What goes up...

Day 2 in Mount Aspiring started with an idyllic walk along the Matukituki river valley through meadows and woodland flanked by a frankly ludicrous number of waterfalls, underneath the snow capped tops. Refreshment was easy, as all the water in the streams woke up this morning as part of a glacier.

As it was early and sun had just come over the mountains, the dew was practically boiling off the fields which made for a stunning mystical scene (see Hannah's cool photo below).

After about 4km we reached the start of the climb up to Liverpool Hut, which was to be the day's destination for lunch.

We had read in the guidebooks that of the three climbs (that don't involve ice axes)  this was the easiest - in that no one is regularly killed on it. We knew that the climb was going to be steep, as the start of the climb is only 700m (horizontally) away from the hut, but is 600m lower.

The 'path' started as it meant to go on with a 30-60 degree slope, that was only manageable using tree roots. This is not a path to do in the rain! Luckily for us, the day was beautiful, and the roots were all nice and dry, and hence, not too slippy.

2 hours later, we had managed to make it to the hut, where we stopped for lunch.

Dave had to check whether the loo, which was perched right on the edge of the cliff, was a loo with a view... Unfortunately it was not!

This hut is quite modern, but the original hut was built by either hauling materials up the crazy hill, or dropping wood (with no parachute) from a bi-plane!

As we descended, we were serenaded by a friendly robin, (though here they are black and white, instead of brown with a red breast) . Then a second robin arrived, and started a robin fight, so we moved on before we got dragged into it.

We then walked back through the valley, which was just as beautiful, if slightly less serene on account of sore feet, and general exhaustion. Only had to backtrack a little bit to retrieve some poles that Dave left by the river!

Dinner was a well deserved rehydrated curry, which tasted better than it looked.

Just when we thought the day was over, three middle-aged Taiwanese people arrived at the hut, after arriving late at the car park, and walking the 10k to the hut, starting at sunset, and arriving at 11pm in the pitch dark.

Though this woke us up, it did mean that we went out and looked at the amazing starscape! The Milky Way jumped right our at you, and the Magellanic Clouds were clearly visible, and much larger than I was expecting!

"Fox is wet...

Really wet. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly wet it is. I mean, you might think that you'll get wet walking down the street to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to Fox!"

That was pretty much the scene that we woke up to. The heli hike guide from yesterday wasn't exaggerating when he said that it rains round here.

So we left Fox and headed down to Wanaka, picking up a rather soggy Dutch girl along the way (who also wanted to go to Wanaka).

We drove past a bunch of cliffs along the side of the road that weren't so much covered in waterfalls, but WERE waterfalls. The entire cliff was depositing water down into the drains on the side of the road (which were coping admirably).

After a while, the rain stopped, and the sun came out, and we were able to go back to stopping every 2 miles to take photos.

Another one for Chris

Parked next to this in the Fox car park. It had UK plates and was doing a month tour of NZ.

The Fox Glacier

Due to the recession of (all of) the New Zealand glaciers, you can no longer walk onto the Fox glacier (the rapid recession has caused the terminal face to be too unstable). Also the walk to the terminal face is much longer than it was 20 years ago. This walk was actually fairly unpleasant, being crowded with bus-loads of tourists (apologies for the hypocrisy here!), being buzzed by helicopters ferrying the lucky few up onto the glacier, and finishing with a fairly anticlimactical view of a (dirty) wall of ice in the distance.

So for this reason (and because helicopters are awesome), we bought our tickets for a guided heli-hike on the ice! :D

The contrast with the somewhat lacking experience described above made it well worth the ticket cost.. And did I mention that you got to go in a helicopter? (twice!) 

Apparently they get 290 wet days a year on the glacier, so we were lucky to get glorious sunshine for at least part of the ice-walk. So we didn't mind too much that the clouds decended later on. The guide assured us that if the weather turned too bad for the helicopters to ferry us back to the village, we would have to sleep up on the ice, but not to worry, as the emergency supplies contained lots of whiskey! (he seemed oddly hopeful for a storm).

Anyway, enough rambling, check out the photos. :-)

Beer in Fox

Picture the Cook Saddle Bar and Grill. Saloon style bar, County music playing. I look around, and can't see a stetson, but it wouldn't look out of place.

"Hi, what can I get for you folks?"

"I'd like a Monteith's Celtic Red if you have it on tap. "

"Oh, we don't have it because they don't make it any more, but we just mix the Original with the Black, and it tastes kinda the same.."

"I'll have the Original please."

A quieter day

Today just involved driving from Arthur's Pass to Fox. It's apparently a bank holiday weekend and we were warned of bad traffic. Turns out this just means you see an occasional car in the distance!

More beautiful empty roads and a stop at a tree canopy walkway. Here are a few pictures.

Avalanche Peak

Today was going to be a rest-day but the weather was too good. Beautiful sunshine but with yesterday's snow on the peaks. So we decided to climb over 1000m to the top of Avalanche Peak. Only 8.5km there and back and with much lighter bags so much easier :-)

Good fun scrambling up and then hitting the snow line. Gave us a chance to top up our water as we were running a bit low and needed enough for a cup of tea on the top!

There was an exciting Crib Goch section right at the end but it didn't seem too scary.

As you can see from the pictures, we found Middle Earth.