This past weekend he tried murder-by-insane-hike in Arthur’s Pass, just a couple of hours west of Christchurch. Earlier in the week, Steve said that he’d found a great hike that would be about 4-hours-in, 4-hours-out. He said that it was an easy walk up a valley to some beautiful hot springs. And I believed him! He didn’t once mention that I should fear for my life on this “easy” weekend!
Saturday started out benignly enough – We headed out of town at the very decent hour of 930am, stopped for hot chocolate in Arthur’s Pass Village, and made it to the trailhead by about 1pm. I really should have clued-in at the trailhead when we noticed that the last time someone signed the trail log-book with their intentions was OVER A MONTH AGO, but I just figured that it had just been slow because it was still the middle of the winter season.
So, we headed out from the carpark at about 130pm, Steve with his 45-pound pack and me carrying my wussy 20-pound pack and we wandered through a farmer’s field before getting to our first river-crossing. We knew this crossing was coming, so we were quite happy to sling our boots over our packs, and trudge through the two channels of the thigh-deep Otira River. About twenty minutes past this first crossing, though, we ran into another river. And another. And another. By the third river crossing, I completely gave up being the geeky Canadian who doesn’t want to get her boots wet and just plowed right through. Steve followed close behind and by the twentieth-or-so river crossing, we didn’t even notice that our socks and boots were sopping wet.
But the adventure hardly finished there. After about 4 hours on the trail, we had only managed about ¾ of the intended hike and only had a couple of hours of daylight left, but we figured that we’d been slowed down a fair bit by the geeky Canadian behavior, so we soldiered on, expecting that we’d hit the hot springs with plenty of daylight to spare. And then we took The Wrong Turn.
There are two routes for the last bit of the Otehake Hot Springs tramp. The first one is the normal-along-the-river-straightforward route. The other is the death-defying, cliff top, bushwhacking, steep creek-bed route. I dare you to guess which route we chose. Even Steve admitted that this hike was the most technically difficult hike that he’d ever managed. On Monday, one of the guys at Steve’s work commented that he’d once taken his girlfriend along this route and she’d been in tears by the time they got to solid ground. So it was interesting. With the daylight failing us, and no end to the hike in sight, Steve started to get a wee bit stressed. He had some silly notion that we’d be stuck on the side of a dangerous cliff overnight and might get killed or somesuch thing. Steve’s funny when he’s stressed out ‘cause normally he’s the most calm, level-headed person on the planet. So it’s a bit entertaining when he gets into high-stress mode.
Anyway, just as the last of the light was leaving us, the trail started heading DOWN. Straight down a class-5 creek with a gradient of something like 1.5 - It was insane. At the bottom of the creek, we knew we had 3 waist-deep river-crossings left before getting to the springs, but only managed two before we gave up at set up camp. It was a cold night, but it made the short hike to the hot springs in the morning all the more worthwhile. There’s nothing quite like sitting in a natural hot pool, surrounded by mountains and trees, and knowing that the closest person is miles and miles away…
And then we hiked back. Same route. We escaped death AGAIN. And neither of us was limping Monday morning. Which is quite impressive. And we’re planning on going back in two weeks. (The easy route next time)
