Hopeless Ridge Part IV - a.k.a. the trip to Lake Monowai 2013

We began Day 3 with a descent to the lake where we were met with dense tangles of trees and vines.  Nothing about our trip was easy!  Hours later we reached Monowai Hut - such a sight for sore eyes!  We  cooked up a hot lunch and lounged for a little while before embarking on another 3 1/2+ hour walk to the Clark A Frame.

My walking slowed to a snails pace on our way to the A Frame.  Walking up hill was bad, but walking downhill was even more painful for the quads.  Nonetheless, I carried on.  What choice did I have?

The forest eventually gave way to a wide open field surrounded by, you guessed it, more mountains!!  It's amazing how the scenery can take away a bad mood in seconds.

After a night on the mountain, we were overjoyed to be in a hut, but the funny thing is this one in particular was quite cramped for four adults, had signs of mice-like inhabitants, and had mighty big spiderwebs with creepy crawly things lurking in them up in the corners of the ceiling.

No matter.  Chris surprised us with CHAMPAGNE!  I was walking slow enough that Chris had time to scoot ahead and scout out a place in the nearby stream to chill sparkling wine for us. It was SO refreshing to feel those little bubbles with each sip!  We had another special treat after dinner - steamed chocolate puddings. YUM!  Daniel broke off pieces of his chocolate bar with hazelnut chunks and sprinkled those on top, too.  Deeeelicious! 

It seems silly how little things can be such a big deal out there in the backcountry, but I guess that's why I love tramping so much... everything, from cold water to a cool breeze to a tasty treat, means so much more when you're far away from the comforts of home.

That night, I assumed, again, that sleep would come easily.  But, again, it did not. 

We tried killing all the sandflies that had snuck into the hut, but the crack in the door was wide enough for more to enter.  We tried retreating into our sleeping bags to escape getting bitten, but our bodies in such tight quarters generated so much body heat that it was too hot to sleep!  

My sleeping bag has a special zipper at the feet so that I could unzip it and allow some colder air in, but this put me at risk of something biting me.  So, I'd stick the toes of one foot out for a few seconds, assuming that sandflies wouldn't notice, and then I'd quickly pull my toes back in.  Then, when I assumed the sandflies lost hope of biting my feet, I'd stick out the toes of the other food for a few seconds.  Eventually, I realized the ridiculousness of this - there was no way I could play peek-a-boo with my feet and the sandflies all night.  So, I caved and just laid out there in the open - I didn't care if the sandflies feasted on me - I just wanted to sleep THAT bad.

Our last day had it's own challenges, but I think you get the idea that this was a tough, tough trip.  We reached Green Lake Hut on our route back to the car - what a fantastic location for a hut!  Mt. Cuthbert looked amazing from across the lake.  

As you can see from the sign in the picture above, we still had 5 1/2 hours to go before we hit the road that the car was parked on.  We ate lunch, I threw my bathing suit on and went for a quick dip in the lake (it was hella cold!!!) and then we set off for the last leg of the trip.  

You'd think that after four days of walking I would have gotten used to walking with a pack, but it never got easier.  That last day was hot and I wasn't sure how I was going to manage another 6 miles after already walking 6 miles before lunch.  I mustered up all the energy I could and got moving.  

But, you know what?  Just when things couldn't possibly get worse a sandfly would come along, as I walked uphill, and would look at me and say, "Oh! Hello there!  You look like you're a bit cranky and I see that you're walking a bit funny - you must be sore!  I'm also guessing that you're probably thirsty or hungry or, heck, both!  Well, why don't I make your day a little more craptastic!" and then, gosh darn it, the damn thing would fly right up my nose or straight into my eye.

ARRRRG! WHY?!!!

Somehow, all of us made it back to the car without a mental breakdown (confession, I may or may not have whimpered once or twice because I just wanted it to be over).  Honestly, this was the type of trip where tempers could fly, but our crew kept it all together.  We put one foot in front of the other until we finished.

Once again, we were back to smiling once we reached the car.

This is our "And what?" pose after four days of tramping.  We're so badass.  

