winter tramping

This is the tale of a hike that did not go according to plan - but then again, I've started many a blog with this same formula: the plan was X, but because of Y, we ended up doing Z. In this particular case, plan X was to drive up into the mountains with our friends Ann-Kristin and Josh on Wednesday afternoon and hike the Lake Man route, a loop that would take us up the Doubtful River (top of the image below), across the Doubtful Range, and down the Hope River as it swings east to arrive back at our entrance point by Saturday evening. It was going to be a strong jolt back into the backpacking lifestyle after 9 sedentary months in the city, but we were keen for a little adventure as Ann flies back home to Berlin this week to start her university studies and we'd been talking about doing a good tramp together for months.

Within the first half hour we knew that our plans would have to change, as the car that we were planning to take suddenly lost its power steering and the car that we did take got a flat tire before we even got out of Christchurch. So instead of beginning our hike on Day 1, we camped at a free site by the side of the highway and cooked our dinner outside in the rain on our small stove. While Bryan and I believe in travelling as light as possible, Josh's mentality is to bring as much as can possibly be carried, which was to our benefit when he pulled out a block of butter in which to fry two massive rump steaks, accompanied by peas and mashed potatoes.

The new plan was to leave early on Day 2 and make up the two lost hours from Day 1...but of course that was not to be. The beginning of our hike involved a crossing of the Boyle River where there is no bridge, which may have been a simple task were it late summer, but with all the snowmelt of early spring as well as days of heavy rain in the region, there was no way a sane human could be convinced to attempt that feat. So instead we drove down to the carpark at what was supposed to be the end of our trip, an hour's walk downriver, to the only swingbridge in the area. Our topo maps indicated a rough track that would lead us back up to the Doubtful Valley, but we soon lost the path and found ourselves enclosed by fences that were most definitely not on the maps. Two hours into our wandering we gave up and decided to start hiking the loop backwards, hoping to reach the 20-bunk Hope Kiwi Hut (#1 on the map) by sunset. The going was much easier once this decision was made, though the sun never emerged from the drizzling clouds and the mud often reached over the tops of our gaiters, and we made decent time making our way up to the head of the valley. We were rewarded at the end of our 9-hour day with the sight that we most wanted to see: a spacious, clean, and (most of all) empty hut with a stack of firewood resting by the stove. We hung up our wet gear, unrolled our sleeping bags in one of the two spacious bunkrooms, and heated up a pot of water for the first round of hot chocolate. I think most of us had already given up on the Lake Man route by this time, secretly planning a short day hike down to Lake Sumner or thereabouts for Day 3, but none of us wanted to vocalize this complete deterioration of The Plan quite yet.

On Day 3, having been awoken many times in the night by the rain pounding down on the roof and windows, none of us displayed any eagerness to leave the hut. We officially postponed a decision until lunchtime (clearly already much too late if we were going to do any hiking), at which point we unanimously voted to drag our sleeping bags next to the fire and spend the day reading and playing card games. Bryan and I pulled on our hiking boots in the late afternoon for a five-minute walk along the grassy flat just outside the hut, more to be able to say that we went outside than from an actual desire to do so. During those short minutes the rain turned into sleet, and by the time we were seated comfortably next to the fire again a layer of snow was visibly settling on the fenceposts just outside the window. Living next to the sea at an elevation of about 30m, we've had to adjust to the disappointment of a snowless winter and were therefore so excited by this weather development that we all headed outside to build a snowman and have a snowball fight as the last glow of daylight faded away.

On the last day, then, there was nothing left to do but to head back out the way we came: across the short field of grassy hillocks, along the long river flat crisscrossed with cow and rabbit tracks, and up and down through the muddy forest roughly following the river's curves. It's difficult to get excited about a hike that you've already done, so we made excellent time in our haste to get back home to change into dry clothes and crank up the heatpump. Roughly halfway back to the car we stopped at the Hope Halfway Hut, a basic 6-bunk hut where some freeze-dried food had been left by hikers before us. On the way in, two days earlier, Bryan had taken one of the two packages of Cocoa Rice Balls with Fruit Salad, which subsequently proved terrible enough to warrant being dumped into the long-drop toilet, and despite much prodding from the rest of the group he was not tempted to take the second package with him on the way out.

Looking back, I'm not at all disappointed that plan X turned into plan Z. It's as if we took a retreat together (at a very remote retreat center), and I wonder if that wasn't what I needed more than just an active adventure. Through months of tramping and months of fruitless job searching, I'm getting used to my plan not working out. Sometimes the alternative is better and sometimes it's worse, but I'm trying to learn to take it as it is and emerge intact on the other end.

