Scotland: Beinn Eunaich, Beinn a'Chochuill, Stob Dearg, Stob na Broige, Binnein Mor, na Gruacaichean, Ben Lui, and Beinn a'Chleibh (Munros 6-13)

In Scotland, during the summer, you want to spend as much time outside as possible (and as little time updating your blog) because the nice summer weather doesn't last forever! While there were a lot of exciting things going on around Glasgow this summer like the Commonwealth Games and visiting friends from the US, my friend Hazel and I spent a decent amount of time out in the Highlands bagging more Munros - which has now become an obsession of ours.

Beinn Eunaich & Beinn a'Chochuill
20 June 2014

This was was actually one I did myself. Hazel left for Greenland for a few weeks, so I was on my own and really itching to get out into the hills. The problem without a car is that you're reliant on the bus and train. Luckily for me, the train from Glasgow to Oban stops at the beautiful Loch Awe at the foot of four massive munros. I wanted to do all four, but having only gone hillwalking once on my own, I thought I'd at least get two in, so I started off down the road to the footpath up to Beinn Eunaich, which looked easy since it's a farm road heading into a water reservoir stored within the mountains, but it was steep and I was not prepared! I was doing the loop backward and started up the side of Beinn Eunaich which is this relentless grassy hill that ever so slowly arches its way to the summit - you know the kind where you think you're almost there, but then you see the summit still looming in front of you? But the climb was a breath-taking one with incredible views down over Loch Awe and the picturesque Kilchurn Castle on its shores. Well, eventually I made it to the top of this slightly cobbly top (989 m/3,245 ft) and was met with even more views down the other side (which to the north was a vertical dropoff!) over the waters of Loch Etive.

Great day for a hillwalk above Loch Awe. Looking north on the way
up Beinn Eunaich

The wind had started to pick up and bringing clouds in from the ocean. Nothing that really threatened rain, but low enough that the summits of all the mountains around me were shrouded in mist. I carried on down to the saddle between Beinn Eunaich and Beinn a'Chochuill, back into the world of visible distances, but then it was up, up, up to the next Munro. One the way, I passed an elderly man who'd walked in from the nearest town - a much farther distance than I walked from the train station - and was impressed he was still trekking on. I mean, he was old! Back in the clouds, I relied on the path being clear enough for me to see my way to the top of Beinn a'Chochuill (980 m/3,215 ft). It was dry and I had my lunch here, and the summit was high enough that the clouds going over the summit were thin, but it forced the rest of the clouds to flow between it and its neighbouring munros. Not being able to even see the rest of the 4-munro circuit, I decided it was best to head back to the Loch. After all, I had time to check out Kilchurn Castle and have a pint from the hotel at the train station! Overall, it was a nice day out in the crisp air, clouds, and two munros (nearly) all to myself!

(More to read below the slideshow!)



Stob Dearg & Stob na Broige
25 August 2014

Hazel finally returned from Greenland which made getting out to further-flung munros much easier with her car, and though the Matiz is a wee one, it got us where we needed to go. The weather was perfect for late August and we couldn't believe our luck and decided to head up north to the famous Glen Coe - probably Scotland's most recognisable valley (and home to James Bond's Skyfall, in the movie at least). I'd still never been and was pumped to go!

It took a few hours to get there, and another while carefully off-roading Hazel's car into the packed parking lot (did I mention Glen Coe is popular?). We started off to the trail heading up the ridge at the eastern end of Glen Coe - Buachaille Etive Mor. The walk up was brilliant! Right through a very rocky but gently sloping Coire na Tulaich. Having not been hillwalking for a few months, we were a bit nervous about whether we'd be in shape to do it, but the walk to the ridgeline was over before we knew it! We still had another few hundred meters to get to the summit, but we were there, enjoying the absolutely perfect views of the mountains of Glen Coe and over to Ben Nevis, Britain's highest elevation, looming a few ranges away.

Beautiful peaks of Buachaille Etive Mor, guarding the
entrance to Glen Coe. Who says that middle peak isn't a munro?
C'mon!

It wasn't much more effort to reach the summit of Stob Dearg (1,021 m/3,350 ft), and we were rewarded with one of the most breathtaking views I've ever seen. The summit is perched right at the end of the ridge and it quickly drops off on three sides leaving you with unimpeded views down into Glen Coe to the west and the immensely expansive Rannoch Moor to the east. There was not even a stitch of wind all day and the waters of Rannoch Moor lay perfectly still.

