Two weeks ago we woke up to a gloriously sunny day, and with just a few weeks left in New Zealand we decided it was too good to waste. We've been living just 45k from Glenorchy all winter and had never made the drive out, so we decided to hop in the car and have an adventure. Glenorchy is a little one horse town, with just a gas station, a general store and a few cafés, but it has some amazing scenery and was the setting for quite a few scenes in the Lord of the Rings. We had brunch at the Glenorchy Café and enjoyed pancakes and pulled pork sandwiches in their back garden in the sunshine and then took a walk down to the lake shore. From the lake we noticed what looked like a trail up one of the smaller mountains in the middle of the valley, so we stopped in the store to ask about it and found out it was a fairly straightforward hike.

After a short drive out of town we parked the car at the trail head, slathered on some sunscreen and headed into the trees. The first two-thirds of the trail was steep switch-backs through the forest that reminded us a lot of hiking in Alaska. The trail was well marked with orange blazes, despite the fact that steep terrain and heavy brush made it pretty much impossible to step off the trail even if you wanted to. Once we reached the tree line, however, the trail markers completely disappeared and the final one-third of the climb was an extremely steep scramble through the tussocks and spear grass and over loose rock. After an hour of clinging to clumps of grass to try and stay on the unstable and near-vertical mountainside we crested the ridgeline and realized we had missed the trail and had been following a goat track instead.

Once we were on the established trail the going was much easier and we made it to the summit just as the weather started to take a turn for the worse. The wind picked up and dark clouds started rolling in, so after 4 hours of climbing we only spent about two minutes on the summit before making a beeline for the treeline. The views from the summit were well worth the effort though, from 1,375 meters we had a full panoramic view of the Dart and Rees river valleys and Lake Wakatipu. The hike down had its own challenges and even on the right trail the terrain was very steep and we were constantly setting off little rockslides. Still we made much better progress on the way down, and reached the trees in about a quarter of the time it took us on the way up. The rest of the descent took about 2 hours and we reached the car just as the first serious raindrops started to fall. Our timing with the weather couldn't have been more perfect!

You can see more pictures from this beautiful hike here.

We officially reached the west coast around 10:30 the next morning and headed North. Our first stop was at Blue Pools, a 30 minute round trip hike to a suspension bridge over a river with some beautiful deep clear blue pools. From there we stopped outside Haast at the Curly Tree Whitebait Company to try whitebait pattys. Whitebait is just the term for a baby fish, doesn't matter what species, and you eat them whole fried up with a bit of egg and served with lemon and salt. We stopped at two waterfalls between there and the town of Fox taking the drive nice and slow to save gas and not miss any of the scenery. In Fox we hiked up to the glacier, but the Department of Conservation doesn't allow visitors to get closer than 200m from the ice. From Fox we drove on to Franz Joseph and splurged on a night in a holiday park so we could take our weekly shower.

The weather was a bit dreary the next day, but cleared up just long enough for us to hike out to the glacier viewing point, past the prettiest waterfall in New Zealand. We headed back to town to hunt down our friend Wyatt from Alaska who was working as a guide on the glacier, and after a quick lunch to catch up we got back on the road. 40 minutes North of Franz Joseph is a beautiful little DOC campsite next to Lake Lanthe so we decided to set up an early camp to watch the beautiful sunset over the water.

We slept in the next morning then made our way slowly to Hokitika, a cute little town with a lot of shops and cafes. We spent some time walking around, visited the Sock Machine Museum and ate lunch at Fat Pipis Pizza. From Hokitika we headed to Greymouth, but despite it being the largest town on the West Coast we couldn't find much to do. We had expected our trip up the coast to take a bit longer than it did, so we had made an appointment at Barrytown Knifemaking for Saturday. Unfortunately we made it to Greymouth on Wednesday so we stocked up on food and headed to Nelson Creek to the free campground to hang out for a few days.

After 3 relaxing days at Nelson Creek reading and napping we headed to Barrytown to forge our own knives in a full-day class. We started at 9:30 in the morning with a raw bar of steel and ended at 5 with a shiny new knife. We had to heat the steel in the forge until it glowed orange...too long and it would burn...then hammer it out on the anvil to flatten the blade and infuse the steel with more carbon. 3 or 4 rounds of hammering and then we heated it once more and quenched it in a bucket of water to harden it. From there we marked out the length of the handle and cut off the extra steel with a hacksaw. Then we took the steel to the belt sander to remove the black and polish the middle of the blade before we started on the handle. 

