Te Araroa, Days 31 – 36: Twizel to the Rangitata River

Hello from the town of Geraldine, an hour’s drive south of where the Te Araroa Trail crosses the Rangitata River. Recent rains have made the river uncrossable by foot (apparently someone tried it, lost their pack in the current, and had to be evacuated) so I’ve opted for the non-drowning detour around the river and then back up to the east bank where the trail resumes. In the meantime, Geraldine is the perfect place for a rest and resupply. To anyone hiking: you need to have breakfast and coffee at the Running Duck Cafe. I shall say no more on the subject – just trust me and get your stinky butt in there!

So, let’s get in the Way Back Machine and rewind to one week ago (= eternity), when I was getting ready to depart Twizel and ended up making A Fateful Decision. The 35-mile section of the trail from Twizel to the town of Tekapo follows the Alps to Ocean cycle path, which is by turns a gravel track and a sealed asphalt cycleway across mostly flat terrain. Most TA hikers opt to either rent bicycles and ride this portion or just hitchhike and skip it entirely. I myself was feeling logistically impaired and couldn’t get my head around booking a bike, so when Harold said he was planning on walking it, I just said, “Sounds like a great idea – I’ll go with you!” Thus began a two-day experience on the uncanny Road Treadmill, via which you keep walking and still somehow feel like you’re getting absolutely nowhere. The track wound up the east bank of Lake Pukaki, another of New Zealand’s strikingly blue glacial lakes, and then turned east to follow a canal all the way to Tekapo. Partway up the first leg of the cycle trail we were buzzed by another group of northbound hikers, whose rented bikes looked tempting but not desperately so. They’re lucky we didn’t run into them 20 miles later or there probably would have been a bike-jacking incident.

We did find the perfect setting for a fight scene in the next James Bond movie, though. Check out this power plant on Lake Pukaki – actually IN the lake – featuring a supremely jarring juxtaposition of industrial infrastructure and alpine scenery. Location scouts: you can just pay us our standard commission.

After our Day 1 Road Treadmill session, we followed a gravel road a mile or two off-trail, further up the bank of Lake Pukaki, to camp along a section of the shore where “freedom camping” (i.e., unpaid and relatively unregulated camping) is permitted. We pitched our tents under a willow tree at the back of the beach, perfect lakeview and looming snow-covered Aoraki (Mt. Cook) in the distance. I sprawled out under our willow cave and stared up at the wind-written pattern in the swaying branches overhead. The next morning we had a visit from an excellent lovable border collie named Belle and had a fantastic dog-snuggle session. Ah, dogs who instantly love complete strangers for absolutely no reason – thank you!

It’s a good thing I had topped up on puppy cuddles because the day ahead was pretty challenging. Seventeen miles in the sun and wind on a treeless road along a concrete-lined canal. The hot wind made it feel like we were walking into the business end of a hairdryer all day. Finally, after 8 hours of pavement-pounding, we arrived in the town of Tekapo, which we quickly discovered was both outrageously expensive and completely without available accommodation. Tekapo wants us to know that the feeling is mutual, and we are visited with a string of misfortunes: we go to a bar to reconnoiter and are kicked out for bringing in the pizzas we’d bought (for $29 each!) from the pizza truck around the corner; we absolutely fail to find a place to stay the night – even the holiday park says they don’t have a patch of grass for our little tents; Harold leaves his trekking poles in the grocery store which closes the second we leave, and has to pound on windows to get someone’s attention and beg to be allowed to retrieve them; then Harold’s legendary pink camo hat is ripped up by the mean ol’ wind; and THEN we have to walk out of town in the quickly-darkening evening to find a place to surreptitiously camp before hiking yet another 8 miles along a road the next day. I reflect that the Tekapo experience has made me appreciate Twizel in a whole new way. (To be fair: if you want to have a boutique holiday in a charming town located in a UNESCO World Heritage site renowned for its Dark Sky Reserve observatory and hot springs, you’ll do just fine in Tekapo. If you’re a dirtbag looking for a cheap place to pitch a tent and you figure you can just lie on the ground and look at the stars for free… maybe not so much?)

At any rate, there are apparently still lessons in humility to be learned, because the next day is a bit of a doozy too. Rain and an unrelenting north wind batter us as we struggle up the eastern shore of Lake Tekapo. Harold stops to make a phone call and then just opts to wait out the weather, but I decide to continue on to the next trailhead, where I figure I can pitch my tent early and get a fresh start the next morning. I find out later that the weather is actually newsworthy – gusts between 40 and 60 miles per hour – but for the time being I’m just fighting my way up the road, listening to the long high ghost tones of the wind playing the power lines overhead. I get to the trailhead and campsite as the peppering rain decides to commence full pelting. Just in time I set up my tent and spend a cozy afternoon feeling grateful for waterproof nylon. At some point in the night, though, the wind abruptly changes direction and my little tent is blown down on top of me. I wake up in a groggy tangle, shove my stuff in my backpack, wrap the tent around me like a blanket, and crawl under some bushes to go back to sleep. Amazingly, this actually works and I sleep in ’til 7:30 am, a record for this trip! Healthy Sleep Habits, Nature, and You: A Personal Journey.

