I am man, hear me roar!

Well first off, I wont be adding photos for a little while thanks to my nomadic lifestyle of late, but there are a fair bit of photos on flickr to check out.

I don’t want to bore you with the details of my 4-day solo tramp over the Rees-Dart track, but it was awesome and I did make it out alive The weather was awesome for the first couple days, and it was only the abundance of snowcover that prevented me from completing the Cascade Saddle side trip. It was at the head of the Dart valley that I made an unfortunate decision – I decided to do an entire days walk after I got back to the hut. Leaving the hut just before 3pm, I had a “5-7 hour” trek to reach the next hut. Even with the late sunset, I still needed to hustle. What I hadn’t counted on was (a) I would become really tired when I had treked 4 hours in the morning before starting (b) it rained the whole afternoon, gradually increasing in intensity and (c) despite the topographic map showing a gentle descent with some flat sections, the track was actually composed of a ridiculous number of descents and ascents, with some flat sections in between. By the time I got to the hut, I had zero energy, I was soaked to the core – basically I could barely walk, my only motivation was getting to the dry hut. I actually worried weather I could get hypothermia before I made it to the hut – if it had been a few degrees colder, or if had been at all windy – I probably would have. When I finally arrive at the hut, where I caught up with a couple who took a full, proper day to do the section, they were bewildered that I had arrived a day early and I asked (but kinda ordered) some hot tea to help warm up (the couple and I had the whole Dart hut to ourselves the night before, where they stayed a second night after taking a proper day to complete the side-trip). Blah, blah, blah… I was fine, returned to Dunedin to sort out some stuff, and then I went to Mt. Cook.

Mt. Cook was an awesome little stop on my way out of the South Island. I had planned to climb to Mueller hut (alt. 5,900 ft), but was discouraged by the DOC staff at the visitor’s centre, who said I needed an ice axe and crampons to reach the hut. As consolation, I did the first half of the walk up (under the snow fields), but while resting, I ran into several people who came from the hut and said I didn’t need the ice axe or crampons because the snow was so soft from summer-like heat. Taking this advice to heart, I did the tramp the next day – which was a 1000m vertical gain over 3 hours! The first 90 mins of the track was one continous staircase! But the views, once I climbed through 300m of slushy snow, were jaw-dropping. I had climbed a proper, alpine ridge! The hut itself, though raised about 6 feet from the ground, was still partially buried in snow! The hut and accompanying outhouse are quite small in this photo, but you can get an idea of the surroundings: