forever–step by painful step, rock by rock, shuffle by shuffle.
Oh, how I longed to be at the bottom of the slide where I could just rock hop my way all the way back to the van!
But I couldn’t go faster without risking injury, and with my muscles as exhausted as they were (and even with fresh muscles) down climbing without solid footing is risking potential injury if you’re not careful (and even if you are, especially when weak).
Eventually, I got to a section, one that I had climbed up previously, at least for a little ways, that was relatively thickly vegetated, which I felt would give me a better chance at stable footing.
The one downside to the vegetated section was that if there were loose rocks underneath the vegetation, I wouldn’t be able to see them, so I could step on them, and possibly turn an ankle.
Gratefully, though I sometimes stepped on rocks that were a little looser than I would have preferred, I never did turn my ankle.
I guess there was another risk of going down the vegetated section: sometimes the plants were slippery, and a couple of times, my feet went out from under me, and I either landed on my butt, caught myself just before landing on my butt.
Still, after spending so much time climbing down a mass of Rock slide, pebbles filling my shoes, it was nice to be able to remove the pebbles for my shoes and down climb the vegetated section.
Sometimes a change is as good as a break, right? 🙃
Eventually, the vegetated section gave way to the rock slide again, so I continued down the very last section of the slide and finally, gratefully, made it to the river bottom. 🙏
🥳
Despite all my best efforts in choosing solid foot placement going down the slide, there were a couple of times where my ankle turned a little bit, one of them far enough that I thought just briefly that maybe I had sprained it.
Gratefully, I hadn’t. 🙏
And now I was at the bottom, with only rock hopping and River crossing left to do before I got back to the van.
And yet, that last… maybe two or three kilometers of rock hopping couldn’t go quickly enough.
I was so ready to be back at my van. 🙃
And oh my great golly, the sand flies! I only stopped moving when I absolutely needed to pause to make a strategic decision before down climbing a small drop or crossing the river.
Not that I would have stopped anyway, as I wanted to get back as soon as possible, but the sand flies were definitely buzzing around my head.
Gratefully, it’s a rarity, at least for me, that they actually try and bite me on my neck or ears or face.
They generally look for arms and legs, though sometimes they’ll settle for hands.
With the long pants and long sleeves and socks that I was wearing, I wasn’t really at much risk for getting bitten. It’s more just an annoyance, and they definitely would bite me a few times were I to stop and not swat them away.
At long last, I made it back to my van, super happy to be there, pulling my key out of my pack as I walked, so I could spend as little time as possible stopped at my van, which would give time for the darn sand flies to congregate around me, which would allow more of them in the van once I got the door open. 😆
Food, water, and mental vegetation were the focus of the rest of the night. 🙃
Gratefully, I made it down before it was dark enough to need a headlamp. I had actually made great time, but it still seemed like forever because of the trickiness of the terrain and the pain in my knees and my relative level of exhaustion.
[sigh]
So good to be back at the van. Such a cool experience with the parrots above.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 