Sunday, January 25, 2009

Road trip around New Zealand


Arriving in New Zealand brings a touch of culture shock coming from Asia. Everyone speaks English, everything is more expensive, and you can't take a bus everywhere you would like to go. We showed up in Auckland, and after dusting off the wear and tear of overland travel of the previous week, set out to purchase a vehicle to cart us around New Zealand's north and south islands.

Its strange how in some places, there is just a certain way things are done, and in New Zealand, there is a burgeoning backpacker culture where many travelers either rent or even buy a campervan. Buying a car is surprisingly easy as far as the paperwork goes, and after two days of exhaustive searching and filling out a few forms at the post office, we were the prowd owners of a 1979 Toyota Hiace van. The van has a pop-up top that we put up when camping which allows a standing position in the kitchen/closet area. There is a two burner LPG stove with a small oven mounted on top of a chest of plastic drawers which house everything from culterly and cooking utensils to food and clothing. The Mystery Machine also has a bed, which is its biggest draw, allowing us to camp inexpensively, while providing a significant step up in comfort from tent camping. Car camp grounds with varying levels of ameneties are everywhere, making the perfect network for a road trip in a souped up van. Its a pretty sweet way to travel.

A typical tour of New Zealand would encompass loops of both the north and south islands, but our climbing habit dictated that we head straight for Mt Cook National Park in the middle of the south island to get the best of conditions before the routes melted out too much. Four days later, we arrived in the awe-inspiring Mt Cook region. Along the way, we stopped to stay with Roger Shepard, fellow Baekdu Daegan thru-hiker and co-author of the forthcoming first-ever English guidebook to Korea's mystical long trail. It was a great visit and really cool to connect with someone we'd never met but with whom we have much in common. Thanks, Roger!

Settling into Mt Cook National Park, I was keenly aware that we'd discovered something I was helplessly falling in love with. While the mountains look a bit like Washington's Cascade Range, the glaciers are more massive and continuous, and the area just oozes atmosphere as the heart and soul of the country's climbing scene. There is a brilliant network of high mountain huts, providing bases for exploration deep within the range while offering a safe haven to wait out the infamous bad weather. People fly into remote huts and stay there for weeks, heading out on adventures when the weather cooperates. The Department of Conservation, much like out National Park Service but a tad slicker, runs most of the huts, all of which are equiped with radios via which nightly weather forecasts are delivered. I dream of such a system and culture in Washington, but it doesn't exist for various reasons which I won't go into here.



Waiting for the weather to clear, we hung out in the van and perused our maps and guidebook looking for a suitable climbing objective. The rangers at the DOC vistors center and the guides at Alpine Guides were especially helpful in this as well. We headed out optimistically towards Sefton Bivy, a small 4 person hut perched high above the village at the base of the glacial mass on the east side of Mt Sefton, one of the region's heavy hitters. Our goal was to climb a nearby peak called the Footstool. It sounded benign enough to me.

A 3 am start wasn't enough to get us to the top before the heat of the day signalled that it was time to turn around, 100 meters from the top. That isn't to say that the climb was a failure, but we certainly felt like it got the best of us at the time. To assess it from the optimist's point of view, we had a wonderful climb up and over two beautiful glaciers in fairly good weather, and were witness to a glorious sunrise over the region. Our position was high enough that we had front row seats for the sun's greeting of Mt Cook and the surrounding peaks, as well as a constant flow of clouds from the always-wet west coast valleys. It was a fantastic way to really start our trip in New Zealand, and a great introduction to the Mt Cook area.

After the Footstool, we hiked to the high alpine Ball Pass on a great weather day. The route was longer than we'd expected and full of loose rock and scree, but we were rewarded with spectacular panoramas of the Hooker Valley (and the whole of our route on the Footstool from a different perspective), the Tasman Valley, and an up close encounter with the massive and imposing Caroline Face on Mt Cook. The whole park experience was quite unexpected, and we had a hard time leaving, both of us having that 'end of vacation' feeling, even though we still have over two months left in New Zealand. I guess that's how you know your feelings about a place.

We have already planned a return trip to the Mt Cook area for some ski touring, hearing that the weather is actually better in the winter, and desiring to spend some time high up in the huts. And thus, the problem with traveling is illuminated here. Some say you travel to get it out of your system, but for others--including me--that is just not the case. Instead of checking things off the list we've just been adding things onto the end of it.

4 Comments:

At January 26, 2009 at 8:08 AM , Blogger Matt said...

great pics, nice van. new zealand looks badass.

 
At February 2, 2009 at 8:32 AM , Blogger K. Marc Dufresne said...

Chris Meder! It is Kevin Dufresne! from college. drop me a line sometime... looks like fun travels there for you!

kdufresn@gmail.com

 
At February 5, 2009 at 2:58 AM , Blogger Kennedy said...

Wow Med, those pics from NZ are amazing. I think the van was a sweet investment, it reminds me of concert tour Wookies!

 
At February 11, 2009 at 8:59 PM , Blogger Vance said...

I agree with your closing comment. I don't know how or why a person would want to try to get something so enjoyable and interesting out of their system. That's like eating a good piece of pie or listening to a great song once and then saying "Ahh I'm glad I got that out of my system and am not doing it again". Glad to have your guys' blog address now. I'll definitely have to catch up on what you guys have been up to.

 

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