Arthur's Pass on steroids...

Two weekends ago Hayley kindly invited me to join her on a tramping trip back to Arthur's Pass along with a group of four kiwis. We were still somewhat spent and burnt out from the two weeks of tramping that we did over spring break but were very excited to get back into it! One of the kiwis that planned the trip was Andrew who is heavily involved with the Canterbury tramping club and found a nice and pretty easy tramp through the valleys of Arthur's Pass. We didn't set out until early Saturday morning and so we were able to enjoy the rugby game shown at Ilam Apartment Common Room the Friday night before, accompanied with free beer and pizza :)  

We arrived at the trail head quite early and were excited to get the tramping started as there were already an annoying amount of sand flies beginning to eat us. Bernard and I won for having the shittiest and oldest packs in the group...

The trail itself was mostly through the valley of the pass, but the weather was great, the company was wonderful, and the river crossings were cold and deep as usual. Nothing new :)

River crossings! woooo

The beautiful mountains of Arthur's Pass never get old :)

Once we reached our hut we spent the next hour or two searching and collecting firewood in preparation for a session of s'more making-as it is somehow not a tradition that the Kiwis know or practice. Bringing back a little bit of America to the middle of nowhere New Zealand felt good :) 

Life is amazing. 

 Best fraaaaaaan! 

 Drying soaked socks and shoes around the magnificent warmth of the fire. 

Box from wine makes a great hat :)

That night the tiny hut was full of dancing, good stories and lots of laughs and we all eventually dozed off to sleep in pure bliss and warmth. The morning after we awoke to a much larger amount of snow than we had expected..

Not having to carry out two liters worth of water is awesome. 

The hike back was quite relaxed and seemed to go by very quickly and the group was all very excited about going through cave stream-a cave that Andrew had been talking up all day and promise would be very fun. I naively thought that it would be a nice little ten minute walk in and out of a cave but little did I know what I was about to go through... It took us only about five minutes to walk from the parking lot to the beginning of the cave, and it looked pretty inviting and fun from the outside. 

But then before we knew it Andrew had jumped into the water and it went all the way up to his chest...

And this is when I started freaking out....

Then Andrea jumped in also and went up to her chest as well....

I was extremely reluctant to jump into the freezing ice melt water but before I knew it I was the only one that had not yet jumped in and so without much choice I followed everyone else in. Luckily for me, I happen to hyperventilate when I am really cold and find that my joints just lock up and I can't move. Eventually, I somehow miraculously got out of the deep, freezing water and we continued on into the cave. Although the first part was the worst cold nothing ended there. The next 40 minutes we walked through rushing, cold water in the darkness of this random cave, in the middle of Arthur's Pass. Every so often you would step in a spot where you would sink into the water up to your waist and then trip over a couple rocks until you were finally able to continue onward. We also scrambled over a couple waterfalls-good times. 

Scary...But so much fun!

The cave eventually came to an end 40 minutes later with another large water fall and then a scramble up a ladder made up metal rungs stuck into the rock of the cave. This was followed by some  body contorting in order to be able to squeeze out to the exit of the cave with some help from a sketchy hanging chain... 

Needless to say, I was pretty happy to have gotten out of there alive! When I was finally at the cave exit and in the position to look back on the cave as something in the past I remembered it all with much happiness and was super happy that Andrew had taken us on the little adventure. 

Afterwards we spent some time changing and drying our soaked bodies in the car and headed to castle hill for some intense rock scrambling and a good game of hide and seek. Castle hill is officially the best playground ever made. Thanks mother nature!

So happy :)

Spring Break Part 4 - Hanmer Springs

Once we were on the way to Hanmer Springs we were all beginning to reach the point of exhaustion and dirty that could only be fixed by a night of sleep in an actual bed and a nice, warm shower. We decided that even though we still had two days left with our car we would leave the next day after climbing Mt. Isobel to head back to Ilam, and for our last day we would just make a day trip to check out Akaroa. That night at Hanmer there was a light rain but we were determined to make a fire due to our boredom of playing cards for three hours every night. And we succeeded! We had to be careful though since fires are illegal in New Zealand—so if anyone asks we were never there ;) We slept pretty well but woke up the next morning still tired and somewhat not looking forward to the hike, we all just wanted to get to the top and back as fast as possible. Also our tents were soaked from the rain that night so we just left them set up hoping that they would dry by the time we returned, and also hoping that no DOC personnel were going to find them and fine us for camping there… And so we were off. The hike up most of the way wasn’t too rough, but once we got closer to the summit there was a lot of snow and interspersed around the snow were these insanely annoying, super spiky bushes that we had to jump to and from in an attempt to keep from sinking into the snow. Ankles were almost twisted, curse words were creamed, and many granola bars were chowed down but eventually we got past the insanely annoying part.

Don't let my smile deceive you, it sucked really bad....

We were  initially so relieved to be done with the gnarly part but as soon as we got up on the ridge we still had soooo much further to continue climbing and the wind was brutal. I thought I was going to fall over on numerous occasions. You had to walk with your face away from the wind so that you could actually breathe normally. But we climbed on, and on, and crazy enough, the exact same Irish lady that we ran into on the way up Mt. Fyffe in Kaikoura we ran into again this time two hours south on a completely different mountain! It was absolutely crazy. We had a good laugh and then once we finally all reached the summit she took our photo again. However this time the wind was so awful that she only spent about two minutes up there and we weren't quite ready for the picture:

The wind was so strong that it whipped the wrist bracelet of the camera into the picture. 

