Fun and Games in the New Zealand Southern Alps

I’d like to share a couple of adventures I had in the spectacular but somewhat bleak southern Alps of New Zealand.

One day, while my brother chased horned and antlered hairy animals up very steep hills on a farm near Fairlie, I found myself idle so I drove a couple of hours to check out Mount Cook – and an impressive mount it is. While “only” 3,724m high, Mount Cook is a technical climb that involves serious mountaineering, such as ice climbing and crampons (as opposed to the likes of the 5,895m Mount Kilimanjaro walk-up or trek).

This story is part of our Walking, Hiking and Meaningful Routes series. Read more here.

That evening I was having drinks with my brother, the farm owner and his wife, and a couple of guides, and someone asked me what I’d done all day. I replied that I had started to climb Mount Cook. Given that they hadn’t seen me with any climbing gear, and it’s impossible to do the climb in a day from the end of the road, they all naturally looked at me like I was an idiot. I said that after I’d set out on the climb I redid my calculations on the time it’d take me to get to the summit and back down, and concluded that I wouldn’t be able to make it before dark, so I headed back. The assembled faces showed that they couldn’t work out whether I was full of wit, or a halfwit. Someone asked how far I got before turning around and I replied, “To the edge of the carpark”.

A few days later we drove to Mesopotamia Airstrip, located by the Rangitata River, to get a chopper to a junction up Forest Creek, a tributary of the Rangitata. My brother wished to chase more hairy animals from our planned camping spot at the creek junction. The junction was about 10-15km east of Lake Tekapo, in a deep valley. That was the plan.

A slight issue was that the snow had come early – the previous night had seen a foot or two of it dumped where we were going. I’m not sure why the pilot even flew us in, or why my brother didn’t come up with a different plan. The country was hard enough to move in when you could see where your feet were going – in snow it was a tad dangerous. Apart from a flattish area where we pitched our tents, most of the terrain was scree slopes. It was pretty much all really steep and consisted of loose, unstable rock fragments which shifted underfoot and created a challenging (to say the least) walking surface. But, at 2:00 pm, in we went.

I don’t usually see a lot of snow, so it was a bit of a novelty. But, after clearing a lumpy spot for my tent, erecting it, stumbling to the creek to confirm it was a good water source, getting in and out of my tent a few times in three layers of clothing below the waist and five layers above, gloves, balaclava, etc, the novelty was starting to wear off. By this time my brother concluded that it would be foolhardy to attempt to chase beasts around the countryside and we should use the Sat phone to get the chopper back. The valley was very steep and the walls were very high, limiting the time the Sat phone could actually get line-of-sight to a satellite. We could see on the phone’s display when a satellite was overhead but by the time we’d dial the number it’d be gone, or the pilot didn’t answer. As dusk fell, we gave up and it started snowing again.

I was using a one person, 3-season tent that had a small vent in the end of the fly. The inner tent had a corresponding patch of gauze to allow airflow out of the vent. These features conspired to ensure that when I lay warm and snug in my sleeping bag, a light dusting of snow blew in the vent and settled on my face. The night passed without incident and the next day dawned bright and sunny and a crisp minus 6 degrees Celsius. After a few hours trying the Sat phone, we finally got through and organised an afternoon pickup. I wasn’t at all upset when I heard the sound of rotor blades coming up the valley and in my best Arnie Schwarzenegger voice said, “Get to the choppa.” As I later said to my brother, “That was an interesting 24 hours that I am glad I experienced, and never want to do so again.”

Neale Hughes

Neale is a former defender of the nation with a natural inclination to avoid most people. He enjoys travel to random, hopefully sparsely populated, locations with interesting architecture, old trains and cemeteries. He is retired and lives near Newcastle in a large patch of vegetation.