Monday, March 16, 2015

Fiordland: Falls Creek

For my last big Otago University Tramping Club trip, I joined forces with an incredible co-leader, Ella, to plan out a weekend we'd never forget.

Our original plan was to hike up Mistake Creek to U-pass on Saturday and then walk down to Hut creek on Sunday.  It would be challenging for us on a good day, but it'd only take a little rain to make the trip unsafe.  So, we scratched that plan and chose (what we thought would be) a more manageable trip up Falls Creek.

The tramping club drove up to Fiordland on Friday night.  I slept underneath the charter bus - a first for me!  On Saturday we started walking around 9am - a little bit later than ideal.  The track was steep, but manageable with a little upper body strength to hoist myself up and over fallen trees.

There was a beautiful water fall within the first hour or so of hiking:


It didn't take long for one of the fellas on our trip to start belting out 80s ballads like Foreigners "I want to KNOW what love ISSSSSSSS!!!!!" (my emphasis) and make Lord of the Rings references (that I did not get because I haven't watched any of the movies, tsk, tsk).

As soon as the track leveled out, we were in the moss covered everything patch of forest that is truly Fiordland-like and then made our way to a small clearing just above the river.  We had a few goes at walking up the river instead of the track because the bush kept getting denser and denser, but there were deep spots with swift water, which we weren't keen to attempt.


Around mid-day we were rewarded with mint weather and stunning views of Ngatimamoe Peak and Pyramid Peak.  I can't over emphasize how awesome the weather was - so unusual for Fiordland

I was feeling optimistic that we'd reach the head of the valley where a glacier fed tarn sits, but we encountered more dense bush once we reached the end of the track and made our way up the valley.  Incredible that it took us 8 hours of total walking time to find a suitable place to set up camp! We quickly put up a tent fly and small tent so that we could drop our gear and hustle to the tarn.

Randomly, a guy on the trip whipped out a recorder and started playing a tune from Lord of the Rings.  Hilarious and awesome. 


I made an uber dork decision to swap my tramping boots for Crocs to walk to the tarn (I just wanted my feet to feel dry for a little while!), but that was a dumb choice - we had a long field of boulders to scramble up and over before we could see the water, so I had to bail on the walk. Waaaaaaaaaah!


No biggie.  I had to start dinner anyway.  (As luck would have it for the group that carried on, several angry kea decided to make a fuss about having visitors.  Here's a video of different cheeky kea.)  We had a scrumptious chickpea, feta and raisin couscous dinner - the five guys on our trip raved about it! (Side note - Ella and I had no idea how much food to pack for seven people, and for some reason we expected them to have giant appetites, lordy we had sooooo much couscous!)

When the sun went down I started a little fire for us to snuggle around.  We shared stories of our worst dating experience, which didn't take very long because New Zealanders don't date much.  The culture is more "let's find each other in a pub and pash for a bit" (at least among the 20-something year old crowd, that is).  We had a bit of a yarn after that and passed around a bottle of cheap bubbly and Whittaker's chocolate.  Good times!

On Saturday, we made our way back to the car park where we got dropped off the day before.  Along the way we had a photo shoot.  The objective was to take a "derpy" picture of everyone holding fake roses.  The picture would be accompanied by a Tinder-style "dating profile" that would be published in the OUTC's annual Antics.  Here's my photo:


The boys' photos were far cuter and more creative. Ha!

We had plenty of downtime once we finished walking (a bus was due to pick us up at 4pm and we were out a bit after 2pm).  So, we used the time productively to craft our dating profiles.   We gave the German guy the nickname "Autobahn" because he's "smooth and fast".  I can't remember the other details for the rest of us, but they were pretty funny.

Now that the trip is over, I'll have my nose to the grindstone to finish up this PhD.  Just a few months and I'll be handing in. Yahooooooooo!

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