Kepler and the Glaciers (Part 1)

[Note: This is part 1 of 2. Just trying to keep it readable. Find part 2 here.]

This post is long-delayed for a myriad of reasons, among them my last final (it went as expected, which is to say it was easy and stupid), post-finals celebrations, and now packing to get ready to leave in a ridiculously short 36 hours. But I'll save my thoughts on that for another post...

Anyway, the road trip I took was, without a doubt, one of the most incredible things I did in my time here, and certainly ranks near the top of my list of favorite experiences ever (right up there with - among other things - getting on TV at a Red Sox game, speaking at my middle school graduation, Thanksgivings at Zin's, and spring break '07 at Lake Tahoe).

We started early on Friday morning, and with a healthy breakfast of a mince pie and V, we were off. Our first real stop was on the Clinton-Gore Presidential Highway - no joke. The sign is located, not surprisingly, on the road between the small towns of Clinton and Gore. No, NZ doesn't have presidents, and yes, these town have been around for a long time. Surprisingly, there's not much information online about this, but one plausible explanation says that it was named this in 1999 in when Clinton came to NZ for a meeting, and that a replica lives in the presidential library in Little Rock. Who knows?

We started the Kepler track in the early afternoon, and took down the first section (14 km, ~9 mi) in four hours, which is pretty good considering the 3,200 ft vertical on that part of the trail. Like I mentioned before, the extreme alpine conditions beyond Luxmore wouldn't let us go on, but it was still spectacular. Luxmore Hut was really nice, particularly the mattresses in the bunks, and even better, the sweet cave and views 10 minutes from the hut. Good times.

The next day, we hiked back out (after probably sleeping later than anyone ever has at that hut) and let me tell you, there is not great feeling than taking your boots off after a solid hike. From there, we drove a solid 513 km, which is only 320 miles, but on country roads that are often windy, it can take some time. It was a great drive (I got to get behind the wheel - see me in the zone above) and driving along Lake Wakatipu and then the Crown Range to Wanaka was something I won't soon forget.

We got to Franz Josef that night, and pretty much immediately crashed (having survived the trip on potato salad, cheesy poofs and potato chips). The next day, Sunday, I woke up a while before everyone else, so while I was entertaining myself on the hostel's porch swing, all of a sudden Nick, a student from Bowdoin in my geology class, walks outside! Turns out he was traveling around alone, so after my genius idea of making eggs and bacon (Kiwis eat all kinds of weird bacon, so for future reference, look for 'streaky' bacon in Commonwealth countries), we all drove out to Franz Josef glacier.

The Game Plan

So about a month ago, Andrew, Carrie and I decided that during finals we should do a tramp on one of NZ's Great Walks. Since I've never explained them before, briefly, they're a set of tramping tracks on the North and South Islands, managed by the Department of Conservation. Each track has well-maintained tracks and huts spaced about a day's walk from each other, meaning it actually costs quite a bit, usually $40 per hut. They have a booking system, too, to keep pressure on the tracks to a minimum, so really popular tracks like the Milford and Routeburn fill up fast. This brings us to the tramp we planned on: the Kepler Track. It was actually built in the mountains near Te Anau to alleviate pressure on the Milford and Routeburn, and is really nice - particularly the second day of the tramp, which is almost exclusively walking along alpine ridges.

Unfortunately, it's that ridge line that's caused us problems. We were going to do the track this weekend, but because of some late-season snow, crampons and ice axes are required, which is something we can't really muster right now. So briefly, the outline of our fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants plan:

• Go to Kepler, and hike the first (passable) section, and stay at Luxmore Hut Friday night.
• On Saturday, hike out and make an epic, beautiful drive to Haast and the West Coast, and stay in a hostel.
• Sunday, we'll go to the glaciers at Franz Josef and/or Fox, which are the most accessible glaciers in the world. At the same time, we should get a great view of Mount Cook across Lake Matheson. Maybe camp out Sunday night, and head back to Dunners Monday.

Cool, eh? It's gonna be great. Cheers.

Milford Sound

That would be Mitre Peak, probably the most photographed mountain in New Zealand, towering over Milford Sound. Holy crap, you can see why. See my heaps of photos here.

