The Hikes That Weren't!

Well this hike started with much excitement; we had planned to walk up Brewster Glacier and attempt our first glacier crossing. Adding some spice to the whole trip was that on the day we planned to do this, Brewster Hut was fully booked meaning we would need to sleep out in the snow. Over the next couple of months we followed the various online specials, purchasing bivies, sleeping bags, insulated sleeping mats, crevasse rescue gear etc. And also, watched YouTube rescue training videos, testing our newly learned skills off of Jon's first floor deck.

And then as the weekend arrived: weather bomb hits the South Island. Friday appeared to be the only good day over the weekend period but alas I had to work so spent the day with a great view of Queenstown lake while engaged in support tickets, spreadsheets and budgets, while Jon did a solo hike up to Treble Cone Summit Rocks (but that is his story so other posting some photos, and also mentioning that I was a tad jealous, I will leave that story for him to tell).

Saturday, the above weather bomb hit our neck of the woods. With hiking out of the picture we decided to go have lunch at Cardrona Hotel, going via the Crown Range Road so that we could play in the snow a bit. And here continued our unfortunate turn of events. Half-way through the range we hit a check point: only cars with tyre chains were allowed to proceed. All good, we turned around, drove back to Queenstown and hired chains for our car rental company. Back to the range and then the check point, where we discovered putting on chains was not quiet as simple for the unpracticed. Twenty minutes later, wet, cold (0.3 degrees Celsius) and rather annoyed, I had the chains on. Hungry and cold, we headed for the Hotel only to discover that it was closed for a function. Now well into the afternoon, we headed for Wanaka where we had the most amazing pulled brisket loaded fries while buckets of snow fell. In spite of the frustration and cold, the day turned out just great with an awesome journey through a winter wonderland in spring.

Sunday the weather looked to clear again so Jon and I planned on doing the loop around the back of the Remarkables via Queens Drive. We had done it previously, but were now looking forward to giving it a go with snow. There were other Walks we also wanted to do but river flooding made these inaccessible.

Waking up at 4:30am Sunday morning we headed out at 5am to the Remarkables Mountain Range. Having checked on their website to confirm that it was open, we paid our entrance fee (tap 'n go self-service) and headed up the mountain only to hit a "Road Closed" sign just before the snow line. Not wanting to incur a fine or to run into some land slip we hung around until 6am hoping to catch some someone who worked on the mountain so find out if the road was indeed closed.

No one came past so instead of wasting the only good day we decided to head to Glenorchy and do a section of the Routeburn Track, going up to Harris Saddle to explore the surrounds and then come back the same way (the total trip being around 20kms). If the weather in Glenorchy did not look good when we got there, we would then go back to Queenstown and once again weather dependant, take the Gondola up to the Bob's Peak and then hike up Ben Lomond (which we have also done previously, in non-snow conditions, but before I started these blogs).

Well Glenorchy looked like it would work so we shouldered our packs and headed for the mountains. The walk in is through a beautiful forest and along an equally beautiful, baby blue river, with many waterfall in the distance flowing down the various mountain faces. The walk does not ascend high, with a gentle gradient the whole way. And then 7.5kms in we hit another "Closed route" sign; a damaged bridge and mountain slip had closed the route.

This time it turned out that we were the only people not to know this. If we had check the DoC website we too would have been informed. Oh, well it appears that for me, high altitude hiking was just not meant to be this weekend.

While the overall outcome was disappointing the walk was still great. taking us through only beautiful terrain at the bottom of some majestic peaks.

While resting in the below plane we heard the powerful roar of two different avalanches which left the birds in the area very unhappy. While we could not see anything or really work out what direction they came from they were sobering sounds.

There were a number of awesome bridges to cross.

While all forest, the terrain was varied and never got boring.

It turns out that in the end we did just over 17km so at least we got some exercise in on a route that was pretty awesome at the same time.

On arriving back in Queenstown, the Remarkables were still under cloud so that would not have worked out anyway but Ben Lomond was not so with the perfect science of hindsight, that should have actually been our choice.

As Proverbs 16:9 says, "A man's heart plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps" so it definitely all turned out as it should have 😃.

We will have to leave Brewster Glacier for another time.