More New Zealand!

Mt. Cook is a truly beautiful mountain. Nath "fell in love" with it as we drove down it's valley and it came into view. She won't stop talking about how she wants to climb it now, so she may end up mountaineering when she gets back to San Diego....

We rolled in somewhat late, which was perfect. A fellow traveller told us about a star show at the Hermitage Hotel. There was a guy out there every night around 9pm with a 3 meter homemade telescope! We saw Saturn with its rings, and 3 moons! There were beautiful Nebulas we saw, and impressive star clusters. Truly a beautiful night out under the stars.

The next morning we woke up early and headed for the DOC office (Department of Conservation). We asked them about hikes, and I was going to attempt the easiest mountaineering route in the area (Grade 1) but weather was on its way. Instead, we did an amazing day hike up the mountains to the left of Mt. Cook for ever increasingly beautiful views of the mountain and then headed back down to the car for the next adventure!

The next leg of the journey involved difficult hiking, important route finding decisions, and the ability to perservere in the face of adversity - WINE TASTING! Yes, we hiked from the car to the door, choose good wineries most successfully, and managed to keep going after the first (and worst) place we stopped.... Central Otago is apparently perfect for Pinot Noir due to its location on the 42nd parallel. I'd definitely have to agree, although the best wine we found was a unique Reisling at a small out of the way winery which was our favorite.

Next stop - Queenstown the adventure capital of the world! You can do anything there! Rafting, bungee, skydiving, paragliding, whitewater boogie boarding, caving, cave rafting, and so much more. Due to exhorbitant prices, I picked one "adventure" - white water boogie boarding. The idea of riding a standing wave backwards was irresistable. Apparently, we picked a bad time with the amount of water running down the river, but Nath and I were still the only two in the guided group to catch the wave! Neither of us was in it for super long, but it was still fun and I can say I did it! After the standing wave, we finished the trip with some class 4 rapids. As a climber, it was overall rather tame, but fun nonetheless!

After the whitewater, we opted for some solid ground. 40km of it to be exact. We wanted to hike the Routeburn Track which is a NZ "Great Walk." It is supposed to be one of the better hikes in the world. It's 32km, with huts you can stay at and dry out along the way, but the bus ride back to the starting place takes 5 hours and costs over $100. We opted to blast the first (and best) 20 km of it in a day, then hike back out the way we came to end up back at the car. The terrain changes the entire time on the trail, from high elevation alpine, to rainforest beech groves, rivers, endless waterfalls, and, so it seems, endless rain. I believe they received a few inches of rain just on our hike in. I've never hiked in such a constant downpour, but it was fun. The trail was a creek, so I was glad I didn't bring any heavy hiking boots since they would be soaked anyways. A few times I turned to Nath and said, "I've never seen so much water!" When we got to the hut, we hung our stuff out to dry, which it didn't, and hung out and met other travellers. It was good times. On the way out, there was much less rain, and felt like a different hike altogether. Especially because we could actually see the mountains around us much better!

Once back in Queenstown, we hit "Fergburger." A constantly packed burger joint known well by the locals. They have amazing burgers with lamb, deer, beef, and more, with interesting sauces like mint chutney which turn out to be quite mouth watering. I'd definitely have to say that it's a can't miss if you're in the area.

After Queenstown, we headed south for the Milford Sound area. It's techincally not a sound, but a fijord, and it's damn beautiful. Huge mountains rising 5000' up out of the water, waterfalls everywhere, and seals lounging on the rocks. We did a short cruise through the area and once done with the touristy stuff we headed for the rocks. The area was The Darrens, the cliff was called The Chasm. It was beautiful concave granite outcrop that slowly went from slabby to massively overhung at the top with many routes up to 200+' long. What made it unique, was the fact that since it was in the Milford Sound area, which receives up to 9m of rain a year (30ft!!!!!) there is a constant stream of water falling off the top of the cliff. When it is nice weather, like we had, the water streamed off in droplets which you had to run through to get to the climbs, and it fell down behind you the whole time you were climbing, blown by the wind in different directions. It was absolutely gorgeous to climb there. Spectacular alpine settings could be seen in the distance behind the beautiful curtain of water constantly streaming down. We managed to find the cliff using the worst climbing guide I've ever seen and I promptly got lost on lead. Luckily, I had brought a set of nuts and managed to protect what I thought was a sport line and we managed to work our way over to an anchor and rappel. That was enough since the day was ending and we headed to find a place to sleep vowing to come back the next day and do a better job of knowing what was where! The next day, the climbing went much better and we successfully found the routes described in the guide and we managed to climb quite a few. They were quality mixed gear and bolted lines on beautiful featured granite. We missed out on climbing the "best" climb in NZ for a number of reasons. It's located high up in the alpine area of the Darrens, in the enormous glacier carved mountains near the Milford Sound. It's called Labrith and is a multipitch granite outing up a large alpine face. Unfortunately, I had tendonitis from our hike on the Routeburn, we didn't have the two ropes to get down, and the guide book we had didn't even have a picture of the route to follow or direction of how to get there! I was still tempted to give it a try, but with all of those factors together, it just didn't happen.... so we headed north again back through Queenstown toward another climbing area.

As we passed through Central Otago again, we stopped for more wine tasting! We tasted until we had to stop and play drunken chess and drink tea to sober up and continued on our way to Wanaka, a great little climbing area on Shist.

In Wanaka, we enjoyed beautiful weather and a very peaceful climbing location. We were there mid week, and there aren't many NZ climbers to begin with, so we had many of the crags to ourselves. Luckily though, we weren't totally along and we made a new friend along the way - Derek! He was a North Islander travelling the south island in his campervan. We enjoyed the strange edgy climbing on the shist rock sport climbing, and I managed to onsight up to 26 (5.12c) although it was probably a little soft for the grade. Nath worked on her leading trying to consolidate at the 22 (mid 5.11) range. There was a beautiful little place to camp right next to a river (at the riverside crag) that we stayed for a few days and just relaxed in the sun when not climbing. We hadn't had a lot of good weather to date, so it was quite nice there! Derek was a really cool guy, and we made plans to meet up at Araplies since he was going to be ending up there right about when we were! When we felt done with Wanaka, we jumped back in our little car and headed out...

Next stop - the west coast which combines glaciers and temperate rainforest, something found almost nowhere else in the world!