Given the opportunity to spend two days in the wilderness with the Yr 12 outdoor Ed class or do my regular teaching job, I choose to brave the outdoors. This adventure took place a couple of weeks back now (been a while in updating the blog).
So I arrived at school with pack on a Thursday morning and was told I was to be driving one of the minibuses. This was not previously advertised, but not particularly worrying. I had walked to school, and was told the hire place was only 5 minutes walk away so I choose to continuing walking, sans pack, instead of getting a lift down. Unfortunately 5 minutes walk was actually 20 minutes at a fast pace (the unfortunateness will become more clear...)
Upon arriving at the bus hire place I was somewhat bemused to realise that I didn't in fact have my wallet, and therefore my licence with me. No problem, I'll ring the school, get them to send someone down. But no, the school office doesn't open to 8.30 and it's still only around 8.05. So after a long walk back to school and then a subsequent lift back to the hire place I picked up a vehicle that was somewhere between a large van and a small-mini-bus.
After all this misadventure we finally headed about 50 minutes north east towards Arthur’s pass. Asides from the kids drawing penises on fogged up windows in the bus and generally mocking the poor bastards that got stuck behind us on the road, the were, well, generally badly behaved on the trip up. The joys of driving a school bus.
The track we were walking was through the Taramakau valley, onto Lake Kaurapatka and then finally through to some hot springs located on the Otehake River:
View Larger Map
The trip was supposed to take 4-5 hours, but took us 7 (the joys of moving in large group!) After passing Lake Kaurapataka we climbed to a short saddle and came upon a track junction. The plan here was to take the flood route down the valley so the students could see what a med-hard track was like as opposed to the easy-med track we had walked on to that point. This section of the track was only 500m but took us about an hour and a half. The track was generally no wider than a foot and often covered with tree fall. It was also very exposed - we were walking about 100 vertical metres above the valley floor, on a slope that dropped off on a rather abrupt angle. A slip of the track probably would've resulted in slipping/falling/rolling a fair way down the valley, along with serious injury. No pictures of this section unfortunately as the camera had to go into my pack so I had both hands to grab roots, trees and what ever else on the track that would aid balance! Eventually we made it through this section and down to the valley floor where we had a relatively easy 1km of travel up the river bed, including quite a few (shallow) river crossings before reaching the campsite and the hot springs.
Rain started on cue around 1.00am, but to our pleasant surprise we woke at 7.00am to find the river had not risen much (but it was still raining heavily). The decision was made to take the normal route out and not take the flood route we'd taken the day before. This involved several river crossings, the last of which was over chest deep. (probably swimming would've been easier) A final scramble/crawl for about 20 minutes up a rather steep and muddy track up the valley brought us back to the track junction on the saddle just east of the lake. From here walking was a relatively mild affair, but the track had in large parts turned to mud meaning a messy time for all (the rain continued throughout). We finally reached the Otira River again, and to some relief it had also risen only slightly and was still easily crossable. The alternative would've been another track/flood route that would've meant another 3 hours walking to a swing bridge.
Incidentally, the area had around 150mm of rain in 24 hours leading up to the Saturday morning. I imagine come Saturday the rivers were certainly no longer crossable. This has also had the annoying side effect of making it impossible to dry my boots, which were as damp as ever 48 hours later. Eventually the sun returned an now my boots are dry... but unfortunately not odorless.
View Larger Map
The trip was supposed to take 4-5 hours, but took us 7 (the joys of moving in large group!) After passing Lake Kaurapataka we climbed to a short saddle and came upon a track junction. The plan here was to take the flood route down the valley so the students could see what a med-hard track was like as opposed to the easy-med track we had walked on to that point. This section of the track was only 500m but took us about an hour and a half. The track was generally no wider than a foot and often covered with tree fall. It was also very exposed - we were walking about 100 vertical metres above the valley floor, on a slope that dropped off on a rather abrupt angle. A slip of the track probably would've resulted in slipping/falling/rolling a fair way down the valley, along with serious injury. No pictures of this section unfortunately as the camera had to go into my pack so I had both hands to grab roots, trees and what ever else on the track that would aid balance! Eventually we made it through this section and down to the valley floor where we had a relatively easy 1km of travel up the river bed, including quite a few (shallow) river crossings before reaching the campsite and the hot springs.
Some quick snaps from on route:
After we had made our camp there was some concern about the weather possibly deteriorating overnight. Out came the mountain radio (which if you've never seen one before is a rather interesting contraption). Weather forecast was for heavy falls starting around 1.00am in the morning. This caused some concern as if the river was to rise overnight we would be stuck at our camping site and forced to wait for it to return to a safe level for crossing. Apparently several people die each year in NZ attempting river crossings, so it seems to be a somewhat serious business. The decision was made to move camp downstream a few hundred metres and to the opposite bank. This gave us access to the flood route in the morning if the river was uncrossable. Given what a bitch it was getting down the flood route into the valley, no one really relished the prospect of doing it in reverse in the morning.
Rain started on cue around 1.00am, but to our pleasant surprise we woke at 7.00am to find the river had not risen much (but it was still raining heavily). The decision was made to take the normal route out and not take the flood route we'd taken the day before. This involved several river crossings, the last of which was over chest deep. (probably swimming would've been easier) A final scramble/crawl for about 20 minutes up a rather steep and muddy track up the valley brought us back to the track junction on the saddle just east of the lake. From here walking was a relatively mild affair, but the track had in large parts turned to mud meaning a messy time for all (the rain continued throughout). We finally reached the Otira River again, and to some relief it had also risen only slightly and was still easily crossable. The alternative would've been another track/flood route that would've meant another 3 hours walking to a swing bridge.
Incidentally, the area had around 150mm of rain in 24 hours leading up to the Saturday morning. I imagine come Saturday the rivers were certainly no longer crossable. This has also had the annoying side effect of making it impossible to dry my boots, which were as damp as ever 48 hours later. Eventually the sun returned an now my boots are dry... but unfortunately not odorless.
After this first successful outing I was keen for more - so out went the group email to all staff: 'what are you doing this weekend, want to come tramping with me?' I had a trip planned and all, but the silence was deafening. Maybe it's the smell of my boots, or me, or perhaps I'm just too boring for people to consider 2 days of enforced close contact. On the upside the vice principal has given me details of the West Coast Alpine Club of which his wife is president. He has also promised to hook me up with a couple of keen outdoors people out of school so perhaps I will have more trips soon.
I also attended a staff cocktail party last weekend. Being me, I didn't drink (chose to drive so I had an escape route if things turned for the worse). I left just after one staff member (who is a PE teacher... no further comment), who claimed they were sober, attempted (and failed) to walk through a closed glass screen door. Result: no more door, and (luckily) a minor scratch on their hand. The damage did look like someone should have bled out on the floor, so said staff member was particularly lucky.
My last confession of this rather long-winded post: I have taken up playing netball in a mixed team on monday nights with some other staff members... Apparently in this country it's a perfectly masculine thing to do.
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