Days 95-102: The Richmond Alpine Track

Well, we made it. The Richmond Alpine Track was billed as the hardest section of the TA, and, having completed it, I believe the claims. I also really hope it's true, because if something harder is waiting down the road, I want to know about it now.

More than being tough though, it was beautiful. Easily the most beautiful section of the trail so far, so it was definitely worth the hard work, long days, bruises, and maybe just a few tears.


After leaving Havelock, we spent 8 days hiking along rivers and through the mountains to reach St. Arnaud, a small tourist village. We carried 10 days of food, one extra in case of bad weather, and one extra in case of unexpectedly difficult terrain. We were able to stay in huts every night, which really made it much easier - having somewhere comfortable to sit and sleep, a counter to make dinner, and no tent to set up and break down made it possible to do longer days, but still have a little time to relax at night and in the morning.

A typical 6 bunk hut. Waaay better than a tent!

The first two days were along the Pelorus River Track. These were the easiest days of the section. This was good, because the weather was awful on the first day - heavy rain for hours. Everything we had was soaked, and we didn't feel fully dried out for several days afterwards. We also had our first real taste of what the trail notes call "sidling," which means walking on a probably narrow track cut into the side of a hill. If the hill is not steep, sidling is great and easy. If, on the other hand, the hill resembles a cliff, it can be terrifying - a steep drop off on one side, a track wide enough for one foot (well, usually), and a steep hill on the other.

Lots of clothes drying going on in the hut after a rainy day

We've crossed lots of these swingbridges - slightly scary, but you'd have to work pretty hard to fall out

These plants are vicious - they even have thorns on the leaves. Almost impossible to get unstuck from one once it grabs onto you.

On the third day, we got up into the mountains for real after climbing up to 1500 meters. We walked most of the afternoon in a cloud, so we didn't get many views. The climb was not as bad as we expected, and we arrived at our hut early.

We met this bird at lunch time. It came right up to us, and started eating all the sandflies off of our shoes. Since then we've been trying to catch one and rope it into permanent sandfly eating duty

Another spooky beech forest

Weird cabbage-like moss growing on the beech trees

The poled route up from Starveall Hut on Day 3. Clouds everywhere, and sometimes it was hard to see the next pole

A little bit of a view under the clouds

Being manly

Beech forest gets even creepier with clouds

 The next day, we woke up to clear skies for, supposedly, the hardest day of the hardest section of the whole trail. The day before, we had some regret about not carrying on to the next hut, rather than stopping early. Once we left the hut though, that regret disappeared. We climbed up to a ridge, and were treated to amazing views of the surrounding mountain ranges, with an extra photogenic treat of low lying clouds in the valleys between them. Possibly the most stunning, amazing landscapes I've ever seen. Glad we didn't do this section in the clouds the day before.

Wow

Little Rintoul (left), and Mt. Rintoul (right) behind me

I wanted to just sit up here all day

 We spent that morning walking along the ridge around a valley. We had views all day of our biggest challenge - Mt. Rintoul and his little brother, Little Rintoul. Slightly intimidating, but finally seeing the mountains I had been stressing about for weeks, and seeing that they didn't actually look insane, made me feel a lot better.

Cool reflections off of the shale

Goats... one of them scared the crap out of me

View from the top of the Old Man summit

We stopped for lunch just before the final climb up Little Rintoul. From there, it was rocky and exposed, but mostly straightforward. There was one ledge that had me a bit scared, but other than that, the Rintouls hadn't lived up to their hype yet.

Rough terrain approaching Little Rintoul

A picture to scare Mom. It wasn't actually a cliff.

We got to the top, and I almost wet my pants when I saw the ridge between Little Rintoul and Mt. Rintoul. Craggy, razor thin, rocky, exposed, and several crazy steep sections. Luckily, the trail didn't go there. It dropped down behind them. It was very steep, and a bit slippery with loose rocks in places, but not too bad. Liz might disagree, and this may have been where some tears occurred, but she was a trooper and made it down with both mind and body intact.