Phil peeing from the summit, as usual...

Another summit video-woo!

The way back down was quite treacherous and unpleasant due to the increase of wind-which we didn't even think was possible, and a continuation of the ankle twisting through the bushes. But eventually we made it down. We were so relieved and happy. Though the entirety of our spring break adventures were absolutely epic and fun we were all ready to go back home and finally be clean for the first time in about twelve days. Our car was beginning to smell pretty nasty...When we finally got to Ilam we unloaded all of our stuff from the car and could not even believe how we fit all of it in our puny little vehicle. 

The shower I took that night was the best shower I have ever taken. It took a good hour to scrub all the dirt off my body and wash all the crap and leaves and sand out that were in my hair. My bed was the most comfortable thing I had ever slept in, it might as well have been a cloud from heaven....I was in paradise. 

The next day we barely got ourselves out of our beds and drove about an hour south to check out Akaroa. But the weather wasn't super great, and our legs weren't super keen so we got some fish and chips, walked around for a bit and drove on back to Ilam, home sweet home! 

Proof that we went to Akaroa--and Zak looks super happy to be our flatmate...haha. 

That's the end of my chronicle of the Spring Break adventures. New Zealand has and continues to be everything I dreamed of and more. Although it seems absolutely crazy that a bit over two months have already passed here, we have accomplished and seen so much! And I still have over three months left. No doubt the adventures will continue :) And the next trips will be with Lena Gerber--can't wait!!

Spring Break Part 3 - Kaikoura

After an awesome time in Marlborough and a day of random adventures in the rolling hills of New Zealand we were on our way to Kaikoura. The drive was somewhat windy, but we had some spectacular views as we drove right by the ocean and around every turn in the road, enormous mountain ranges would come into view and got us all more and more excited to get to our destination.

At Kaikoura!

Once we reached the little town that is Kaikoura we filled ourselves up with some awesome fish and chips, walked along the rocky beach and then headed to our official free campground. It was probably the sweetest campground yet as we met a really cool couple there that were travelling around all of New Zealand in a huge van trying to see and take in as much of New Zealand as they could. We also made sure to inform them that the next morning we were planning on summitting Mt. Fyffe in case we didn't show up back at the campsite before night fall...

The next morning came around before we knew it and we were all a little apprehensive about the hike that was ahead of us, and it didn't help that the sky was absolutely overcast and extremely creepy looking. But we marched on hoping that it would eventually clear up. Unfortunately for us the first two hours of the journey was straight up hill on a 4X4 car track which we of course had to walk up because there was no way that our car would make it up..

Flatties!! Woo. 

And up we climbed...

 Zak doing some necessary stretching and yoga on the way up, haha. 

The views started getting pretty epic pretty fast. 

Once we got to the hut we took a break and waited for the sun to come out....we ran into another group of kids from Uni who had spent the night there and confirmed our beliefs that the views from the summit were going to be great. Then we played cards, ran into an Irish woman who also hung out at the hut for a bit, and finally twenty minutes after she set off, we decided to drop any hope of the sky clearing up and we set off as well. Unfortunately the rest of the hike up to the summit was all in snow and so our feet were soaked and cold within minutes. 

 On the way up! The sky is looking pretty sketch here...

 There is the Kaikoura peninsula!

I will admit I was getting pretty nervous as we started getting closer and closer to the summit, because the wind was picking up, the sky was remaining dark and ominous, and it seemed like the summit was not getting any closer. I trusted Zak and Phil who have done a lot of mountain climbing in Colorado to let me know if things were getting hairy and if it would become necessary for us to turn around, and so I trudged on. And also seeing the Irish lady reach the summit made me want to be there even more. Finally.... we made it!! And the Irish lady took our picture :)

View from the summit! Nothing beats the exhilaration of climbing up a mountain and ending at views like this...

I was pretty happy to be on the way back down because I was still afraid of the ominous clouds but we made it back down out of the winds fury safely. The way back down was so insanely painful on the knees though that Hayley and I spent a good chunk of the descent walking backwards to keep the strain off of our poor, poor knee joints. It actually helped! When we got back to the car we all felt super happy, and super accomplished and again treated ourselves to some wonderful fish and chips :)

So Happy! LIFE IS GOOD :)

We slept super well the night after climbing Mt. Fyffe and all awoke in super good spirits. We knew we had a pretty chill day ahead of us and planned on doing the 3-5 hour coastal walk of the Kaikoura Peninsula. However Phil and Hayley decided to check out the town of Kaikoura instead so just Zak and I set out on the track. The views were amazing, and seals were absolutely everywhere!

You could get so close to the seals!!

Soon after the point of the last picture we reached a point where there were about ten seals sleeping and sun bathing and completely blocking our path to this really cool looking cave. We tried throwing rocks into the water next to the seals to scare them and make them move but alas, they refused to budge, too comfortable in their spot. 

We even accidentally hit the seal with a small rock and he didn't even twitch..

 So beautiful! 

We were pretty exhausted after the coastal walk from all the clambering up and down hills and rocks that we did and were pretty happy once we were back in our smelly car. At that point it was about day nine or ten without a shower-- going strong! Haha. And off to Hanmer Springs we went!