The great thing about this experience is that we saw parts of New Zealand that so few people get to see - most people don't think to hike off track where we had been (for good reason, I suppose, but those views were pretty darn awesome!).  There's something special about that.  So, no hard feelings.  We all knew going into the trip that no one in the group had been in this area before and we were in it together.  It makes me smile that the four of us pushed on and accomplished what we set out to do.  

With that said, I'm determined to make my next vacation destination as sandfly free as possible.  Maybe Antarctica?!!

Hopeless Ridge Part III - a.k.a. the trip to Lake Monowai 2013

Our 6 mile hike into Rodger Inlet Hut was just a warm up for the rest of the trip.  Ah, yes... our second day of walking was quite eventful!  We left the comforts of Rodger Inlet Hut to head up to the bushline (roughly 4 hours of walking).

There were sandflies everywhere!

Lake Monowai - with some snowy mountains in the distance

It was obvious to us that no one had been on the route to the bushline in quite some time.  The giveaway was downed trees along the route that were supposed to mark the track, but looked like they had been down for a while, and the track markers hadn't been replaced on different trees.  At one point, the trail disappeared abruptly and we spent a considerable amount of time fanning out trying to find the next tree on the trail with the orange marker.  Our maps told us that, basically, we just had to head up the mountain and that we did; eventually, finding the trail again.

The crew checking the maps.  Lake Monowai in the background.

The trees gave way to a breathtaking view.  At this point, it got much easier to navigate.  It didn't get any easier to climb, however!

Photo credit Chris Niebuhr

But, my God, the effort was worth it!  The views at the top were spectacular!  

I don't care that it's cold, snowy, and windy, or that the climbs can be long and grueling... I love being in the mountains!  

Photo credit Daniel Bilson

Photo credit Daniel Bilson

Eventually, we needed to walk down to the lake and end up at Monowai Hut on the far right side (can't be seen in this photo above).  The original plan involved walking along this mountain in the picture below (sort of like a tramper's highway) and then cutting down to the hut.  We were expecting this to be (very) roughly a 20+k day (over 12 miles).  

But, the plan changed and we went a different way.  Cutting diagonally became the new plan.  This proved to be more challenging than originally expected.  The mountain range is clearly very steep.  What we couldn't foresee was the number of fallen trees we had to climb over or under or go around... or the number of times we'd get stuck in the given space between two trees or a fallen tree and the ground because we'd forget we're a wider load with packs on... or the number of streams we'd have to cross (balancing across logs requires greater concentration when one's legs have turned to jelly after so much walking).

We tried following streams down to the lake twice to speed up the process of getting to the lake.  The second time was a vain attempt to get to the hut before the sun went down.  

I made a few poor decisions that made the day more challenging: choosing not to wear a raincoat or waterproof pants, deliberately walking through the stream, and not pulling the rain guard over my pack.  So, I was starting to get cold from my drenched boots and the water that my shirt and pants had absorbed from rain knocked off of trees that I grabbed to catch my falls.  Plus, I was starting to struggle with the added weight to my pack from absorbed water from shaken trees.  On top of that,  I had used a lot of upper body strength to pull myself up some of the steep sections of terrain that we crossed earlier in the day.

My body ached all over in no time.

We held out hope that we'd make it to the hut (which meant we'd have a dry place to warm up, make dinner and go to sleep).  But, we were losing daylight and so the decision was made to find a place to pitch the tents.

But... we were stuck.

The stream turned into a waterfall that we couldn't go down and we had jumped from a higher point to get to where we stood.  Going back the way we came from seemed impossible because the banks surrounding us were wet and too steep to climb up and the plants growing along the banks couldn't hold our weight plus the weight of the packs.

And then I started shivering... just a little at first... I was only a wee bit chilly... but, eventually it got to the point where I was visibly shaking and my thoughts were slowing down.  Hello, hypothermia.  

D'oh!

