Even 3 hours away from Dunedin we had a difficult time finding a hotel room. The difficulty seemed to be standard on the South Island, which was kind of surprising since we never had any problems on the North Island. In Te Anau we used an i-station to find out that the only place that we could stay was basically a large hostel in a trailer campground. We had to get two different dormitory rooms, albeit next to each other and use a communal shower/bathroom area. It wasn't that bad, except that at about 2am some idiot who was probably smoking in their room managed to set off a fire alarm and the whole place had to be evacuated for ten minutes. I was glad i was wearing earplugs, because it was still incredibly loud.
We didn't get a great night of sleep but we were still excited to get back into Fjordlands. We had decided to do a hike with the terrible name of "Gertrude's Saddle." Normally if you asked me if i wanted to go to Gertrude's Saddle i would respond with a comment that only obliquely made sense, if at all, like "Do i look like Bertha?" I didn't know anything about the hike except where it started and that on the vague map it looked like it was less than 4 miles, maybe only a little more than two. In fact, i still don't know how long it is because every description of the hike lists it in terms of time (4 to 6 hours) instead of distance! According to more precise maps it looks closer to 2 miles in length, but is extremely steep after the first mile as it ascends close to 1,900 feet the second mile. Later i found out it's classified as "hard." It's fun though because it gets so steep you have to use these metal cables that are bolted into the rock so you don't fall back down.
The hike starts off near the Homer Tunnel, and the high alpine area, right at treeline, is home to the only alpine parrot in the world (at least that's what they tell me). The Kea was really cool, and there were lots of them hanging out tearing up the weather stripping of car windows and doors. They did it gleefully. And people thought it was cute and took pictures of the cute little guys destroying someones vehicle.
There was no way this Kea was letting anyone get near his awesome orange traffic cone.
Once again we walked through bizarre, interesting vegetation. It got hot fast. The dark rocks bake the valley floors like an oven. I appreciated the few patches of trees we passed through, and the initial shade. It was soon clear the hike was not going to be as easy as i thought. It seemed not to be maintained, even though it looked very popular. In no time at all the trail started doing annoying things like constantly splitting into numerous intermittent paths that wasted energy as the wrong ones were often chosen.
As i mentioned earlier, the first mile was slowly but steadily uphill, until the back of the valley was reached. Then it rose sharply up the side of the mountain, typically following a water drainage up to a high valley. The drainage area was similar to the Sierra Nevadas. Water slipped down wide expanses of smooth, bare stone. Things began to get large scale, and it was supremely nice day. I drew on the photos so you can see what i mean.
This monolithic cliff, athough it doesn't look it in this sucky picture, is 1,000 feet high and a mile wide.
Eventually the smooth rock faces became so steep as to be dangerous. At that point metal cables made an appearance. They were useful, particularly for going downhill. I imagine if it was icy it would be necessary to clip in to avoid dying.
We got up to a place called Black Lake where Maree called it quits. Her back was still bothering her, and carrying her pack up to that point had really irritated it. So i continued on up more smooth slabs with cables and then across a boulder field, until the trail suddenly ended. "Sudden" because the trail stops without warning at the edge of an enormous cliff.
Wow. I was not expecting this view. I'd been staring at walls of rock all morning, always going up hill, and then the top of the hill was actually the end of the mountain. I could finally see the tops of many of the nearby peaks. The exhibited a weird uniformity. The forest canopy was 3,000 feet below me (i was as high as El Capitan, in California).
A hiker stands near the precipice. The grass in the foreground on the right side of the image is actually the very edge of the cliff. I was leaning back against a rock wall to avoid falling off while i took the picture. It was scary. Depth perception and perspective are screwy looking because those streams below are literally straight down below. The wide angle of view is making it more exaggerated.
People coming down kept saying it was a spectacular view. They were right. The view was down a valley that connected to the main valley we had driven down the day before. That is, unless i was looking at the main valley and yesterday we had been in a side valley. I could see all the way to the ocean in Milford Sound. Thick tundra and grass continued to the very edge of the cliff, which was one of the reasons you couldn't see it coming until you were there.
Some of the new type of tundra i was walking on up on the saddle.
I walked up one side of the saddle to take a VR above this lake. At this point, looking back at the opposite side of the valley we had come from, the mountain tops looked within reach, if only there was a way to get to them.
I ate some lunch, explored the area to take a VR and started running back. More running, yes, because i knew i had taken some time and Maree would be tired of waiting for me. I got back down to Black Lake without blowing out my knees but Maree was gone, so i kept going without stopping. On the way down i performed this cool maneuver to pass a group of about 6 Germans on some steep crumbly, partially wet mountainside. I guess that was a mistake. When i was about 30 feet below them, they got all excited at started yelling gibberish. I thought WTF? and looked up at them, just in time to see softball size rock whizzing down at my head. I was not in a place where i could simply jump out of the way. It landed on top of my foot and it hurt pretty bad. So, think twice before you pass a bunch of fast hiking Germans, or they might try to kill you.
Maree was no longer waiting here. In this shot you can see one of the cables, right above the letter "I" at the beginning of this sentence. Again, this is a very wide angle shot so you can't tell how steep it is.
Some of the neat plants on the valley floor.
After this point we entered patches of trees pictured here. They provided cool shade and momentary refuge from the blazing bright sun. The road is over there at the base of the mountain, a dark line in the greener colored trees.
We got back to the car with just enough time to drive for three hours so we could get to Queenstown right at sunset. It was a great day. I didn't know till i was writing this blog that Queenstown, although a three hour drive, is only 35 miles in a straight line from the road that goes through Fiordlands!