Back down the ridge we went, off to find the next munro, but there was a massive mountain between us and where the map said the next munro was. We were very disheartened to learn that not all mountains in Scotland over 3,000 ft are classified as munros as we trudged up the trail to the summit of Stob na Doire (1,011 m/3,317 ft) - which is boringly classified as a "munro top." Apparently, there is no exact definition of a munro other than that it must be over 3,000 ft (which Stob na Doire clearly meets), but a munro must also be its own mountain, standing prominently from any neighboring ridge or mountain. Stob na Doire was massive, but clearly not "a mountain in its own right" to be classified as a munro. We took a photo at the top anyway, in case the rules change in the near future and it earns classification as a Munro.

After Stob na Doire, it was almost a joke to reach the "summit" of Stob na Broige (956 m/3,136 ft) - almost 200 feet below the summit of Stob na Doire! But it still felt good to reach its top and look out over the road to Loch Etive. The weather couldn't have been better and after a quick bite to eat we started off down the mountains back to the car through a green valley lit up by the golden setting sun. It was a bit tricky getting the car out of the dirt parking lot as the ground was eroded where the pavement from the road ended, but we got her out and started the long drive back to Glasgow.

(More to read below this slideshow, too!)



Binnein Mor & na Gruagaichean
27 August 2014


We just couldn't get enough of the good weather and thought that while it lasted we should get out once more. The weather report called for clear skies, light wind, and no rain, so once again Hazel and I hopped in her "gran-mobile" and drove back up to Glen Coe. We wanted to do the Aonach Eagach ridge on the north side of Glen Coe, but after looking reports of its treachery, we decided against it until we had someone with us who could urge us along Britain's sharpest ridge walk. We decided to try some other ridge walks first before tackling that monster! So we drove through Glen Coe and then tucked east to Kinlochleven where we parked the car and headed off up to the Mamores peaks.

I'm not sure we realised just how long of a walk this was going to be. The first few miles are just a constant slight increase up a long valley (though with nice views over Loch Leven and the town below), until the path dumps you out into a beautiful valley perched up between Binnein Mor (our first destination) and the neighbouring munro Sgurr Eilde Mor. While the day was just as sunny as the previous walk, the air was not nearly as still and we were being buffeted by very stiff and strong gusts of wind! We worked our way up to the ridge overlooking Coire an Lochain where we had spectacular views of Ben Nevis across the valley, and even though our legs were about to give out, we still weren't at the top! Out of 282 munros, Binein Mor is the 28th highest and we still had to get there. We met some nice Dutch tourists and caught up with a single hillwalker who was bagging his 200-and-something munro. He reassured us that Aonach Eagach's bark was worse than its bite, but that with the stiff winds, it was better we weren't on that ridge. We made it to the summit of Binnein Mor (1,130 m/3,707 ft) which is perched on a little point in the sky with very steep and long drop-offs on either side! Vertigo definitely set in a few times, especially with the wind, but once we sat for some water, we got over it pretty quickly.

Chilling out on top of Binnein Mor. Munro #10!

We didn't linger at the summit long due to the wind. It was incredibly brisk and chilled us even with all the layers we were wearing! But we did have a little celebration as this was my 10th munro! We found a little spot tucked away from the wind for lunch, but since the walk was so long, we pressed onward along a nice ridge to na Gruagaichean and enjoyed a good scramble up to the summit (1,056 m/3,465 ft) where we celebrated once more as this was Hazel's 10th munro! Ben Nevis just stared us down while we had the rest of our lunch. Time was getting on, and the sun was already setting and we still had to get back to the car and drive back to Glasgow! The walk down the ridge was nice and grassy with stunning views of Loch Leven and we could even see the jagged ridge of Aonach Eagach in the distance. But the nice grassy ridge soon gave way to a massive, steep, pathless, grassy hillside that we essentially bushwacked our way through before reaching the trail that would return us to the car. It was definitely one of the longest walks I've done so far (almost 9 miles), but it was definitely worth it!

(There's one more section to read below this slideshow!)



Ben Lui & Beinn a'Chleibh
14 September 2014


The weather's been changing a lot around Scotland as Fall starts to set in but the weather report suggested we'd have clear skies and cloud-free munros over the weekend, so my intrepid munro-bagging-partner, Hazel, and I went for it. We drove west to Ben Lui, which was described as one of the finest munros in scotland with amazing views, but we had the feeling, as we parked the car, that those views would not be for us today. Clouds were low and the peaks of all the munros were shrouded in mist. But we were here so might as well go for it anyway!

