Cedar Flatts

So I may have thought that my first tramping escapade was unbeatable, but this past weekend’s trip to the west coast was a little more adventure than any of us could have hoped for. Since the tramping club was doing it’s annual pub crawl on Friday night, few of them were planning any one night backpacking trips for the weekend, so me, Andrew and Hayley decided we would go out on our own. At the club meeting one of the officers told us of one of his favorite trips in all of the South Island down a track called Cedar Flatts which leads to a hut and some even nicer hot springs than the ones that we visited the previous weekend. We were totally pumped to have another awesome weekend and immediately that night rented our car and convinced Brandon and Craig that they should come along with us. And after some coaxing and convincing they eventually agreed to join.  

We planned on waking up early Saturday morning and getting on the road by 8am but unfortunately things started getting hairy from the start. When we all woke up we got news from Andrew that the car battery was dead because he had left the lights on all night. So we had to wait half an hour for someone to come jump our car. So setting off an hour later than expected we were now behind schedule. Then the scenic ride which we expected to take only two hours ended up taking closer to three and a half… and Andrew unfortunately got a speeding ticket going through a small town. The ride itself was great though, interjected with bad radio signals we provided a lot of our own singing and entertainment. 

Finally we arrived at the trail start and set out on our journey. It was a beautiful, beautiful day but we were already quite behind schedule. We set off around 1:30 pm and knowing that it gets dark in New Zealand around 5:30 / 6pm we had to book it to get to the hut before dark. Thankfully we had a map with us and we felt pretty good about getting there on time. We stopped frequently at the beginning to take pictures which we would later look back on regretfully…

And then things took a turn for the worst.. About forty minutes into the hike there was a fork in the trail, one route "The Flood Route" being a completely vertical rise up, and the "Main Valley Route" which we decided to take that continue as a more flat path. Unfortunately the Main Valley Route ended up leading us to a river with no site of our next orange triangle signalling our path. We assumed (incorrectly) that if we would just follow the river upstream we might find the next triangle and so we headed up stream clambering over an annoying rocky shore for a good thirty minutes. Then we finally realized that things just didn't seem right. We checked out our map, backtracked along the shore and still couldn't figure out what was going on. Finally we realized that we should have actually taken the Flood Route and we all trudged back to find it again. Now we had lost at least another hour with this ordeal but once we were finally on the flood route we figured we would be fine and so we marched on with high spirits. 

The Main Valley Route that we spent way too long walking off track on...

And we walked on, and on, and on..... and every time we would stop for water we would hypothesize that we really must be getting close now. And then it got darker, and darker, and darker .... (we saw an actual Kiwi in the wild!) and darker... and darker...And then we started getting a little worried. Andrew and Brandon whipped out their head lamps and the rest of us resorted to using the flash lights that were on our phones (NZ phones are thankfully equipped with those). So now it's 6pm, it's dark, we think we're on the right track and it's getting cold fast. Our spirits are still pretty high as we're trying not to worry one another but each us are personally praying that the hut shows up soon. We also have to hike much slower since we can't see and much of the path is covered in roots and slippery, mossy rocks. 

Finally we think we see a light far ahead on the dark and hope that it is our hut. Unfortunately as soon as we see this light we come out to another rocky river shore and we can't see anything past a few feet in front of us. Our trail ends here with no orange triangles in sight and we have absolutely no idea where we are supposed to go. The hut seems so close (if the light we see is indeed from the hut) and we do not know if we are supposed to cross the extremely wide, rushing river to get there or if we missed some turn off the path, or if the trail continues further up or down stream. Basically, we are lost and confused and starting to get super cold. The guys leave me and Hayley next to the last trail marker and head out in different directions in an attempt to find a way out of this mess...

They are gone for close to half an hour and Hayley and I are reprimanding ourselves for being stupid enough not to bring any tents in our assumption that we would find the hut...

Finally the  boys come back, and thank god they are bringing good news. They were about to return saying that they had not found anything and that we would have to trudge back all the way to the car (which would probably take 7-8 hours in the dark) but somehow one of them shone their light on something shiny and it turned out to be an orange triangle. We were SO relieved. We headed onward to the track and then came to the sketchiest suspension bridge you could imagine. In the dark, gripping my phone flash light in between my teeth we all clambered on the bridge. As soon as the first person went we realized however that it was ridiculously shaky and so only one could go at a time, and it was a looooong bridge, so myself being at the end of the crew had to wait a good long while before I could get across. On my way across I paused for a moment and looked up. The sky was so insanely clear, and rushing water below my toes, the feeling of being so small in the middle of all these mountains... it was a great, eerie feeling but one that I will never forget. 

As soon as we stepped off the awful bridge the hut was in sight and we all fell into hugs and just extreme, utter joy that we weren't going to freeze that night. The hut, if you could call it that was one room with one set of bunk beds but we couldn't have cared less. We were inside, and alive, and warm!

 Attempting to make a fire...

Alive! And warm...

Always travel with a wine bag, or two...

There was quite a bit of sleeping bag jumping involved...

The next morning we reluctantly awoke pretty cold and realized that all of our hiking boots were absolutely frozen and still wet. We slowly packed up and head out of our humble abode into the frost covered environment outside...

The bridge was even sketchier when completely covered in frost. Nice and icy, perfect for slipping off of....

Since the night before we had been to elated to have found the hut to want to check out the hot springs we decided to find them that morning before we set out. They were not quite as big as the ones the weekend before but they were super warm, and really hard to say good bye to...

 Hanging out in the hot pools...

So warm....

On the way back the hike was great since we could actually see our surroundings and didn't have to worry about making it before dark. Our seven hour hike out turned into a four hour hike back... It was ridiculous. But now we learned our lesson about always leaving on time, and always bringing tents even when planning on staying in a hut, because you never know what the heck you are going to run into in the New Zealand bush...

 Made it back! 

The storm clouds visible as soon as we stepped out of the trees. So glad we got out in time before experiencing any of that...