Te Araroa, Days 19-23: Queenstown to Wanaka

Greetings from a trailer park in the town of Wanaka, where I’m finally making myself eat the oatmeal packets I’ve been carrying for 250 miles. The distance has not made them more appealing, in case you’re curious. But aside from my oatmeal transport service, what have I been up to, you ask? WALKING, people!

Harold and I left Queenstown 5 days ago with Ellyse and Rob a day ahead of us. We figured we’d catch up with them somewhere along the Motatapu Track, the next section of the trail, which threads through arid inland mountains between Queenstown and Wanaka.

The first day’s walk was essentially the Escape From Queenstown episode: we left town on a bike path, traversed an industrial district, snuck through an alley, past a sewage plant, across a fenced-off construction site, then through a suburban subdivision, around a lake, and finally across a luxury golf resort, where a giant sign informed us that we were “welcomed customers” and then told us not to touch anything. So, customers in the sense of ontological status as opposed to actual consumer behavior? I definitely felt like someone was going to drive up on a golf cart and take a broom to us.

The day’s destination was Arrowtown, a small town at the base of the mountains. We set up camp in the local holiday park, where I beheld this incredibly classy setup:

OH but before we go any further with our primary narrative, let me backup and tell you about my night in Queenstown. This is worth it, I promise. Queenstown is a very popular holiday destination and this is the summer vacation season, so the only place I could find to stay was a spare bedroom on the outskirts of town that someone was Airbnb-ing. I booked online, checked in and went to bed, planning to let myself sleep in a bit the next morning. At 6 am, I woke up to a woman grabbing my legs and shaking me, hissing “Who are you? Who are you?!” I’d been so deeply asleep that the only words I could force out of my mouth were “I don’t know!” Turned out she’d forgotten that I was there and thought I was a home intruder. It was a lot of excitement for 6 am – if you ever have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, I recommend it.

Anyway, from Arrowtown we headed up into a region of dry grasslands and sharp rocky mountains – over the course of the next three days, the trail would take us over five summits and then finally out to the town of Wanaka. After climbing the aptly named Big Hill, we descended into the Arrow River valley, where the track wandered back and forth across the river at least 30 times before just becoming the river itself for about a mile.

After all that hill climbing and then sloshing around upstream I was ready to call it a day, and I decided to camp on the riverbank with Brad and Ink, a father and 10-year-old son hiking the TA together. Harold decided to carry on, climb the next mountain, Roses Saddle, and bunk at Roses Hut down in the valley beyond. I told him I’d be there the next morning to prod him awake. So it was pretty satisfying to arrive at the hut the next morning, shake his sleeping bag, and hiss, “Who are you???” until he got up. Delightfully, Ellyse and Rob were also at the hut and were ready to head up the trail together with us.

Later, as I trudged up and down my three mountains of the day, I had plenty of time to reflect on the almost comic level of difficulty – no switchbacks, the trail just charging straight up and down the mountainsides. I would look up and think, “Surely it doesn’t go up there?” Actually, yes. Yes it does.

I began thinking about Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s five stages of coping with loss, adjusted for the experience of dragging myself over mountain after mountain on the TA:

Stage 1, Denial – The trail does NOT go over that mountain.

Stage 2, Anger – I hate that the trail goes over that mountain. HATE.

Stage 3, Bargaining – Can I just go around it? Maybe on that 4-wheel-drive track all the way at the bottom down there?

Stage 4, Grief – It is a major tragedy that the trail is about to go up yet another mountain, and that this is where I will die.

Stage 5, Acceptance – Ok, F it. Up we go.

Suffice it to say that nobody actually died, and that we all made it to this lovely trailer park, where the following pizzas were eaten: