February 28- Ivory Lake

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February 22

We had dried our the tents and were checking email in Hokitika when we heard the news. A magnitude 6.3 earthquake had rocked the city of Christchurch and had done significant damage. By car, Christchurch is only 3 hours from where we were, directly east on the opposite coast of the south island. It was very close, and our friends were going to leave from there that afternoon to meet us for the next tramp. I hadn't heard a response from them from my last text that I sent around the time of the quake, so I was slightly nervous.

Fortunately I got a response a few hours later saying that they were fine and that they were still going to come tramping. All the while we were watching images of destruction on TV and the Prime Minister saying that the death toll was already at 65 with it expected to climb. One story showed a popular hostel near the downtown area that had been flattened and people were trying to pull the bodies out. It hit close to home since I had stayed at that hostel the first time I was in the country.

So knowing that plans were still in place to go tramping tomorrow we went to fill up with gas in the car and get groceries. The gas station was already a madhouse with everyone filling their tanks and any extra containers they could find. And at the grocery store all the bread and milk was gone and I only managed to grab the last 3 sleeves of english muffins.

So at 8pm our friends arrived and we drove the hour to the remote carparkr where we would begin the Ivory Lake tramp the next day. We set up camp just as light faded.


February 23

It was good to be hiking with old friends again, and even better for them to see us one and a half months after our first hike with them over New Years. Our beards have grown long and Nick has improved his hiking pace considerably since then. This tramp would be much different from the last one.

We followed the river for a bit before crossing it and heading into the very steep and thick bush-covered mountains. Steep uphill would be the theme for today, as we climbed our way up the Dickie Spur to the hut by the same name, just above the bush line.

It was a relief to arrive and we quickly made ourselves at home in the 4-bunk hut. There are 6 of us and the structure is 10 by 12 ft, so you can imagine the quarters are cramped. But it's fine and we make do, we're all just happy to be indoors where it's slightly warmer and drier than outside.

A quick look at the hut logbook showed that there have only been 3 people here since October- 5 months ago! So I think this tramp will live up to the reputation of being really remote.


February 24

Today was a day that I will remember forever. We started early, which turned out to be a good thing because we would need every minute of daylight and then some. The going was easy at first and we had sunshine. Things seemed good. We were following Dickie Ridge to the Tusk, a peak at the junction of 3 ridges, and then planned to follow another ridge down into the Waitaha Valley. The ridge began to get narrow and we started to encounter notches in it where downclimbing and upclimbing parts with very steep drops on either side was necessary. At this point the ground was covered in tussock so that gave you more handholds, which made it slightly less difficult than it could have been. But as we ascended, the tussock diminished, giving way to loose and crumbly rock, while at the same time the clouds swallowed us up.

We negotitated a few more notches in the ridge, each seemingly becoming more difficult than the last, and we began to contemplate turning around. We figured out our position though, and decided that we were in one of those places where we'd gone too far over too much scary stuff to go back and do it again in reverse. So we plodded on in the gray mist that surrounded everything, as the time slipped quickly away.

The last 3 notches before the top were the worst, each taking close to half an hour to get the 6 of us down, up, and past. It became abundantly apparent why DoC said that a 30 meter rope "might be helpful" for this section. We did not bring a rope because of the flippant way they say "might", but I would now argue that a rope is necessary and that it is only by an act of God that 1 or more of us did not meet our demise by falling from that ridge. I will forever remember the intense fear that I felt as I watched Nick (who is without a doubt the least stable of us on their feet when climbing) downclimbing the notches with a terrified look on his face surrounded by the endless cloudy abyss. It appeared that you were just climbing a pile of rock hovering among nothingness. But I knew the harsh truth that on either side was a dropoff of several thousand feet, and a fall would surely be fatal. I felt confident in my own climbing ability, having been in situations similar to this a few times before, but I felt sick with the thought that I'd gotten my friends into something that they shouldn't be doing. I don't know how to describe it other than to say I felt physically ill several times through the process of moving along the ridge.

Once, Helen even slipped and let out a yell that was quite terrifying. Fortunately she had slipped to the better side of things (both were bad thought) and was able to stop herself on scree just a few feet down a small gulley. But as I said, we all got to the Tusk intact, and only a few minor scrapes and cuts to show for it.

We wasted about an hour following the wrong ridge down before we discovered it and corrected course, all the while becoming more and more tired and hungry for a real meal, since it was already 6:30pm and we still had about 4 hours ahead of us. Fortunately when we found the correct ridge away from the Tusk, it was easy travel and we made quick work of it. Soon we got to Ragged Peak and began the final descent.

It was a long descent over boulderfields that seemed to go on forever. Eventually we were funneled into a dry riverbed where we climbed down some rockfall areas that were probably impressive waterfalls when it is raining. We put on our headlamps as the last rays of light deserted us, determined to make it to the hut for the night. But at 9:30pm, 13 hours after beginning our day, we reached a precipice dropping 100ft to the river below where I decided that we would go no further today. Going any further in the darkness would be foolish and we should just be satisfied to be alive after the day we'd had.

We had no tents, so we would use our packliners as bivy bags and sleep on them or partially in them if it rained. So there, on the 10ft wide ledge overlooking the river, we arranged ourselves for sleep and ate some dinner. As I slowly slipped towards sleep, I noted that the sky looked kind of patchy like it might rain. I didn't care though. I didn't care about anything except that all of us had made it off that damn ridge today.


February 25

I slept remarkably well last night despite the fact that it had misted/rained for the last few hours of the night. Everything around me was wet, including the outside of my sleeping bag, but miraculously I was mostly dry inside of it. Sleeping on an uneven and inclined rock was not ideal but apparently I'd been too tired to be bothered by it. And around sun-up, everyone was up and ready to continue to the hut.

We found a way down to the river, crossed it, and continued down a line of bluffs toward the valley floor. From there, we slipped our way down the tussock covered hills until we reached the main river, the Waitaha. It was only a short 30 minutes to the Top Waitaha hut.

This is unequivocally the roughest country I've ever seen. Everything is steep, sharp, and loose, and for those reasons it is clear why it is remote. Everything seems bent on preventing you from moving through it with any ease.

Again, the hut book at this hut only showed 3 people coming through here in the past 5 months. It's beautiful, but I see why hardly anyone makes it up here.


February 26

Keeping the trend of this tramp, today was another exhausting adventure. Exhausting, but also exhilerating.

Yesterday, we had decided that due to the difficulty we'd faced already on this tramp, we would not go to Ivory Lake and then follow Galena Ridge back to the valley with our cars in it like we had planned on doing. Galena Ridge had some difficult spots along it and no one seemed excited about going through the same type of ordeal as the other day again. So the group feeling was that we would exit the tramp by heading down the Waitaha River valley. That was the decision last night, but by the morning that decision was not sitting well with me. I was already regretting that I would not be seeing Ivory Lake, which was my number one tramping goal for this trip to New Zealand. So first thing this morning I proposed an idea to the group that involved getting up to Ivory Lake today (only 2 hours up the valley from where we were) and taking a different and supposedly tamer ridgeline back out... No one took the offer. So I decided that I would do the route alone anway since getting to the Lake was the purose of this tramp for me and I had the proper experience and skills to go on alone. Andrew then said that he would join me so I didn't have to go on alone. I was glad to have a companion, and so we set off shortly after that.

The climb up the valley to Ivory Lake was difficult and not even really a "route" at all. We were just two guys making their way through some wild and very rugged landscape. (I keep mentioning how rugged everything is, but there just is no way to describe how truly raw this land is) Below the hut we turned a corner in a canyon and suddenly we came to the waterfalls first, which drop in an amazing array from the outlet of the lake. The rock slabs are so evenly fractured and randomly arranged that the waterfalls become an awe-inspiring scene. By far they are the most beautiful falls I've seen anywhere.

Then we made our way up to the lake itself, where we found the Ivory Lake hut perched on the glacially carved rock near the outlet. It's a small, but very cool hut that was originally used as a base to study the glacier. Not used for that anymore, it is now just a backcountry hut that is in one of the most picturesque locations in New Zealand. It's also one of the most infrequently visited and for that reason is sort of a "holy grail" of tramping destinations.

We wanted to stay and enjoy some time here before heading off since we'd gone through so much to get here, so we lounged around outside the hut for over an hour and had a long drawn our lunch in the sunshine. It definitely wa a beautiful spot and I wished I had more time to spend there.

