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 :)