With a few of the great walks under my belt I felt pretty sure-footed heading out to do another multi-day hike on my own. I hitched a ride to the uniquely gorgeous town of Glenorchy with relative ease and found a quaint backpackers hostel to stay the night.
I checked in and was told the backpacker lodge was around back, through the gate. I walked around the side of the main building and came to a gate. I pulled and it didn't budge. I jiggled the handle to make sure it wasn't locked and again it didn't budge. As I pulled I felt it give a tiny bit, then a little more and with one final yank the gate came flying open with a loud crack as a few boards gave way as it broke in half. I looked up immediately like a startled deer to see if anyone had noticed and of course, there in the window ahead of me was a crowd of backpackers: half laughing, half shocked and scared. I looked around to assess the situation. When I looked to my left I saw a large open gate, a second gate, at the end of a footpath just slightly around the corner and previously out of sight, about 20 feet from where I busted through the nailed up gate like the fucking Kool-Aid guy. Dammit! Idiot, that's me.
Gate conquered, in I walked and found my sweet little room where I unpacked my pack and reassembled it as best I could for what would likely be an 8 day walk. Hikers love doing that, unpack and repack, each time feeling like you've really made good changes somehow. Not a good thing: I found a 2 pound camera lens I had failed to leave in my stored camera bag, so there was 2 useless pounds I was stuck carrying for 8 days over two mountain ranges. I had resupplied in Queenstown and had about 7 pounds of food (including one pound of chocolate) ready to go. The others in the cabin were all hikers heading off on different trails. One guy was loosely following the Te'Araroa trail (tip-to-tip across New Zealand) and his stories were incredible. The majority of hikers you meet are even-mannered, genuinely nice people...but it only takes one bad one to spoil the vibe. We were all hanging out relaxing and unwinding when the bad seed decided to aggressively challenge us all, one by one, on our environmental beliefs. We entertained his attacks briefly then started making excuses and heading to bed. Thanks, asshole.
I woke up refreshed and ready for a day in the woods. I quickly got dressed and headed out to the road to hitch a ride. No cars. 30 minutes pass, still hardly any cars, and no cars stop. So i start walking. The sandflies were starting to circle so the walking was necessary at this point. I walked 3 kilometers before a car stopped. I hitched a lift about 5k further towards Kinloch and was dropped at a crossroads. I began walking towards the trail with a sign and thumb out and after about an hour I got another ride.
The man that stopped looked a little shifty but with my arms spotted with sandfly bites and the sun rising quickly, I hopped in. Perhaps I should have consulted the map a bit more since I really had no idea where to tell him to go. I figured the locals would know where the trail was, but I made a guess and pointed straight ahead. Again, idiot. As we drove, the driver began to ask odd questions that could have sounded threatening but I treated them as curious.. Questions like: Aren't you scared of getting kidnapped? Or hurt? It was odd to have him asking these questions but I continued to answer and act like it was an absurd thought. After the 5th or 6th question I started becoming uneasily aware of the finer details of the inside of his truck cab. The leather-wrapped handle of a knife sticking up between his seats didn't worry me as much as the one red women's shoe in the floorboard. Had that once belonged to a backpacker? Is the other one on a foot in a ditch somewhere? I gathered my thoughts and tried to act uninterested without seeming rude. The road was bumpy and long and we saw very few other cars. The further we drove the stranger the dialogue became. I could see him glancing over at me every now and then and he asked me more personal questions about wether I thought I was confident, or able to defend myself, etc. Had that been my first hitch I would have likely never hitched a ride again but as it was my 50th I went along with the conversation and exhaled a bit as we finally made it past a herd of sheep and up to the trail head. He waved goodbye politely and wished me luck.
I had lost a lot of time walking and hitching to the trail so I started quick and tried to keep up a good pace. About 20 feet into the trail I came across a smiling guy holding a map. As I passed him he shuffled the map under his arm and quickly asked me to take his photo for him. I stopped and snapped a shot, then surprisingly he started chatting with me and followed along. We navigated our way through a dense crowd of Asian tourists at the head of the trail and started on our way. He was Swedish, carrying a tiny backpack and full of quirky conversation. Unprovoked, he launched into details of his family and childhood as he walked behind me. I tried to listen but I wanted to keep pace so I missed every third word. It occurred to me that we had started hiking at a loop trail and Lon had followed me without much talk of direction. I asked to make sure he was headed on the Greenstone Track and he said yes, so on we walked.
