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