So the Butler program took me and pretty much everyone else out there last weekend for our 'adventure weekend,'--probably the best use of the money we pay the program. We rolled out for Te Anau on Friday, staying in a hostel in town. We started Saturday morning by going across Lake Te Anau to the Te Ana-au Caves, which are a far more accessible kind of glowworm caves, compared to the sweet-as (only one 's', yes) ones we saw in Greymouth. It was cool seeing different caves (these were limestone vs. sandstone) and there were tons of glowworms, but walking around on platforms just doesn't have the same coolness factor. Oh well.

After that, we started heading up the two-hour drive to Milford Sound. It was an epic drive, with mountains shooting straight up on either side of the road - I was straining my neck to look up and out the bus windows as best I could. Finally we got to the sound itself, just a dead end road with a bus terminal/boat dock with a half dozen cruise ships moored outside. The picture at the top is what we saw just before we got on the ship.

We weren't on the ship for more than two minutes before we saw our first waterfall, and it was the first of dozens...I couldn't even keep track, because the number of falls fluctuates depending on how much rain they've gotten recently (and there's always a good chance of that, with about 23 feet of rain a year). That waterfall is in the picture here with the red New Zealand flag, used on nautical vessels for whatever reason.

There was SO much to look at on this cruise. The fiord (if that looks funny, it's because most other places spell it as 'fjord') is almost 10 miles long, and has sheer rock faces coming out of the water on either side, 4000 feet up. On the creepy side, those walls go pretty much straight down too, about 1600 feet below the surface.

Of course, all of this spectacular scenery is thanks to the glory of geology in action. In the last couple ice ages, this region was heavily glaciated, and carved into a U-shaped valley, the way it is today. Obviously, there's a lot of evidence for it left. Among the cooler things were the gouge marks in the walls of the fjord. In this picture, they're the lineations going down and to the right, meaning the glacier flowed from left to right, towards the ocean.

Also quite awesome were the many hanging valleys around. These form when you have a smaller glacier flowing from higher up into a larger glacier. The small U-shaped valley, after the glaciers recede, end up sitting above the large valley, often with waterfalls flowing out of them. I just love the perspective of looking up and into one of these valleys, like the picture below, which gives you an idea of the sheer scale of these things.

Okay, okay, enough geology for now. After our sweet cruise, we went back into the dock and were boated out to another cruise ship, anchored in a nearby cove. The ship we got onto was the one we were originally supposed to cruise around on too, but apparently they may have hit some rocks when they got to close to this waterfall - something they usually do all the time. Anyway, this was the ship we were sleeping on for the night. Our group had cabins with two beds in each room - a sweet deal - but by far the best part was the buffet dinner we had that night. I'd forgotten what a huge, delicious, multi-course meal was like.

In the morning, we got a real taste of the sound, when me and 5 others got up at 6:30 and jumped in the water. It seemed like a terrible idea at the time - the anticipation was awful - and once I hit the water, I couldn't decide whether if felt like my skin was burning or freezing. After a frantic doggy paddle over to the back of the boat, I thought it would be a perfect complement to my impending frostbite to jump in the water again. While it may sound like suicide, from the point I got in a hot shower afterward, I was really glad I'd done it. After some kayaking around the sound, we headed for home.

Now, we would have gone for a little hike on our way home, but of course, it was raining. I have the pictures to prove it. Instead, we made for Dunedin a little earlier, but I think getting back to the city at this particular time, just to happen to see this, was worth it, don't you? I'll leave it at that.

Me = Bad Blogger

Okay, I'll admit it, I've been a bit lackadaisical about posting recently, but how can I be blamed? I wrote two papers this week, and had a bunch of reading to do for a tutorial. That's fair, right? Right.

Anyway, I'll continue the mid-semester break posting again next week, since I'm going to Milford Sound this weekend! It's in Fiordland, one of the most beautiful places on the South Island from everything I've heard (Andrew went there about a month ago and called it 'EPIC'), and even Kiwis love it, as compared to super-touristy Queenstown. See that link for mind-blowingness. And best of all, this is a Butler trip, so it's free. We're making 5-or-so-hour bus journey to Te Anau tonight, then tomorrow we're going on an overnight cruise on the Sound, complete with food, kayaking and all sorts of other goodies.

So yeah, after the weekend look out for some more posts about MSB and now, Fiordland. Sweet.