Day 134-135: Arrowtown, Macetown, Cowboy Camping

First, a few pictures of hitching back to Queenstown and on to Arrowtown.

Those little dots up at the top of the mountain are people parasailing down.

And an obligatory picture of a quaint little church in Arrowtown, before we started hiking.

But I know what you are all here for:  pictures of Mountains.  Am I right?

The thing to remember is that we had started this day more than 150km away, on a completely different trail.  We only arrived in Arrowtown around 4, which gave us maybe 3 hours before it got dark up in the mountains.

Which did not dim our high spirits whatsoever.  The views were still impressive, and we had managed to avoid spending a night in a hostel in Queenstown surrounded by German Teenagers.

Our shadows were getting longer, but we still had a bit of time.

That little saddle was our first goal for the day:  The high point on the right is called Big Hill.

Our second goal was Macetown--a former mining village, now completely abandoned. It's somewhere down in this valley.

And a good thing we were heading down, we were about to run out of sunlight.

So a few things about that night.  1.  Macetown doesn't really exist as a 'town'.  It's just a collection of abandoned buildings and old foundations.  Which means 2.  There's not even a hut to stay in.  So 3. Molly and I, having sent our tent back to the States, would have to camp out in the open.  Unless 4. You find this strange corrugated structure on a derelict farmstead to sleep under.  5.  Which happens to have sections just long enough for a person in a sleeping bag to fit into.  6.  Which wasn't that comfortable, really, but 7.  Your lovely wife had snuck a large bottle of hard cider to drink for dinner, which was nice.

So here's our camp for the night.

And molly curled up in it.

No camp is complete without a laundry line.

And finally, us, bundled up.   It was cold, so we put on every layer of clothing we had.  Our sleeping bags, on top of being old, aren't that warm.

And of course, the one night we didn't have any shelter to speak of, it froze.  The next morning, frost everywhere.  Which probably explained why we never really warmed up that night.   But we did survive, and were well set up for the next few days of hiking, which turned out to be some of the best we had in New Zealand.

Days 132-134 :Green Stone Track

Just east of the Milford Sound, right on the East/West divide of the island, is a trail head for quite a few amazing hikes.  One is a Great Walk, called the Routeburn.  We had hiked part of this with Molly's parents before.  You can also reach the Greenstone Track--it's almost as gorgeous, but wouldn't cost us $100 each to just camp on it.  We were going to take advantage of our back country hut passes, and stay in what we were told were very nice back country huts.  (Which turned out to be true.) 

Only a few kilometers up from the trail head (appropriately called "The Divide"), our first of many good view from this hike.

This is the Hollyford Valley.  There is a long (6-10 day) hike down to the coast using this valley.  Had we more time, we would have done it.  It's evidently one of the more rainy and muddy tracks, but the views were supposedly amazing.

The wood in huts must come from somewhere.  In this case, a fallen tree that was easily a couple meters in diameter.

Nope, not majestic at all.  Particularly on this track, we expected to see hobbits around every corner.

The first hut (see below) had a meat safe.  What's a meat safe?  I have no idea.  I assume it's for hunters, but didn't quite have the gumption to check it out.

The McKellar Hut, where we stayed our first night.  That evening, it stormed.  Easily 80km winds, and a lot of rain.

To the point where rocky mountain sides were sprouting waterfalls everywhere.

We expected that we would have to spend the entire next day in the hut, waiting out the rain, but by noon...

It had cleared!

Actually, it was an amazing day.

We spent the next day hiking with a couple Americans, Peter and Emily.  They were spending a month in New Zealand, hiking around and such.  It was also an opportunity for Peter to have proposed to Emily, so they, like us, were in pretty high spirits.  They were great company; both worked in environmental jobs in the Mountain West, so we learned quite a bit from them about a lot of the places we had biked through the previous year.

The long container on Emily's pack is her fly rod.  She's an avid fly fisher, but even though she had taken the time to get all of the permits she thought she needed to fish on this particular river, no one bothered to tell her there was a seasonal restriction, and only on the section of the river we were hiking.  Emily, I hope you found a great place to cast your line before you guys headed back to the States.

New Zealand never really has a lack of waterfalls up in the mountains.

One of the longer and higher swing bridges from our journey.

This is the Greenstone Hut, from our second night.  32 bunks, and a kitchen and common area.  It was pretty deluxe.  It even had flush toilets!

And great views, too.

This is out towards the end of the trail.

Common practice:  Leave your shoes and socks on the deck of your hut to catch the last of the sun and dry out a bit.

The last touch of the sun on the mountains.

And first morning sun.

The last bit of trail to the Greenstone Hut had a bridge across a 10 meter deep gorge.  These pictures didn't come out great, but you can get a since of how much the river was up and then receded because of the rain.

 The day before:

The next morning:

  

Because we're cute, you know.

 

The only issue with hiking the Greenstone Track is the eastern trailhead.  Getting to the start was easy, The Divide is on the only road that goes to Milford Sound, so has lots of traffic.  The other end was at the end of a dirt road an hour away from the nearest paved road, which was itself another hour or more away from Queenstown.  Like many places, we suspected there would be a shuttle that could give us a ride (there was) but that it would be expensive (at $55 a person, it was).

Our luck, however, held out for the day.  After waiting for half an hour at the shelter near the end of the trail, a couple from Hamilton (just south of Auckland) ended their day hike, and took us all the way into Queenstown. Fantastic.

Except now we were in Queenstown.  Perhaps the only place in New Zealand we actively disliked.  One quick discussion and a visit to a grocery store to restock, and we were off again, hitching to Arrowtown to hike over the Crown Range on the Motatapu Range.  It was late, and promised to get dark, but we had good luck again, were picked up immediately, and we had just enough time.  But that's for the next post.