Chris managed to push Daniel back up to the point that we had jumped down from and then we handed our packs up to Daniel.  Next, poor Chris had to push and poor Daniel had to pull each of us gals up.  Then, we got Chris up.  The boys left to go find a spot to pitch the tents.  Johanna helped me pull the wet clothes off and put dry clothes on.  What a relief!  Almost instantly I was getting warmer!

The boys found a spot to put the tents and so we trudged up to the campsite.  Chris carried my pack for me because I was exhausted.  

After the tents got set up, I crawled into my sleeping bag to speed up reheating my body.  Chris headed back to the river to get more water while Daniel used what we had to make hot drinks.  Yay!  

I recovered and assumed sleep would come easy.  I was wrong.  The tents were pitched on a slight slope.  So, we'd push against the tent bottom with our feet to stretch the legs for a bit and then slid to the bottom of the tent to rest uncomfortably in the fetal position.

My knees ached so bad from being bent!  My toenails throbbed from being in boots all day!  All I wanted to do was SLEEP!  

The next morning we woke up and tried to wrap our minds around how epic our trip had been - and it wasn't over yet! We still had two days of walking ahead of us!

After some coffee, we packed up camp.  The group had a renewed drive to reach Monowai Hut and we were hellbent on getting there before lunchtime.  So, once again we were on our merry way.

Hopeless Ridge Part II - a.k.a. the trip to Lake Monowai 2013

Whoa, nelly. I've finally started returning to normal - that tramping mission was killer!

Well, there isn't an official "Hopeless Ridge" sitting high above Lake Monowai, but there's good reason that Daniel, Chris, Johanna and I gave it such a name (in fact, we called this particular section of Fiordland a lot of things like, "Helpless Ridge," "Glimmer of Hope Ridge," and various other names that capture our feelings of defeat, hope, and In your face Mother Nature! You didn't get the best of us this time!)

So, I bet you're wondering what all this drama is about?

Basically, we dealt with minor nuisances from the start.  On January 1st, we drove for about four hours (with a hiking pack between my legs in the front passengers side of the car and a pack between Jo and Chris in the back) from Dunedin to the Lake Monowai carpark to camp at the head of the trail for the night.  We put up tents in a light rainfall, got our first taste of sandflies (literally - Daniel swallowed one accidentally!), and experienced the most stinky longdrops in New Zealand (thankfully, my friends from Broome County Office for Aging had given me a fantastic going away present - a turtleneck to wear while running.  I wore it on this trip and it was perfect for covering my nose to block the stench in the toilet!).

The sandflies at the campsite were out for blood, so we took refuge in the car until bedtime.  Much to our dismay there were about 30 little buggers flying around.  We got straight to work squashing them.  The trick was to attack them one by one with our pointer finger because pounding them against the window with a fist was less efficient and just caused our hands to hurt.

Once the pests were dead, we played Hangman on the condensation of the car window.  Everyone took a turn picking a tramping themed word.  You wouldn't believe how hard it was for two Americans and one kiwi to guess the Canadian chick's word "toque"!

Here's a clip of us guessing Chris' word:

After an exhilarating round of Hangman, we turned to asking each other the trivia question on the bottom of the the bottle caps off of our Tui beer bottles.  Oddly enough, two bottle caps had "ABBA" as the answer to completely different trivia questions.

And this concludes the first night.

The next day we set out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to make our way to Rodger Inlet to spend a night in the Rodger Inlet Hut.  Little did we know that the 6 mile (over 6 hours) hike in would be cheesy easy compared to the days that would follow!

Hopeless Ridge Part I - a.k.a. the trip to Lake Monowai 2013

Welp, the trip to Lake Monowai kicked my ass.  I'm still mentally and physically exhausted after two days of rest.  Our group of four battled wind, rain, snow, sandflies, blisters, scratches, scrapes, bumps, bruises, falls into rivers, slips in muck and even a night sleeping on the side of a mountain.  I had my own personal issues like hamstring tendonitis at the outset, hypothermia and a little issue with dehydration.

Anything I write beyond that description will only sound exaggerated (as if it doesn't already!).  So, until I can figure out how to sum up the experience, I'll leave you with a picture - this one is definitely worth a thousand words.