You could see forever from the top of Little Rintoul

A view from the saddle between Little Rintoul and Mt. Rintoul

The climb up to Mt. Rintoul was pretty easy, but then I had another pants wetting moment as I eyed the trail down from there. I saw something that looked kind like a trail, but was too steep to possibly be a trail. Turns out that this time, it was, in fact, the trail. But, luckily, it was a short section, and not as steep as it appeared from afar. We made it past that, and then on down to our hut for the night. We met Peter there, a kiwi who did the north island last year, and is doing the south island this year.

Great views and cool clouds from the top of Mt. Rintoul

Steep section coming down from Mt. Rintoul. Tricky, but not as bad as it looks

Nice sunset over Tasman Bay from Rintoul Hut

Day five was scenic in the morning, and pretty easy. We arrived at the hut early, and hung out with Peter and Matthias, who is moving fast - he had done about a day and a half of our walking, and finished early. We were also eaten alive by sandflies, which we are coming to despise even more than mosquitoes.

Must be a warning for goats in the area

Day six was surprisingly hard and terrifying. We spent the morning sidling above the Wairoa River. It was like the Pelorus track, except the advanced version. The track was more narrow, the drop offs more steep, and for added fun, the trail itself was very steep in places. There may have been a few more tears shed in this section. On the plus side, the trail notes had us expecting a terrifying river crossing ("the trail crosses the river above a 4m waterfall. If you lose your footing, you go over the waterfall") which turned out to be really easy, probably because the water was fairly low.

More fun swingbridges

Steep trails above the river

On the left, the river. On the right, the "trail"

The famed "waterfall crossing" - quite easy when we were there

When we left the river, the transformation was amazing - we went from wet, thickly forested, terrain to dry, red, rocky, scrubby terrain in the space of about 10 minutes of walking. We had entered the Red Hills section of the Richmond Forest Park. That afternoon was less scary, but also not marked very well, and had a very rough, bouldery track. We didn't arrive at the hut until after 7:30, and were exhausted. That night we stayed with Dan, from the UK, who is doing just the south island, and Peter again.

Red Hills, with Mt. Ellis in the background

Amazing how much the landscape changed

Day seven was a lot easier, and we ended up at a nice hut with Peter and Dan. We discussed important topics, such as hunting deer from helicopters and what we were going to feast on when we got to town the next day.

Some huts are bright orange, we're not sure why

Rocky river valley

Day eight was short - we had an easy 3 hour walk into town, 2/3 of it on a road that wasn't very busy. On the way, we were stopped by two mountain bikers who said "You hiking the TA? Are you Joe?" Turns out I'm just the tiniest bit famous from posting my blog to the TA Facebook group. Kind of a weird feeling to be recognized like that. We chatted with Gordon and his wife for a few minutes, and made plans to meet up for a beer in town later.

Mmm algae

View of the Wairau River valley, coming down out of Richmond Forest Park

We passed this road on the way to St. Arnaud. It did not have guardrails.

We arrived at the Travers-Sabine Lodge to a distressing message - apparently our SPOT had not been going through, and our worried families had contacted the lodge. Up until this point the SPOT has been pretty good - almost every time we had checked in with it, it had gone through. But we think a combination of steep, remote terrain and low batteries (we had to change them in the middle of the Richmonds) led to nothing getting through for four days.

And, of course this happened just after I tell my mom that we're going into more remote areas, and she should start to worry if she doesn't hear from us for about four days. Sorry for all the stress everyone! We both feel terrible about worrying anyone who was watching for our check ins. This has kind of killed my faith in the SPOT, although hopefully it will be more reliable again with fresh batteries.

So we're past the (apparently) hardest part. I know there are other tough bits of trail in the next 1100 kms, but it sounds like, when they do turn up, they at least don't last eight days. From here we head into the Nelson Lakes National Park, which is a really popular tramping area. We're sure to run into more good smelling people there. I have to wrap this up though - the weekly all-you-can-eat bbq at the lodge is starting soon, and I need to mentally prepare to make them regret offering such a thing.