Well, this weekend was an adventure. Our plan was to hike 2hrs to Aspiring Hut on Friday, then Saturday try to climb up to the Liverpool Hut if the snow was passable, then come back Sunday afternoon. Simple as.
However, there were 9 of us (and it wasn't even majority Americans--1 S. African/Kiwi, 3 Germans, 4 Americans, 1 Kiwi!), and we had to wait for one of them to finish their group project before we could leave on Friday. They said it should be done around 1--we got going around 2:45pm. It's a 4.5hr drive to the trail head, but is a simple hike so should be easy even in dark. Surprise! There are fords (or stream crossings) along the road and our car sits fairly low. Keep in mind it's been pouring all day (and still was), so the river is running high. We got across the first one and evaluated if it was safe to continue. The sign saying "beware, river may rise and become impassable" didn't apply to us, so we continued on. One girl who had been here before said it's only 3 ford crossings anyway. After the 7th crossing (2 of which were close), we made it to the trailhead at 9:00pm--the ideal time to begin a hike. Suited up in our rain gear, we tramped off into the darkness and should be at the hut by 11:00.
Maybe the trail is easy if it's daylight and you stay on it, but somehow we veered off. We, of course, didn't
know that because it was dark. Our route, the more adventurous one, included walking through the river about 10 times, in some areas that were nearly knee-deep. So, our legs and feet were drenched from that and our upper halves were drenched from the relentless rain. At 12:30am, we made it to the hut! There was a wood stove and dry wood, so we lit a fire, hung our wet stuff, talked a little bit, and went to bed.
After waking up, and seeing it was still raining, we had to decide our plan for the day. No one was really interested in going to the higher hut since most of our stuff was still wet. We also were worried that if the rain continued (it was supposed to die off Saturday night and rain hard Sunday) the stream crossings would be challenging to walk through and drive through. So, we decided to walk back and head home to be safe. Interestingly, when you stay on the trail, it was in fact easy, and there are bridges to cross the stream (one was maybe 20m from where we crossed, but was too dark to see it). The skies finally cleared a bit to see the beautiful mountains surrounding the valley we were in. Some people jumped in the river, then we continued on. We decided to try to take pictures with a sheep, so we actually cornered one and tackled him to get some pictures. Relatively easily, we made it back to the car with no problem and saw that our wrong turn the night before was maybe 200m into the tramp.
Now, we took a rental car and some other people's car (named "Russell") on this trip--not my car because the others took it elsewhere. Apparently, Russell has been nothing, but trouble. After getting through all 7 fords, and driving about 5 minutes more on a dirt road in the middle of no where, Russell shut off. They weren't sure why, but apparently this is common, so they let it sit for a minute, then restarted it. No more then 2 minutes later, the hazards came on again, and off went Russell. This time, he was apparently making noise. He was bone dry on oil, but luckily they noticed before it destroyed the engine. So, we were to take the rental car to town (about 30min each way) to pick up oil, but a few minutes in we passed a farm, so I went up to the house and met an extremely friendly farmer who gave us oil. So, we started up again. About 3 minutes later, Russell stopped again. This time, the engine oil temp gauge was going through the roof. For some reason, the coolant was flowing into the radiator. We were right outside the same farmer's house now, and he came out and helped and we got the radiator cooled off eventually. In the mean time, we checked the transmission fluid--bone dry. However, after all this, we made it back to Dunedin, trouble-free around 11pm with a great story to share (and a free Sunday, which I will spend playing rugby on the beach)! Captions: Aspiring range (2), NZ's wildlife!, Rob Roy Glacier
No comments:
Post a Comment