-Rachel

moving church

While Bryan and I have still not been affected by Saturday's earthquake in regards to our own home, our church is a different story. We met in the auditorium as usual on Sunday, but as chunks of plaster began falling off the walls we grew concerned about safety and decided to move this weekend's service to our smaller (and much rattier) youth hall. The wisdom of this decision was confirmed by a structural engineer who issued us with one of the yellow certificates that we've seen around the city, meaning that the building is to be entered with caution and only by those people who have legitimate business being there. We were thankful that the damage extended only to the auditorium, which is technically a separate building from our office area though they have a long wall in common. This morning, after a series of particularly strong aftershocks, as Bryan was in the office particularly early on a phone call to the U.S., he heard the familiar sound of a collapsing building and rushed to the door in time to see the ceiling open over our senior pastor's office and a load of bricks and debris landing solidly on his (very expensive) desk. So much for the office area being safer.

And so this is why, on our cherished and much-too-rare days off, we will be moving everything from both the auditorium and the offices over to the youth hall. This complicates everything, but as it could be months before we have a usable auditorium and office area again, we have to plan for it being a fairly long-term solution. We've already spent the morning cleaning out the youth hall, moving furniture, trying to spruce up the grungy upstairs area that was just recently vacated by a Korean church, and brainstorming to identify the most efficient and effective solutions to our new problems. It's an irritating job, but it's all necessary and there's a sense of community about it as well. Hopefully at the end of this process we'll emerge with more creativity, commitment, and momentum than ever before - if not, I don't know how we'll handle the next few months. More later.

-Rachel

earthquake!

On Saturday morning we woke up just before 5 am to the undulations of our first earthquake - always glad to add something new to our list of New Zealand experiences! We knew about the major fault line that bisects the entire country, so while we hadn't found ourselves in an earthquake here before, it wasn't surprising to us that it was occurring. As there was no damage to our home, save for a few items that fell off of shelves and out of the cupboards, we considered it to be a quite minor quake, and only realized its extent hours later. There wasn't a word about the earthquake on TV (too early for the news) so, not being able to sleep, we walked downtown for an early breakfast and encountered firsthand the piles of rubble where the entrance to the bagel shop used to be. The central city area has the most dramatic damage, as it contains the oldest and therefore most fragile buildings, and about 25 square blocks of the city were roped off later in the day and have been patrolled by city police ever since.

We had planned to go on a nice long day-hike with friends to a forest park an hour or so south of here, but unfortunately had to give up that plan because local authorities were encouraging people to stay off of the roads. Later it became clear that the roads we would have taken were clear after all, but a part of us probably wanted an excuse to be rubberneckers, to remember this one dramatic moment in history before it would be cleaned up for the upcoming tourist season. So the four of us got together for lunch (and afternoon tea, and dinner, and dessert) and wandered around in the warm sunshine of early spring, appreciating the curious little mud mountains that bubbled up in parks and lawns, which I understand to be silt from the nearby Avon that forced itself up through the soil. Though it was a beautiful Saturday morning, almost no shops or restaurants were open, so the few places that did manage to serve customers were busy non-stop. A friend of mine manages a KFC which was, to her dismay, open. She did not have a pleasant day. After a long afternoon of walking I attempted to drag the boys into some sort of intensely girly shop (I believe it's called Truly Scrumptious) that advertised cold drinks, but in desperation they found a coffee shop secretly open down the street. 

I'm amused by the news reports that are coming out about the quake, some of which are just blatantly wrong. We all laughed about someone's dramatic statement on TV this morning that "20% of residences are uninhabitable". While there certainly are some homes that fall into this category, the vast majority of them are either completely fine or report something minor, like the common loss of a chimney. We had lunch this afternoon with a friend's family on the south side of the city and would never have known there was an earthquake there had we not experienced it. I think the big surprise was that the magnitude was as large as it was (a 7.1, downgraded from the 7.4 originally reported) and that it originated so close to the city (40ish kms west, coming down from the low hills and plains to our lovely coastal city). It was hard not to chuckle at a woman who appeared on TV in the morning, having obviously been interviewed before anything was known about the earthquake's originating point, who declared with wide, panicked eyes that she was heading for the hills to avoid the tsunami.

More later - the camera's acting up, so unfortunately I can't upload any of my pictures yet. The picture above is from stuff.co.nz and was taken at the school that I worked at the week before last.

-Rachel