Time for another long overdue update. The perils of being too comfortable have struck again, but we’ll get to that. I’ve done so many amazing hikes since the last post that this update will be more of a photo dump with light descriptions, rather than the lovingly crafted hike descriptions of posts past. I’m sure my readership won’t be disappointed by that, as describing every twist and turn of every hike is certainly only interesting to me. Videos for this post (usually one or two per hike) are here.

Alex Knob

The first major attraction I visited after the last post was the Franz Joseph glacier, where there are a few solid hikes to climb up and get a view of the glacier. This was my first taste of a more truly touristy area, with lots of tour buses coming through, and many people taking helicopter rides up to the glacier. Anyway, the first hike I did was Alex Knob, which is a solid climb, but not advised in poor weather, since it climbs up to where the clouds are. Needless to say…

Robert’s Point

I was all ready to just cut my losses after my cloudy Alex Knob experience, but a friend had strongly recommended Robert’s Point so I finally figured I’d give it a try. It was a great recommendation! This was a really cool trail with several swingbridges (including a very long one and a couple quite high ones), cool rocks, and an awesome view.

Fox Glacier

In the next valley over from Franz Joseph glacier is Fox Glacier. Besides the ubiquitous helicopter rides there aren’t so many vertical hikes, but there’s a lake where you can take a lovely walk and get great views of the glacier. I took the opportunity to play around with my new camera, and that night ended up at a beautiful campsite by a river where I took some more photos.

Brewster Glacier and Mount Armstrong

This was one of the absolute best hikes I’ve ever done. It starts with 2 hours of very steep climbing up to one of New Zealand’s famous huts (kind of a similar climb to the ole Mailbox Peak hike, for anyone in Seattle). From there you can take an informal but well-traveled trail that winds around the base of the mountain and leads you to the very foot of the Brewster Glacier, with blue lakes, a sequence of cascading waterfalls, and really cool rocks. You can walk right up to the glacier! You can touch it! You can climb on it! And the whole scene is just stunning.

There’s another trail, also informal but much less well-traveled, which leads from the hut up to the summit of Mount Armstrong. Calling it a trail is, frankly, misleading though. It’s actually just that you can see the summit of Mount Armstrong from the hut, and you just…. walk straight up to it. Calling it walking is, frankly, misleading though. Mount Armstrong is basically just a gigantic rock pile, so it’s more that you freeform scramble your way up these massive rocks to the summit.

I had planned to get to the hut, have a snack, then summit Mount Armstrong, and then come down and see the glacier. Somehow I started toward the summit, followed the cairns that mark the trail, and…. ended up at the glacier. This was no punishment, and after a bit of debate I decided to still head up to the top of the mountain. The only bummer was that it had been perfectly clear all day, but I didn’t get up on top of Mount Armstrong until about 5pm, by which point things were starting to cloud over. The views were still astonishing, but the 360 degree panorama was obscured on and off in various places. Rough life.

Mount Shrimpton

Despite the great name, this is pretty much the only hike I’ve done so far that I wouldn’t recommend. It’s similar to Mount Armstrong in that it’s a very steep official trail up to a point, and then just almost no trail at all where you scramble up to the top. But this scramble was over either long, slippery grass or small, slippery rocks and scree, and there were several different places where it was steep enough that if you started sliding it wasn’t clear that you would stop (before the valley floor, at least). So I spent a bit of this hike fairly scared, and ultimately the view at the top wasn’t quite as spectacular as Armstrong. Though I was also still sore and tired from Armstrong a couple days before, and maybe I’m just getting spoiled.

Wanaka

After all that hiking it was time for a bit of a break, and as luck would have it there was a soft landing spot waiting for me in the hip lake and mountain town of Wanaka. When I resurrected this blog, somewhere in the absolute avalanche of positive messages (HA!) was an email from my uncle George saying that he had some friends in Wanaka and I should look them up when I got there. Inveterate mooch that I am, I opened up lines of communication immediately. And that’s how I find myself kicking back and watching the Australian Open here in George (not my uncle, his friend is also named George) and Victoria’s beautiful house in Wanaka. As my uncle George pointed out, that didn’t take long!

Though I’d never met George and Victoria before they’ve taken me in like an old friend and shown incredible hospitality. These few days have been just the ticket after a month of van life, from the practical (laundry and a shower) to the spiritual (warm and friendly company, interesting conversation, incredible food). Last night I crashed a dinner they hosted for their friends Jane and Charlie, where they made an astonishingly tasty spread (and I don’t just say that because 30% of my recent diet has been canned beans) and Jane gave me tons of recommendations for my next hikes. Today Victoria brought me along to the social tennis meetup at their club where I accidentally played for 4 hours and had an absolute blast. I may not be able to lift my arm tomorrow, but it’ll have been worth it.

Upcoming plans are a bit hazy. I think we’ll all go for a bike ride tomorrow, and then I may start getting back to the hiking life the following day. There are a couple of day hikes around here I’m keen to check out, and then many more sights to see: Queenstown, Glenorchy, Te Anau, Milford Sound, Fiordland, the list goes on and on. I (of course) don’t have much of an itinerary planned out so we’ll just see how we go.

You can see the videos for this post (one or two per hike, usually) here.