Climb every mountain

Margaret Smith, winner of the Get Up & Go Magazine Award for Australia’s most adventurous traveller is building on her reputation. Recently she climbed mountains, crossed rivers and walked through valleys in an intrepid area of New Zealand. Here she tells that it’s ‘business as usual’.

Our 2007 trip to New Zealand was planned for late January and early February while our annual Department of Conservation Hut pass were still current. We kept our group to four people, allowing us to hire vehicle and get accommodation at YHA’s when not on the track. We allowed three weeks and our plan was to return to three main tracks that we had done 11 months earlier and hopefully do these again in fine weather. 

We landed in Christchurch and picked up a car before heading into the city to pick up our supplies. We then headed north towards St Arnaud, the setting off point to the Nelson Lakes National Park. This took two days and included a detour into Hammer Springs, a thermal region with hot pools. (It costs about $10.00 for seniors to get into these pools.)

Fog covered the base of Mt Roberts on our first day on the track but we were able to see the top of the ridgeline across Lake Rotoroa from our backpacker’s digs in St Arnaud. We headed for Mt Roberts car park where we left our rented car and headed up the Roberts ridge track.

This track zigzag's up the steep lower section of the mountain to the end of the tree line. The fog was thick and there were no views.  As we broke out of the tree line we looked out across an ocean of fog to the distant mountains to the north. The ridgeline above us was clear. We spent that day climbing and admiring the views as the fog slowly disappeared from the valleys. 

Robert’s ridge rises up between the Travis and Sabine River valleys. The end goal for this climb is the Hut at Lake Angelus.  Late afternoon we came to the top of the ridge where we looked down on beautiful Lake Angelus with the D.O.C. Hut on the shore of the lake. We sat there breathing in the beauty for half an hour before descending to the lake and the hut.  Having achieved the first of our three objectives we had an easy day at Angelus Hut and then set off on objective two, the Travis Saddle.

Up early and left Lake Angelus heading down the Cascade track.  Again we set off in a foggy mist that cleared as we started our descent. The first section of the track was steep. We could see the cascade waterfall dropping down into the valley. After crossing this watercourse we entered the trees and followed this stream through to the Travis River. The mosses in this area were exquisite and small cascades led us down to meet the main river. We went south and spent the night at the John Tait Hut.

The next morning we continued on to the Upper Travis Hut and our accommodation for that night. We arrived in time to complete the climb to the Travis Saddle that afternoon where we spent several hours exploring and playing in the end of season snow before returning to the hut. 

The next morning the weather was perfect so it was decided to return to the Saddle before returning down the valley to the John Tait Hut for the night. With our second objective achieved we returned to our vehicle and headed north to Motueka for an assault on a new area known as Mt Arthur in the Kahurangi National Park.

From Motueka we drove to Mt Flora Car Park, 900 metres above sea level. We left the cat and followed the trail to Flora hut, Gridiron Rock Shelter, Growler Rock Shelter, Dry Rock Shelter and then Salisbury hut, which was our accommodation for the night.  We saw several of the large Powelliphanta Land Snails along this section of the track and we had to take care not to stand on them. Salisbury hut looks out on Mount Arthur and Gordon's Pyramid. The following day we walked across the tablelands to Balloon hut and explored some of the sinkholes and caves in the area that are limestone based.

The following day we set off back across Gordon’s Pyramid for Mt Arthur, involving several steep climbing sections and several ridgelines that the track followed. From the peak on Gordon’s Pyramid we were rewarded with 360-deg. views. When we reached the track between Mt Arthur and the Mt Arthur Hut we were hit with a blizzard. We had the gear to handle this weather, but the concern was being blown from the ridgeline by the strong wind gusts. We had two kilometres to reach the safety of the Mt Arthur hut, which we did. Next morning there was no sign of the storm and we walked out to the car and headed for Cobb Lake and our next walk to Lake Sylvester. This walk was a two-hour walk uphill to Sylvester hut, set spectacular alpine scenery. 

The following day we set out to explore the lakes in the area and climb some of the peaks before returning to the car late that afternoon.    

We travelled south to Wanaka to return to the Cascade Saddle.  Walking from Raspberry Car Park, we followed the Matukituki Valley to Aspiring Hut where we set up our base camp.

Next morning we set off for the Cascade Saddle, a steep climb of 1380 metres from the valley floor to the Pylon, which is the highest point on the climb. Sections of it have been referred to as easy rock climbing rather than hard trekking. As we broke through the tree line the fog was still restricting the view across the valley, but by the time we reached the Pylon three and a half hours after we started, the fog had cleared. From the pylon it was an hour and a half walk across the Cascade Stream to the Saddle. Once we reached the saddle, the sky was clear and we were rewarded with spectacular views of the Dart Glacier, Mt Aspiring, Mt Rob Roy and the Matukituki Valley. Several people had walked across from the Dart Hut and others had followed us up from Aspiring Hut and we all gathered on the saddle to admire nature at its best. 

The trip back down was more scary than the trip up. We had climbed the saddle twice now and this was the first time we had returned down the same track. The steep sections were harder to go down than to come up. Back at camp we celebrated our achievement with a cup of tea. We had accomplished all our goals for this trip. 

The following day we followed the Matukituki Valley further up before climbing the track to Liverpool Bivvy. The steepness of this track surprised us, as it was even steeper than the track to the Cascade Saddle. It took us two hours to climb 800 metres.  Several rocky sections gave us concerns as we climbed. It was with relief that we returned to the valley back to our camp. We had one day left before we had to return to Christchurch and our trip home.

We broke camp early that morning and took three hours to get back to our car at Raspberry Creek. We then drove to the start of the track to the East Matukituki River and set off for The Rock of Ages. We set a time to be back by 7pm that evening and pushed hard to reach our objective. We made it to Junction Flat, but time ran out and we had to turn around a kilometre short of our objective. We got back to the car at 7.30pm exhausted. A bath in the beautiful Glazier River returned some of the life to my body but we had pushed too hard that last day and I paid the price that night with aching legs and knees.

We returned home having had a successful trip; achieving our three objectives and enjoying others we set along the way.    
It was interesting to note in all areas that we walked, except the Cascade Saddle, over half the people we met on the track and in the huts were between 50 and 70 years of age. 

Our group consisted of one person 66 year’s, one 63 year’s and two of us are 62 years young. My advice to people is to ‘get up and go’.  I would like to think that my stories and pictures encourage travellers to take their own journey.

Margaret Smith