We wound our way along the edge of the valley with the river to our left, stopping every few miles for snacks and drinks. As we crossed pastures, the majority of the cows scurried away from the path as we neared but some froze in terror creating tense standoffs. It's hard to feel confident waving your arms and yelling at an 800 pound cow no matter how much of a badass you are. I was surprised to see so many cows so soon as I thought they'd be further along the trail.
I stopped a few times to check the map and everything seemed right. I wanted to tell Lon that I thought he was going the wrong way but he seemed so sure of himself that I just let it go. He was doing the loop, he could afford to make the loop in the opposite direction. I was hiking half the loop and catching a different trail in order to get to the Milford Track so I had to make good time or I'd literally miss my boat! Besides, he was growing on me, would be fun to have him around another day or two. So on we hiked.
We walked for another few hours and finally came to the gorge. It was breathtaking. It looked a little different than the pics I had seen but it was incredible. As we crossed the bridge and entered a meadow and spotted the hut I noticed some workers and a barrier around it. Hmm.. Interesting. As I remembered from the map, the hut I was hiking to, the Greenstone Hut, was in a small field on a hill. Up a hill.. This was not a hill...Construction....
OH GOD.
THIS IS THE WRONG FUCKING HUT.
IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT!
I stood there staring at the Mid Caples Hut, the only hut in the network that was under construction and closed. I looked back at my map and I understood what had happened with a sickening clarity: Both tracks followed the right bank of a river, both crossed similar terrain and pasture lands, and both led up to a gorge right before crossing to the hut. I had simply paid too little attention at the beginning and gone the wrong way. Lon just kind of lingered for a minute pretending not to notice my embarrassment and frustration. He stayed until I told him I was fine and that I was going to head to the other hut. The other hut that was 21km away. Fuck. Everything.
I let the anger and frustration propel me through the first few miles. I crossed back through the endless cow pastures and up and down the edge of the valley as I retraced my steps. I cared less about the marshy cow shit patches and let my boots get covered. This hike was literally teeming with bullshit.
I ran out of water. Every stream I passed was full of cows, or their crap, or the possibility of it. By luck I crossed paths with a hiker who had an extra 2 liters of water. If you don't hike often you have no way of realizing what a significantly unbelievable occurrence that is, but it happened and it was much appreciated.
Funny how on a hike when you're headed the right way and your mind is thinking positive thoughts all you see are butterflies and flowers, then your headspace changes and you notice things like the smell of the manure and an ominous dead cow.
After another hour I made it back to the trailhead, drooling with curiosity at what had gone wrong. There, in plain sight, a very clearly marked trail sign-post freely giving me all the information I needed. I recognized the small wooden walkway I had gone around earlier and realized that this is the spot the crowd of tourists had forced us to go around on the trail, therefore missing the sign. Deep breath, keep hiking.
The trail changed pretty dramatically as I headed up the correct valley. The pastures gave way to small elevation gains and losses and soon I was looking down on the valley where an emerald-green river was snaking it's way forward, toward the hut I presumed. I was too tired to get my usual shaky wimpy knees on the terrifying narrow bridges that crossed the ravines.
But even in my frustration and fatigue I was fully aware of the beauty surrounding me, and any moment spent in that place, no matter what the circumstances, was a moment well spent. I was literally in awe. With a new vigor and some water I filled from a waterfall I pushed on. At this point I had walked about 15 miles, and it was another 6 to the hut. I snacked and kept up a good pace. With no mile markers (and a blurry sense of time having crossed the whole damn valley twice) it was tough to gage how far I had gone. Did I pass the hut turn-off? I remembered a wide part of the trail a ways back that had an ambiguous path leading off into the woods. I backtracked about half a mile to investigate, found a small trail to a pile of toilet paper, then turned back around and plodded on. Finally, after about 35 km (roughly 21/22 miles) I came up the hill just as the sun was setting. I collapsed on the bench outside with my sweaty head literally steaming as sandflies swarmed my stinky face. I took off my boots, tied them together to keep them safe from the Kea (mountain parrots) and went inside.
It was all worth it in the end. Through all my trekking that day I had no idea that this, Valentine's Day as a matter of fact, was going to be one of the best nights of my trip.. But that's a different story for another time.
It all works out in the end.
