{"id":1389,"date":"2011-03-27T16:06:09","date_gmt":"2011-03-28T00:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=1389"},"modified":"2011-03-27T16:06:50","modified_gmt":"2011-03-28T00:06:50","slug":"new-zealand-arthurs-pass-national-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/?p=1389","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand: Arthur’s Pass National Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Many abject apologies for the total lack of blogging recently.\u00a0 We had some server difficulties which made it impossible to access pictures for about a month. Things are back online now, and there should be more frequent updates!<\/p>\n

After leaving Abel Tasman National Park on Christmas Eve, we drove south through the interior and finally along the west coast…..and drove, and drove, and drove.\u00a0 The south island is far less populated that the north island, and this is evidenced by the total lack of traffic, the overabundance of sheep and cattle, and the one lane bridges, (more on these next time).\u00a0 Our destination was Arthur’s Pass National Park. The weather was volatile, as usual, but we did get some partial clearing and a rainbow or two along the way.<\/p>\n

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After turning away from the coast, and heading back towards the center of the island, we were aiming straight for the Southern Alps.\u00a0 This is the mountain range that runs the length of the south island.\u00a0 It is large, remote, wild, virtually uninhabited and has very few passes over it.\u00a0 As you may have guessed, Arthur’s Pass is one of them.\u00a0 Eventually, we started our climb up through the mountains.\u00a0 It was late in the day, and a mist and fog was laced through the valleys and snaked around the peaks.\u00a0 We started looking for Gollum to poke his head around the next jagged rock outcropping looking for the One Ring.<\/p>\n

We finally arrived at the tiny village of Arthur’s Pass, and tried to seek out a Christmas Eve service.\u00a0 As it turns out, the tiny chapel in town only has services on Sunday mornings, and Christmas is no exception.\u00a0 So no Christmas carols for us.\u00a0 This was\u00a0 a pretty big blow for me.\u00a0 I had never been away from family before on Christmas, and never missed the Christmas Eve church service.\u00a0 To me, it’s an integral part of Christmas, and I wasn’t going to get it this year.\u00a0 There were tears and I threw a pretty big pity party for myself.\u00a0 Luckily, I have an amazing husband, who not only dealt with the pity party, but had a BACKUP PLAN.\u00a0 The backup plan, aside from heroically offering to drive another hour back to civilization after we had already set up camp and night had fallen, was to bust out dinner and the laptop.\u00a0 While I moped, Tom chopped vegetables for pasta sauce.\u00a0 Now remember, we were camping, so making nice food is a bit harder.\u00a0 We had a very yummy dinner of pasta with fresh veggies, which helped lighten the mood.\u00a0 To top it all off, Tom had loaded a bunch of Christmas movies onto the laptop that we brought with us, and we watched Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Charlie Brown’s Christmas. As silly as it sounds, eating yummy food and watching fun movies really did make Christmas Eve special.<\/p>\n

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The next morning, we had our own little mini-Christmas with presents that we had painstakingly brought all the way form home to exchange on Christmas morning.\u00a0 Tom got me a two person travel game that we played throughout the rest of the trip called Mr. Jack Pocket.\u00a0 I got him a new pair of underwear!\u00a0 Hey, I knew it would be about half way through the trip when we exchanged gifts, and I wasn’t exactly sure what the laundry situation would be.\u00a0 It was nice to have a bit of Christmas, even if it was sunny and very far from home.\u00a0 (The photos of Christmas Eve and Day aren’t fantastic…but they do tell the story!)<\/p>\n

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After our oh so delicious breakfast of Cadbury \u201cbreakfast bars\u201d, we headed out to the ranger station. For long, strenuous hikes, the rangers like for you to register your intentions, so that if you don\u2019t come back, they know where to go looking for you.\u00a0 The ranger station was open for only 20 minutes due to the fact that it was Christmas Day, so we needed to be prompt.\u00a0 When researching the hikes for our trip, the one consistently mentioned in the Arthur\u2019s Pass areas was the Avalanche Peak Trail linked with the Scott’s Track to make a loop.\u00a0 Now, the Avalanche Peak Trail was considered \u201cvery challenging\u201d and the Scott’s Track, \u201cmoderately challenging\u201d.\u00a0 Since it was December and we were feeling a bit out of shape, we decided to go out and back on the Scott’s Track.\u00a0 This was our first experience with the fact that Kiwis TOTALLY understate the difficulty of their trails.<\/p>\n

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We knew we were in trouble when the \u201ctrail\u201d seemed to be more or less a stream bed, complete with rocks, roots and boulders.\u00a0 In fact, the word \u201ctrail\u201d is a bit of an overstatement of the situation actually.\u00a0 However, it started in lush beautiful forest full of weird looking plants and more fern trees, so at least we had nice scenery to look at as we hoofed it up and up and up.\u00a0 Eventually we broke the tree line and were rewarded with jaw dropping views of the valley below and the mountains above.\u00a0 The higher we climbed, the better the views.\u00a0 We were right in the middle of the island, and had quite dramatic vistas where the mountains dropped off to the east and west, and where they climbed further to the sky towards the south.\u00a0 Magnificent.<\/p>\n

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The higher we got, however, the more exposed the trail was, and the wind was really whipping.\u00a0 There was some rain forecast to come into the pass in the afternoon, and we could literally watch the storm starting to come in from the west coast.\u00a0 Eventually it got a bit too windy for this red head, and I called for a lunch stop to reassess our situation.\u00a0 After dining on sandwiches and chicken flavoured chips, (yes, that\u2019s a real thing, and yes, they are delicious), we decided that the summit was just not in the cards for the day.\u00a0 It was still over a mile away with probably another 1,000 ft of elevation gain, and we could see the rain coming.\u00a0 I think Tom would have been up for it if I was willing, but he wasn’t too fussed about turning around.\u00a0 The views had been amazing, and we were ready to call it a day.<\/p>\n

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After our decent, the rain began, and we took refuge in the town of Arthur\u2019s Pass on the front porch of a convenience store, which conveniently, (hehe), had wifi that we could use to call our parents via Google Voice.\u00a0 Crazy technology these days!\u00a0 While we rested our aching feet, we were visited by several curious kea.\u00a0 These are the indigenous alpine parrot that lives in the Southern Alps of New Zealand.\u00a0 They are incredibly intelligent, very curious and often quite mischievous.\u00a0 They have been known to rip open tents, carry off hiking boots and unzip backpacks to get at hiker\u2019s hidden treats.\u00a0 They\u2019re fun and quite beautiful.\u00a0 It was fun to watch them fly and climb around.<\/p>\n

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We spent one last evening in Arthur\u2019s Pass before heading back to the west coast.\u00a0\u00a0 Up next, Franz Joseph Glacier, Queenstown, the elusive kiwi bird and even more rain!\u00a0 Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many abject apologies for the total lack of blogging recently.\u00a0 We had some server difficulties which made it impossible to access pictures for about a…<\/p>\n

Continue readingNew Zealand: Arthur’s Pass National Park<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11,6,17,12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas","category-food","category-hiking","category-new-zealand","category-travel","category-whimsy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1389"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1445,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1389\/revisions\/1445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amyalphin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}