Alrighty, two weeks later and we’re back, right on time. I’ve covered some ground since the last update – I did a couple more hikes around Glenorchy and Queenstown, then went down to Fiordland for about a week, and now I’m up around Aoraki/Mt Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand. Since I know you all come exclusively for the hike descriptions, let’s get into it! Videos for this post can be found here.

McIntosh Loop

The McIntosh Loop is a pretty hefty hike that leaves right outside of Glenorchy. It goes past two huts, one of which was delightfully old and tiny, in stark contrast to the huts on the Routeburn. It starts steeply along a farmer’s fence with hundreds of bleating, spooking sheep, and then loops through alpine meadow to a river crossing and return to the track. As I sweated up the very steep initial section I could see clouds chasing me across the lake. Luckily I made it most of the way to the hut before it started raining, and hung out there for a bit to rest and warm up. Even more luckily, the weather quickly turned, and the rest of the hike was lovely and dry.

Lake Alta & Double Cone

The Lake Alta hike leaves from the Remarkables (the actual name of the mountain range outside of Queenstown, which really is quite dramatic and beautiful) ski area. It’s an easy stroll up to a nice alpine lake. From there, if you’re feeling frisky, you can hit the rocky trail up to a saddle, and then just rock hop up along a ridge to the summit of Double Cone. From there you get views of Queenstown and the lake, as well as a beautiful valley down the other side. The last bit to the summit is a serious semi-rock-climbing scramble, so that got the blood pumping.

At this point it was time to get myself down to Fiordland, which I’d heard so much about. Fiordland is the very southwestern part of the south island, known for, you guessed it, fjords. Fjords are inlets carved by glaciers, so they’re generally narrow with very steep sides and other glacial features (hanging valleys! waterfalls!), and they’re filled with water. They’re beautiful! Another distinguishing characteristic of the Fiordland area is that much of it is covered by temperate rain forest, since the wind blows in off the sea with lots of moisture that dumps on the park as it hits the mountains. Unsurprisingly it looks a lot like the other temperate rain forest I’ve visited on the Olympic peninsula, close to Seattle.

Unfortunately I didn’t get very lucky with the weather in Fiordland. What with it being a rain forest and all, it did rain the first couple of days I was there, and one hike in particular just didn’t really afford the views it otherwise would have. After that it was just way too cold for my current lifestyle, with a couple days of a high around 10 degrees and a low around 3 (that’s 50/36 Fahrenheit). At the height of summer! It was especially galling since the hike reports I’d been reading from the week before all talked about how hot and sunny it was. Speaking of, on to the hikes!

Key Summit & Greenstone Track to McKarrel Pass

This. Hike. Was. Awesome. As I mention in the video I took that day (the one that starts as a selfie), maybe it was just because I slept til 10am and was feeling great, but I had an absolute blast on this hike. The first portion is on the Routeburn track, which avid readers will remember I checked out in Glenorchy. The Routeburn crosses from outside Glenorchy down to Fiordand, so I hiked a bit of each side. One funny thing about that is that the Routeburn track itself is only about 32km long from end to end, but driving from one end to the other is about 300km. Geography! Anyway, after a short stretch on the Routeburn and a climb to the clouded-in viewpoint at Key Summit, I turned off the super highway and onto the Greenstone track.

Suddenly I went from a huge, flat, crowded gravel trail to a single file, occasionally flooded forest walk right along a lake where I didn’t see another soul. I walked along the lake for an hour or two before the trail crossed the huge valley I was in, through marsh and high grass, and then started to climb through the forest on the opposite side. Once I got up to the saddle it was a completely different feel. The whole saddle, and the winding valley down the other side, was a big wetland. The trail was a boardwalk through the marsh that wound its way gently down towards the other side, and it was just gorgeous. It’s hard to describe (or even really understand) why I was so struck by this landscape, but I found it just absolutely enchanting.

Lake Marian

This was the hike that suffered the most from the cloudy and rainy weather. The track is a relatively short, steep climb up to a hanging valley which contains the eponymous lake. Hanging valleys are valleys formed when two glaciers back up to each other (I think). If you imagine a big valley with mountains on either side, and then if you took an ice cream scoop and, about halfway up one of the sides of the valley, you scooped out a big bowl in the mountains, that’s basically what a hanging valley looks like. Search for a picture! I find them just beautiful – the walls of the hanging valley are usually extremely steep, the curvature is beautiful, the striations in the rock from the glaciers are often very prominent, and there’s usually a lake and/or waterfall involved. What’s not to like! In this case, what was not to like was that, after the hike started with relatively good weather, the entire hanging valley contained its own private cloud, which was determinedly raining down… well, rain. So what would’ve been lovely pictures and a slow lunch turned into a quick look around and heading back down. So it goes.

Gertrude Saddle

This was a very cool hike up to a saddle with beautiful views of Milford Sound and the surrounding mountains. It’s a really good viewpoint to see the snaking glacier trail. It also features several sections on steep slabs of rock, and accompanying stark warnings about how if you attempt it in the rain you will surely die. Luckily I did my research and scheduled this for a dry day, and am therefore still alive. There’s even a picture of me in there to prove it.