After we finished up with the knives we still had enough daylight left to explore Pancake Rocks, thin sheets of limestone with thinner layers of mudstone in between that make them look just like big stacks of flapjacks. Scientists aren't exactly sure what caused them to form that way, but they do know that they formed on the sea-bed and were later lifted up and eroded away to form the large towers and cliffs. We ended our day at a holiday park in Charleston and enjoyed another good shower to wash off all the ash from the forge.

The next morning we drove through Westport headed for the end of the West Coast road. We stopped in Seddonville to explore the Chasm Creek Walkway, a short bushwalk that went through an old railway tunnel and over several bridges. After our little hike we drove through Karamea to Oparara to see the limestone arches and caves. All the trails were at the end of a 14k dirt road and it was in pretty rough shape so it took quite a while to get out there. We hiked out to the Oparara Arch on a trail that ran parallel to a beautiful stream. The arch was massive...several hundred feet high and wide...but the best part of the hike was the friendly little bird we met on the way back. He followed us for several feet, flying past our heads and jumping from branch to branch next to us, and when we stopped and put out our hands he had no qualms about jumping into our palms and trying to divest us of our rings. By the time we finished the hike we were both pretty hungry, so we decided to cook dinner and save the cave hikes for the next morning.

We woke up to a bit of a drizzle, but considering we planned on spending the morning underground it didn't bother us too much. We made the short hike out to Crazy Paving Cave where the floor was covered in "bricks" of fine sediment that dried slowly and cracked to give it a cobblestone look. The walkway was wired off to protect the fragile formations and it only took a few minutes to see the whole cave. Box Canyon Cave, right next door, didn't have any of the natural "paving stones" and so we were free to explore every nook and cranny of the enormous cave. Steve quickly found the narrowest passage possible and we began worming our way into the depths of the cave. 

Our side-stepping and shoulder scraping paid off in the form of a small chamber full of massive hand-sized spiders. These cave spiders are apparently direct descendants of the earliest known true spiders and the sign at the entrance warned us to "look but do not touch," a sentiment entirely unnecessary in my opinion as I can't even imagine wanting to touch them with a 10 foot pole. It did make me slightly less inclined to want to go squeezing into any more small spaces, but when we made our way to the back of the cave I couldn't resist climbing up a large pile of sedimental clay deposited by who know what source of water. From the top of my 30ft mountain and I had a clear view of the massive cave around me, and I discovered another small passageway that led to the rear of the cave where we found a little colony of glow worms. We turned off our headlamps and enjoyed the artificial starlight for a few minutes before heading back above ground.

By the time we emerged into the daylight the rain had all but ended and our drive back to the main road was bumpy, but uneventful. We headed back south to Westport and took the road for Nelson, planning to slowly make our way from there to Christchurch and then back to the Queenstown Lakes area to start looking for jobs.

To see more of the West Coast's beauty go to the photo post here.

The weather over the weekend was a bit rainy so we spent most of our time just relaxing in the tent  and eating the best fish and chips ever. On Monday the weather started clearing up, so in the afternoon we booked a tour with Seal Swim Kaikoura. They took us out to the seal colonies on a small boat and we snorkeled with the fur seals. A couple of them came quite close, and it was great to see them underwater, they're so much more graceful and agile than on land. We also wanted to swim with the dolphins, but it was so busy in town that they were booked solid, so we figured it would be better to try to do it when we come back on our way to Christchurch in a few months.

In the middle of September Steve and I took a weekend trip to Juneau to do some sightseeing in Alaska's capital, and escape the tiny town of Skagway for a few days. We splurged on plane tickets rather than taking the 6 hour ferry so we could make the most of the time we had, and on our last day we woke up early and took a cab out to the West Glacier Trailhead to look for the ice cave under the Mendenhall Glacier.

The hike began on a relatively flat trail through the rainforest that provided occasional views of the glacial lake, still covered in early morning mist. About half a mile into the hike we left the main trail for an unofficial and "unmaintained" trail that, despite numerous warning signs about dangerous conditions, was just as easy to navigate as our previous route. We ascended and descended several rocky hills and crossed over several small creeks before emerging once more at the edge of the lake. As we moved farther down the path the vegetation grew smaller and sparser until the towering spruce trees were replaced by towering rock faces and thick undergrowth with massive boulders. 

For more pictures, see the Photo post.