Wellington and the Tararuas, Part 1

Well I am back in Wanganui after a weekend in Wellington and then 4 days in the Tararua Mountains that run from Palmerston North to Wellington. Lots happened, so this is going to be a two-parter. Part one is below, part two comes tomorrow.

Tired and hungry, Ben and I arrived in Wellington late on Friday night and then slogged through the city looking for Charlotte. Charlotte was an Overland leader this past summer and graciously offered to put us up for a few nights while we were there. She was a breath of fresh air and energy as soon as we saw her and she quickly brought us to a bar where we met her boyfriend, Cody, as well as Alex, another Overland leader, and Alex's two friends, Emma and Clare. Ben and I held off on beer and conversation for a while in favor of running down the street to grab a kebab from Abrakebabra. If you're ever in Wellington, you have to go there - delicious. Anyways, once we finished up dinner, we had a beer with everyone back at the bar and then went back to Charlotte and Cody's place.

The next morning, we were greeted with a stupid amazing view of Wellington from Charlotte and Cody's back porch.

We hung out there for a while and then headed off to Homegrown Music Festival in Wellington. It was all Kiwi bands and the highlight was, without a doubt, Fat Freddy's Drop. Good vibes, good energy, great time.

We spent some time at the EDM stage too, but it wasn't as good as I was hoping. Unfortunately, the acts there tended to ruin what may have been good music by cranking the volume up too high (how old do I sound?). The concert ended around midnight and, being old, I was ready to head straight to bed so we grabbed a cab and went back up the hill to Charlotte and Cody's.

There, I found myself completely unable to sleep and stayed up all night. At times I would read, at times I would try to close my eyes and fall asleep, but mostly I just embraced the insomnia and allowed my mind to work.

I thought a lot about why I was in New Zealand and why I had chosen to leave everything for 3.5 months. I was not second guessing anything, but simply wanted to answer for myself the question of why. I came to two answers, but I'm saving that for another blog and choosing to use this one as a narrative of the past few days.

Answering that question sufficiently was one benefit to being up all night. The other was the opportunity to see the sun rise from that same view. I sat out in their yard, had a cup of tea, and took in the sun coming up over the mountains. It was actually a really nice way to spend the night and early morning.

Ben and I spent all of Sunday in Wellington and then on Monday we headed up and out in the same direction but to different destinations. We both headed north, but where I got off in Otaki, Ben stayed on and headed further up to Wanganui to rest and get ready for his wrist surgery.

In Otaki, I caught a lift from a guy that had hiked the AT in 1981 and now offers a free shuttle for Te Araroa walkers. His name is Beni and he is quite a traveller. In fact, he is planning on coming to the states next year and drive through Oregon. Mom and Dad, I told him he should shoot me an email and we may be able to put him and his wife up at the beach for a night :)

As we made the 16k drive from Otaki to the trail head, Beni asked me where I was headed for the night. When I told him my goal was Nichols Hut, he looked a bit taken aback. Then, quickly composing himself, he said, "I have no idea how in shape you are, but Nichols is quite a hike...you can probably make it." I couldn't.

The hike started out easy enough. First with a swing bridge crossing that I wasn't super ecstatic about and then across a grassy plain. As soon as I entered the bush, though, I knew it was going to get harder. The bush here was jungle. Not like a jungle, it was just a jungle. Vines hung down everywhere, ferns scraped at my ankles and towered over my head, green growths of all kinds covered everything and trees climbed up to create a ceiling that kept all of the heat and humidity of a sauna pressing down upon me.

Upon entering the jungle, I began to sweat, immediately and profusely, and felt my energy quickly draining. But I trudged on, foot by foot, climbing up and away from the valley I had started in, deeper and deeper into the bush.

Around 2:30 is when I knew I wasn't going to make it to Nichols Hut. Fortunately, Waitewaewae Hut was close and I knew I could bunk up there. So I trudged on with a new goal. After another hour and a half that felt like it could have been 4 or 5, I finally arrived at Waitewaewae.

It was a gorgeous hut tucked alongside the Otaki River. When I arrived, I dumped my stuff and immediately headed down to the river for a quick dip of the skinny variety - when you're the only human around for miles, there's no need for modesty. After that I tried to hang out on a rocky beach for a while, but the swarms of sandflies were thick and forced me back to the sanctity of the hut.

There, I wrote for a while, ate some dinner, and was down before the sun.

After a lousy night of sleep, I woke up at about 8 and got ready for the day. Clouds had moved in over night, so I headed out from Waitewaewae into cooler, greyer landscape. I crossed another, even more terrifying swing bridge

and then I climbed. And climbed. And kept climbing, straight up - a 1,000 meter elevation gain in 3 k. In imperial: more than 3,000 feet in less than 2 miles. It was STEEP and unrelenting.

But I climbed on, sometimes literally crawling on all fours, and hand over hand, foot over foot, finally made it up above treeline to a view of dull grey clouds that surrounded me in every direction. No matter though, because at least the gale force winds quickly whipped away all the sweat that had poured out of me during the climb and cooled me down instantly.

Once above treeline, I moved quickly up another few hundred meters to the summit of Mt Crawford and then raced (safely! of course) across a ridgeline to Nichols Hut. I made it to Nichols at 2, a full 5 hours into the day but only 5 kilometers from where I had started. The Tararuas are not for the weak of will.

At Nichols, I scarfed down a few sausage and cheese wraps and then got ready to head back into the wet and wind and cold and continue to Dracophyllum, the planned accommodation for the night. As I was on my way out, I took a look at the map hanging in the hut and saw that in about half a kilometer I was going to come to a junction - one trail led towards my hut and the other was an abandoned track that led deeper into the mountains. With a smirk, I thought to myself, "I'll have to make sure I don't take the abandoned track." And then I headed out into the clouds to do just that...