Piopiotahi / Milford Sound

Milford Sound is one of the biggest attractions in New Zealand. It is, in fact, a fjord and not a sound, but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, between the forest and the mountains and the general topology, the fjords are all quite inaccessible. Milford Sound is the only one you can get to by car, on a long drive up the mountains and down the other side which includes the 1.2km long Homer Tunnel. The thing that struck me about the tunnel was that the roof and sides weren’t smooth – they just kind of left them looking like they had after being blasted, I assume. Anyway, I took a 2 hour boat cruise on the sound to see the various peaks, waterfalls, and other beautiful natural features. It was lovely, though obviously very crowded and touristy.

Boyd Creek Tops

The last hike I did in Fiordland was to Boyd Creek Tops. This was a lovely, uncrowded stroll through boggy, mossy forest up to a boggy plateau. It was a gorgeous day and I had a really nice time soaking up some sun, looking at all the different shades of green, and pissing off tiny birds (once again, you can see this in the videos).

So that’s almost all the hiking I’ve done since the last update. I spent a couple of days doing administrative stuff, including lining up a buyer for my van, buying a plane ticket to Australia, getting in touch with family in Australia whose hospitality I’m going to abuse, and swinging back through Wanaka to abuse Victoria and George’s hospitality again (that one’s not administrative, just nice). Today I got to the campsite at Mount Cook Village and went for a nice quick stroll on the Hooker Valley track to Hooker Lake. It’s kind of a hike but really not, and I didn’t get any especially interesting pictures, so it doesn’t make the cut, because I make the rules on this blog! But I’ve got a couple of hikes planned for the next few days that are supposed to be tremendous, so I’m excited about those.

What’s it like living in a van?

I’ve thought about doing a “what’s it been like living in a van” post, talking a bit more about how I spend my days, what I eat, showers/laundry, how it smells in the van, etc… But I just haven’t gotten around to it, and now my van life time is rapidly coming to a close. The summary is that van tourism is a *huge* thing in New Zealand, so there’s a fair bit of infrastructure for it. Many towns have places where you can pay a couple of bucks for a shower, there are free or cheap campsites all over the place, lots of laundromats, etc… Since New Zealand is a country that invests in the public good you can pretty much always find a public toilet and go to a library for WiFi. There are public dump stations for your dirty water and lots of places to fill up on clean drinking water. So it’s really quite easy!

With all the hiking I’ve been doing, I’m generally a big hungry boy. I’ve got a two burner stove in the van (*such* an upgrade from one burner), and most of my meals are a starch in one pot and a big mishmash of veggies and beans in my big pan. So many beans. And lentils. Couscous is a lifesaver because it’s so quick and easy to make, and recently I’ve been treating myself to brown rice, a true luxury time-wise. While that’s cooking I’ll saute up an onion, then add some lentils, then when those are soft I’ll throw in, say, two or three of eggplant, cauliflower, green beans, or zucchini. Finally, once everything’s mostly cooked, I’ll dump in a can of curry or spicy chili bean mix. The whole thing makes what should be about 5 servings, aka 2.5 Phil meals. I’m also eating what friends recently informed me is a dangerous amount of canned tuna, so I’m now transitioning to canned sardines and salmon and mackerel.

That’s one positive aspect of van life – in trying to live cheaply, and with no reliable refrigeration, I’ve mostly been buying fresh vegetables, which keep just fine for a few days sitting in the van. So I’m cooking almost vegan (besides the canned fish and, I dunno, some milk in the canned curry or something) and eating out much less, and between that and the radical uptick in exercise, I feel really good.

There are, of course, some downsides to van life. One is that cooking and, especially, doing the dishes in my tiny (so, so tiny) sink, takes quite a long time. Hence slow blogs! I always think I’ll do one or two things in the evening, and then by the time I’ve made and eaten and cleaned up dinner, it’s already time for bed. It also does, in fact, get quite lonely sometimes. There are plenty of chances for a quick head nod or what’s up to other van travelers at a campsite, but more meaningful interactions are a bit harder to come by, at least if you’re a bit introverted like I am. That’s not to say I’ve been cripplingly lonely this whole time, just that there is also that part of the experience. Otherwise, besides worrying that my friggin wall panels are going to shake loose on a gravel road, I really can’t think of a whole lot of other downsides. It’s great! I’ve really been loving van life, and am excited to try it in a slightly different form again when I get to Australia.

So there you have it, in classic Phil fashion my “summary” of van life turned into more or less a full explanation, and now it’s past my bedtime. I’d promise another update before I leave New Zealand, but I’m not here to lie to you. We’ll just have to see how we go. I’m putting another small collection of miscellaneous photos I like below because, again, I make the rules on this blog, and if I want to post boring photos then that’s how it’s going to be. Videos for this post can be found here.