Day 16 Saturday, Sep. 11 -- Arthur's Pass National Park

Synopsis

We drove towards up to the top of Arthur’s Pass (the main road between Christchurch and the West Coast) and took a several-hour hike up Avalanche Peak, which we did not summit due to an excessive amount of snow at the top. We butt-sled down a good-sized portion of the trail on the way back. Despite the clouds, it was a great hike with cool views. We also took a short hike to the Devil’s Punchbowl Falls before heading back to the West Coast, spending the night near the Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki National park.

Detailed Journal

We were up this morning at 7am. We had hopes of a clear day based on the skies overhead, so we decided to call the Mt. Cook Ski Planes just in case things looked brighter down there, as well. Unfortunately, the outlook was the same as they had described to us yesterday. They suggested we call today around 3pm and check for tomorrow. With that, we began the drive to Arthur’s Pass.

We stopped at the DOC office in Arthur’s Pass Village at around 9am to get their suggestions/advisement on the local walks. We were both interested in hiking to Avalanche Peak and the Devil’s Punchbowl Falls. The DOC advised us against doing the entire ascent to Avalanche Peak due to heavy snow on the trail and incoming wind storm in the afternoon. As an alternative, he suggested that we hike up Scott’s Trail to the bushline for some really cool views despite the clouds overhead. He said it was about 1-1.5 hours up the trail. Scott’s Trail essentially meets up with the Avalanche Peak Trail before hitting the Avalanche Peak Summit. It is generally regarded as being less steep from this side. He also told us that the Devil’s Punchbowl Falls Trail was closed, but that we could get some cool views of the falls by taking Cons Route for about thirty minutes.

So, at 10am with our Nalgene bottle full of water, a couple of apples, and some trail mix, we headed up Scott’s Trail. The ranger had described it as steep, which was a bit of an understatement. It was less of a hike, and more of a scramble up rocks and a stream that the melting snow made out of the trail. We gained elevation very quickly and soon the valley below looked small. The Devil’s Punchbowl Falls (in addition to several other smaller falls) could be seen when the trees cleared up enough to see across the valley. We started a bit below the falls, and before we knew it we were even with the top of the falls on the other side of the valley. At this point, the mountains on our side of the valley started to come into view. An impressive half-bowl of snow-capped peaks, including Avalanche Peak, which we would not be achieving today. The hike to the top didn’t look too bad had the weather been a bit nicer and the snow cleared from the trail. It was easy to see why it’s a popular climb. The bush started to thin out and the more it thinned out, the more snow covered the trail. Towards the top of our tramp, we would often fall through the snow up to our waist. We finally reached a ridge that provided a nice 360 degree panoramic of the surrounding mountains that reached all the way up to the cloudy roof above. It was quite windy and raining/snowing (just as the guy at the DOC office had said it would be), and lower clouds were rolling in fast over the mountains to the west of us, so we took a few quick pictures and headed back down quickly. The journey down was much faster. For the first part, we jumped down through the snow, often sliding down portions on our butts or “skiing” on the slick surface. We both felt like kids again. It was a blast! We past a couple who were on their way up (the only people we encountered on the trail), and made good time coming down. The roundtrip ended up taking about 3 hours.

When we got back to the van, we made a couple of pita-bread sandwiches to eat as we walked towards the base of the Devil’s Punchbowl trail. We only went about 500 meters on the trail to a bridge with a decent view of the falls, then turned back since the trail was closed not too far ahead. We took a look at the map of walking trails in the park and decided to hit the first little portion of the Bealey Valley trail to “The Chasm.” It was about a 30-minute round trip and not too exciting. We drove back over Arthur’s Pass towards Greymouth, stopping briefly at a lookout of Mount Rolleston, whose peak was shrouded in clouds. The view was still quite impressive. We reached Greymouth, via the Tourist Route of course, at about 4pm and found that most of the shops were closed (shops close early on Saturdays). We stopped in at the Jade Boulder to take a look at their jewelry collection and Jade Museum, which was mildly entertaining. We then went back to the van, grabbed the laptop and headed to DP1 Café for their internet connection. Unfortunately we couldn’t plug our laptop into the net, so we’d have to wait until another day to upload an update of the webpage.

On our way out of town, we fueled up and called Mount Cook Ski Planes again, who said that the next several days weren’t looking good. A real bummer, indeed. So, we headed north to Punakaiki for the night, just down the road from the Pancake Rocks and Blowholes, which we will checkout first thing the tomorrow morning. We ate our microwave “pies” for dinner, Lynette had the chicken and corn and Jason had the mincemeat (mutton, of course). Turns out, Lynette is not a fan at all of sheep meat. It’s not Jason’s favorite, but he doesn’t mind it. We also had our dehydrated green beans, which came out of the package looking like dried up spinach. After boiling for a bit, and loading it down with butter, they weren’t too bad, but not nearly as good as fresh, frozen, or even canned. Everything, of course, was a little more edible since we were washing it down with a bottle of Monteith’s original ale. We topped the night off with some apple crumb pie and Nestlé’s French Vanilla Latte, then planned our next day and worked on the journal.

Pictures

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