At 1pm we packed up and left, heading up the ridgeline that circled the lake. This ridge was great compared to the horrible Dickie Ridge from 2 days prior, and seemed like a dream to walk along. It also helped that there were no clouds so we had some views. We made great progress and soon were standing on top of the ridge overlooking the glacier and lake from 2000ft above them. From there we traversed 2 shorter rocky ridges to get to Mt Beaumont, which has a permanent snowfield/glacier on its peak. There, the clouds rolled in and we had to navigate our way down with zero visibility.

It turned out that my navigation skills are still pretty good since we popped out below the clouds exactly where we ought to have been. From there we descended down a long, long tussock covered spur towards the Tuke Valley down below. We could see the Upper Tuke hut from 600 meters above it, but it seemed impossibly far away since we were so tired by this point.

The tussock was so difficult to get through, and it was more like controlled (or sometimes uncontrolled) falling as we went. We were both very sore by the time we arrived at the hut, but I have to say that it was all well worth it to get to see Ivory Lake and the waterfalls. Now I can leave this tramp satisfied, and not just pretty sore.

As another side note about the popularity of these huts, Ivory Lake and Upper Tuke huts are the most remote yet. Ivory Lake hut gets about 20 people per year and Upper Tuke gets between 10-20 per year, and many of these people helicopter in. Before us at this hut tonight, only one person had been here in the past 12 months!


February 27

Neither Andrew nor I wanted to get up this morning, but we had to go about 10 hours to get all the way out to the cars in order go to the other trailhead to pick up Nick, Helen, Matt, and Rowan. So we dragged ourselves out of our sleeping bags and left the hut around mid-morning.

The "path" we were to follow out was essentially to go down the Tuke River... in the Tuke River. We hopped/scrambled/rock climbed up over and around the boulders that were strewn in the water, sometimes going through the rapids themselves and many time climbing into the thick bush on the sides of the river to avoid large waterfalls. After what seemed like an eternity (we covered about 2km in 2.5 hours) we came to the part where we needed to ascend to a ridge to avoid a large gorge. This was tiring after already spending so much energy in the river, but we made it up quickly and soon were standing on the base of the ridge that we had ascended on our first day.

Once at the top, we knew almost all of the uphill for this tramp was finished, so we had renewed strength and almost skipped down the mountainside. The section that had taken us 7 hours to come up during the first day only took us 4.5 hours to get down. It was great knowing that the end was in sight and that we had survived so many difficulties over the past 5 days.

So we got to the cars and raced off back to the main road and then to the other trailhead, an hour away, where our friends would be waiting for us to pick them up from... or so we thought.

We got there... and no one was waiting. It was a pretty remote trailhead, 10km down a rough gravel road through farmfields, so I doubted that they had already hitch hiked out. Andrew and I sat there for awhile, pondering what to do. It was 8:30pm and the sunlight was almost gone. We could drive back to a place to get cellphone reception to see if Helen had texted me after they got out (if they'd already got out), or we could just camp there and wait for them to come out in the morning if they were bivy-bagging it again somewhere near the trailhead. I settled on sending Andrew to drive back to the main road to see if he could get reception with my phone while I hiked in along the track to see if I could find our long-lost friends to let them know the cars were near.

15 minutes down the track, I met 4 of the most disheveled, worn, and exhausted trampers I've ever seen. It was Nick, Helen, Rowan, and Matt and they looked like they'd been through some really tough stuff. Helen immediately gave me a big hug and I was sure they they'd had a rougher time coming out than Andrew and I had.

I was immediately overwhelmed with stories of the harrowing ordeal they had been through since we parted ways yesterday morning. Stories of coming down a river with house-sized boulders to climb over, wild rapids that nearly swept them away, thick bush that cut them to bits, and football field-sized slips off the mountains that created massive debris fields to cross. Yesterday had been a 12-hour day of hiking, and today was a 13-hour day. I felt bad for them and was glad that they were alright, but was also instantly glad that Andrew and I had gone out the way we did. We had got to see Ivory Lake and only had an 8 and a 9-hour day to get out.

The 6 of us drove to a nearby hostel where we cooked a feast of celebration, composed of any food we had leftover and any that was in the cars. This tramp has been all kinds of things, but mostly it's been a great adventure. The difficulty, the raw terrain, the remoteness, and the experience have all been epic.

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Comments

[Dale]

Glad you made it
That was quite a trip. I can identify with your soul searching when you felt you might have brought your friends on a trip that could be their last. It's a disturbing situation, but you made it and it is now just a memory.