March Madness

As many of you are aware, Michelle’s 30^th Bday was March 27^th. It also happened to be the same day we started another multiday tramp. Although she was quite sad not to be around family and friends on such a significant milestone, she was excited to tackle one of NZ’s best tramps. The Routeburn Track is another one of NZ’s “Great Walks” so it has been on our “to-do” list. The problem with this track, like the Rees-Dart, is that the start is miles away from the finish. It’s about a 5 hour drive from the start to the finish. Who wants to sit on a transport bus for 5 hours after they finish hiking in the mountains for 3 days? On top of that they want to charge $150 per person for the transport. Well we found another track, The Caples, which connects to the Routeburn and allows us to hike back closer to the start. The Caples track only really adds another 1.5 days to our hike too. Since this is classified as a “Great Walk”, the backcountry huts are expensive so we chose to camp out, which means we have more equipment to bring along. We knew going into to this that it was going to be a difficult tramp for us since days 1 and 2 were at least 8 hour days of hiking with our gargantuan 35lb packs on. 

It turned out that day 1 only took us 7 hrs and it really wasn’t too difficult, but we were tired at the end. What a great way to spend Michelle’s B-day. Although we were “roughing it” with dehydrated meals, we brought along a big cookie and a small bottle of wine to celebrate her 30^th.

Happy Birthday Cookie

The second day was supposed to be another long 8 hr day. We were really starting to feel it by the 5^th or 6^th hour of tramping, but we reached our destination early and decided to make another push for the next camp site. Day 2 ended up being 10 hours of hiking! OUCH!!! Our feet hurt, our backs were sore, and we were just exhausted, but it meant less hiking the following day. We made the right decision since I was really hurting by the 2^nd hour of hiking and our car was only another half hour to go.

The hike was awesome and it is up there as one of our favorites. You can guess at the things we saw and you'd probably be right; big beautiful mountains, raging rivers, cascading waterfalls, mystical forests, and other mountainous scenery. 

 

Although we’ve seen so many of these landscapes since we’ve been here, they are all so different and seem to have their own individuality. 

The second day was especially cool as we were on the mountain above the clouds, but we could still see the valley and rivers below.

What a month it has been. Since we’ve finished work it’s been nonstop adventures for us; the Rees-Dart, Catlins, Dunedin, Rail trail, and the Routeburn-Caples. And the excitement keeps building since Jessica and Scott will be here March 31^st. We have an amazing trip planned for them and are squeezing in as much as we can in the 2 weeks there here. We are looking forward to their arrival and feel really fortunate to be able to share our experiences here with other great friends. 

If you would like to see more pictures from our tramp click on the following link:

https://picasaweb.google.com/115853505113135701754/RouteburnCaplesTrack03