After this restorative and restful night’s sleep, I’m excited to be back on an actual trail and up into the mountains again. The sun comes out, the wind has changed its mind about trying to kill me and has become a cool and cheerful breeze, and I’m on my way up the Richmond Track through rolling savannah, and then up the Coal River to Camp Stream Hut. There’s a perfect dipping spot in the river and I stop to scrub myself down and wash my hair – I feel downright beatific as I roll up to the hut and see that I’m the first person of the day to arrive. I claim a bunk (no collapsing tents tonight, Satan!) and as I lounge outside the building with my back against the sun-warmed corrugated metal I get to say hello to all the other hikers as they come up the hill to the hut. First Bree from Australia, who I’d met back in Wanaka, then Michael from Switzerland, then David from Czechia and Flo from Germany, then Julian from the Timaru, then Brad and Ink who I’d camped with along the Arrow River so many days ago, then Rob and Ellyse fresh off their well-considered but windy cycle journey on the Twizel to Tekapo leg, then Aaron from Montana, then Trevor the Triple-Crowner, then Harold, then a few new faces, and then I realize that we have a TON of people at this hut and we are going to host an Official NOBO Family Reunion and Te Araroa Tent Congress. When everyone’s settled in I do a count: we have 18 northbound hikers, 1 section hiker, and 1 lonely but welcomed SOBO. It’s a great night – incredible that chance and the trail have brought together all these people who’d met over the course of the preceding month. In typical hiker fashion, we are loud as hell until 9:30 pm, when everyone promptly goes to sleep so they can be ready to walk 15 to 20 miles the next day. Overnight a kea (NZ endemic alpine parrot!) comes to the hut and causes trouble, eating the rubbery parts of people’s backpacks and practicing some kind of dance routine on the roof. Harold and Stu actually see it! It also sees them, is in no way intimidated, and expresses its desire to resume tearing things apart. The next morning the kea does fly-bys overhead and can clearly be heard laughing at us.

 

The next day the Hot Creek Water crew, reunited at last, hike from Camp Stream to Royal Hut – only 9 miles but we stretch it out almost languidly, sauntering up the trail and taking a phenomenal detour to climb to the summit of Beuzenberg Peak, 6790 feet above sea level and the highest point we’ll reach on the entire Te Araroa. The wind up there – THE WIND UP THERE – feels like it wants to rip us off the earth and toss us down onto the scree bed in the high valley below. We hoot and scream like crazed little kids and then Flo pops his head up from behind a boulder like some kind of marmot and says he was taking a nap (on a pile of rocks on top of a summit in a windstorm – I don’t know Flo very well yet but I sense that this is very Flo-like behavior). We can see so far from up here – down to Lake Tekapo and its headwaters in the Southern Alps, across to Aoraki wearing a jaunty cap of cloud (round with a little tail, like a beaver hat). We amble down to Stag Saddle, the highest point on the TA itself, and then later realize we’ve also officially walked half of the South Island! Down at Royal Hut I’m asleep by 8:00 pm, happy and warm and perfectly worn out.

The next morning I wake up to heavy frost – frost on the tent, frost on all the socks Harold has left out to dry overnight, frost on Rob and Ellyse’s shoes. Aaron never put his rain fly up on his tent and I look in to see his sleeping bag covered in lacy frost, him huddled down in there and looking somewhat less than cozy. You will know what kind of person I am when I tell you that this was hilarious to me, and that I began razzing him about it the second he woke up. In my defense, though, Aaron seems to embrace self-inflicted sleep hardship – most nights he doesn’t even bother to set his tent up at all and just cowboy-camps on the ground in his sleeping bag. After everyone thaws out we get on the trail for our last full day of hiking before the Rangitata River. Our plan is to walk 12 miles or so, camp along the bank of Bush Stream, and walk the final 4 miles to the Rangitata River and our pre-booked shuttle van to Geraldine the next morning. So we’re strolling along the trail when we come unexpectedly to this impossible-looking ascent up what appears to be a gravelly landslide. I look at the map – the ridge is called Crooked Spur. I reflect that no southbound hikers have mentioned this particular landform to us, and someone suggests that perhaps they were traumatized. I ask Ellyse, “Do you think this can possibly be as steep as it looks?” She says, “Maybe it’s an illusion.” Well, you already know how the next part goes – it was damn steep, and I let everyone else go before me so I could take my time suffering. I get to the top and promptly spring a nosebleed, which Rob lovingly captures in pictures.

The next day we make it to the shuttle, hop out in Geraldine, have lunch in the beer garden of a local pub, and then accidentally leave without paying. Not one of us even notices – we just wander away from the table across the lawn and down the street in a sleepy fugue. Harold bumps into the waitress around town later in the afternoon and she lets him know – he gathers the rest of us up and then we go back to the pub like a bunch of dumb reprobates to settle our bill. Clearly none of us can be trusted at this point.