The Remarkables

March 15-17. After a day of recuperation from our 3-day hike on the Kepler Trek, we left for another 3-day hike to the Remarkables near Queenstown, New Zealand. The first day was sunny and gorgeous, and we were all hot and sweating after climbing from an elevation of 400 meters to 900 meters. After setting up camp the first night, Darren and I did a little hike/rock climb to the top of one of the ridges of the mountains. The view was spectacular but our legs were all cut up from these nasty bushes, called spaniards, with long sharp blades. Darren also managed to somehow tear a hole in his shorts - again.

The second day started off cold and by mid morning we had a light rain that increased in intensity as we hiked. We were hiking through long grasses with hidden spaniards on uneven ground with frequent hidden holes that would catch us off guard and made for slow hiking. A couple hours into the hike one of the girls in our group fell in one of the hidden holes and broke her ankle. We stopped for about an hour and sent a couple people from our group back down to the base of the hike so that they could get cell phone reception to call for a rescue team. We set up a tent and left the girl and her roommate to wait for the helicopter, but we were all super worried about them. The last part of our hike that day was up a super steep mountain of broken slate rock and was pretty challenging with our packs in the wind and rain. We set up camp at 1800 meter elevation with no protection from the wind and rain which later turned to hail then snow. The wind broke a couple tent poles and kept us up all night - worst night sleep ever. The most exciting part of the day was when the helicopter arrived to drop off the roommate of the girl who had broken her ankle and we learned that the other girl had made it safely to the hospital.

Luckily the weather had cleared in the morning but our boots were frozen from the rain and freezing temperatures and our tent was covered in frost. Many people's fuel had frozen so we had to share two stoves for boiling water amongst 20 of us. It took about an hour of hiking before our boots and toes thawed out, but the views were again spectacular and worth the aweful hike and weather the day before.

After the hike we were rewarded with fergburgers, which although I do not normally care for burgers, these were delicious. Hands down the best burger I've ever eaten. You can see in the picture that they're huge! Needless to say, Darren was in heaven.

Stewart Island

This video is from our two day trip to Stewart Island. Darren and I entered a drawing and won two ferry tickets to Stewart Island which is off the southern coast of New Zealand. Only four hundred people live on the island and most of the island is national park land. There aren't many roads, but the island is amazing for backpacking so we hiked along the eastern coast of the island and stayed in a backpacking hut that night and then hiked back to town the next morning. The hike was so beautiful and there were very hikers on the trail. The trail hugged the coastline so we had beautiful scenery and remote beaches that are only accessible by hiking trails so we stopped at some of these pristine beaches and had the entire beach to ourselves to relax and find cool shells. The second day of our trip we rented kayaks and kayaked out to Ulva Island which is a smaller island off of Stewart Island. All rodents have been removed from the island so the bird life there flourishes and we were entertained by a continuous choir of various birds during our hiking around the island. One of our favorite birds to watch and listen to was the Tui bird which is the bird in the video above.

Backing up a few weeks...we borrowed a car from one of our host family's friends the last weekend in February and drove up to the Fiordlands with a few other people from our group. We did a lot of driving and cool hikes with beautiful hikes but the primary reason for the trip was to see Milford Sound. We took a cruise through the sound that lasted about 2 1/2 hours and really got to see the fiord and the waterfalls pouring into it. We also lucked out because a pod of dolphins came up to our cruise ship and started jumping out of the water. The weather was beautiful and our cruise guide told us that they were experiencing a drought because it hadn't rained in 6 hours. The average annual rainfall of Milford Sound is 276 inches a year.

Kepler Track

March 11 to 13 was the Kepler track. Sixteen of the thirty five students signed up for the 60 kilometer hike. We hiked up hill the first day of the hike and stayed at a hut at an elevation of about 1200 meters. Near the hut was the summit of mount Luxmore and the Luxmore caves. After arriving at the hut we headed off to the caves to explore...they were so cool. You could never go caves like this in the States without a guide, but they were just open for exploration. There were beautiful stalactites and stalagmites, and we were able to explore any of the side shoots and caverns of the caves. Some of the passages were in the cave were so small that we had to crawl and some members of our group couldn't fit. Darren and I continued pretty deep into the cave for over an hour until we saw the sign in the picture below which reads "To prevent degradation of this fragile passage please remove overalls and wash boots before entering."After our caving adventure we returned to the hut for the evening and saw the most beautiful night sky we've ever seen. The stars were so bright and there were so many of them. We could have stayed out there all night if it wasn't for the freezing temperatures. In fact the next morning it snowed for the first couple hours of our hike. We hiked to mountain summits and along the saddle with the views looking down in the South Fiord. The views were spectacular.
After descending again to non-freezing elevations we camped in our tents near this waterfall. The third day of the hike was the longest - about 24 kilometers, but it was mostly flat land through forests.

Tramping in Fangorn Forest

Tramping is the New Zealand term for hiking and we've done a lot of tramping on this trip. This beautiful panoramic shot was taken after bush wacking our way for three hours up the side of a mountain. Looking down from above the tree line we could see North and South Mavora Lakes and the river that connects the two. We camped down along the river and practiced more of our white water kayaking skills. I was able to master some of the skills I'd been working on, including S turns, and I only flipped once during the two days of kayaking. Darren flipped several times, but he was attempting harder skills such as backwards S turns. It rained a lot over the three days we were there, but it was green and beautiful and we were very grateful for our rain pants and gortex hiking boots that kept us nice and dry. If you don't recognize the scenery, Darren could point out to you the place where Gandolf calls the white stallion and where Merry and Pippin escaped from the Orks into Fangorn Forest in Lord of the Rings (You can see it more clearly in the photo below - it's in those fields to the left of the lake.)