Carefully keeping to the path in the fog along the ridge to Ben Lui

We forded the River Lochy and trudged our way up through the muddy pine timber forest which was nice as there were a few waterfalls and the leaves were already changing colour. But soon we found ourselves in the massive bowl-shaped valley between Ben Lui and Beinn a'Chleibh, both covered in clouds and a brisk wind blowing through the gap between them. We headed up east along a long, steep, grassy slope that just kept going, and going...and going, until we were in the clouds. But the grass stopped and was replaced by broken boulders and alpine-climate plants. We'd reached the ridge that would take us to the summit, being careful not to lose our footing lest we trip and fall down the cliff into the valley on the other side, which incidentally is where a 4-person aircraft tragically crashed a few decades ago. We wanted to see if we could find the wreckage, but the clouds were too thick and we didn't want to go wandering off trail.

After a few fun scrambles and photoshoots, we made it to an open plateau with a cairn that we thought was the summit, only to realise we had a little further to go before reaching Ben Lui's true summit (1,130 m/3,707 - the same height as Binnein Mor, but ranked 29th). It was too cold and damp to linger there much longer so we headed down to the bealach and it was pretty much a hop, skip, and a jump up to the summit of the neighbouring munro, Beinn a'Chleibh (916 m/3,005 ft) which was cloud-free for a while. But there was no reason for it not to be cloud free - after all, Beinn a'Chleibh is the 281st highest munro out of 282! So, not spectacular, but fun to check it off the list nonetheless. Clouds eventually did roll in and we never really got a good clear view of Ben Lui all day. We ran into many people who were doing one or two more munros after Ben Lui and Beinn a'Chleibh, but I'd injured my knee running the day before so we decided to head back to the car, which didn't take long, and it was nice not having a three-hour drive back home. Not sure how many more nice days we'll have, but so far, nothing can stop us!

New Zealand: Queenstown and Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park

Travel Dates: 4-14 December 2013

Right, so continuing on this trend of finally writing backed-up blog posts, this one's a monster simply because of the photos I had to reorganise to get here! Last December, though, I had the great pleasure of being able to tag along and help teach a glacial geology and geomorphology field trip to the central region of New Zealand's South Island. Having been to the North Island and having experienced the northern- and western-most points of the North Island and explored the watery wonderland of the Bay of Islands, I was totally pumped to get to some of the more staggering New Zealand scenery we all know from Lord of the Rings!

After three hours of one of the most turbulent flights I'd been on in a while (and I'd just return to Sydney from a trip to Denver and Vermont), we landed in Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. The flight in over the Southern Alps was beautiful. Being early December, New Zealand was just emerging from winter and all of the mountains still had substantial snow on them! We wasted no time in picking up our three passenger buses and trailer, and with 24 student in tow, set right off out of Queenstown to the Kawarau Bridge, famous for being the original bungee jump in New Zealand. Of course, we were there to learn about New Zealand's past glacial geology, climate, and geomorphology - or how the landscapes develop and change through time. Along the first few days the students would be presenting small mini-reports on different aspects of these topics and we weren't letting any second go to waste!

After learning about New Zealand's loess deposits, accumulations of wind-blown dust that were deposited under colder dryer conditions during the last glacial period, we headed off the main highway, taking the Crown Range Road to Wanaka where we'd spend the first night. We stayed at a small hostel/motor park near the shores of Lake Wanaka, which fills one of the many glacially-sculpted valleys east of the Southern Alps, including Lakes Wakatipu, Ohau, Pukaki, and Tekapo. Early the next morning, I got up early for a short walk along the lake, looking out across to the beautiful Mt. Alta rising across the shores. Our destination by the end of the day was Mt. Cook Village in Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park, but we had plenty of stops to make before calling it a day.

Purple lupin growing at the Clay Cliffs near Omarama

We took Lindi's Pass toward Omarama before doubling back across the Ahuriri River to the Clay Cliffs, a geological formation of very soft rocks exposed along the active Osler Fault. The cliffs are a deeply dissected feature that is the site of an ongoing battle between the uplifting tectonic fault and erosion. We stayed here for a short while and had lunch along the Ahuriri River, a beautiful place to dip your feet in the refreshing water and have a bite to eat. We made one more stop to the former river outlet of Lake Pukaki before it was dammed and diverted but also had time to stop at the southern end of Lake Pukaki to get a sense of what we were in for for the next few days.

Aoraki/Mt. Cook (3,724 m/12,218 ft) looming over Lake Pukaki

The weather was bright and sunny and fairly few clouds against a blue sky, and from here, far off in the distance, was the brilliantly majestic peak of Aoraki (or Mt. Cook), the highest point in New Zealand at 3,724 meters (12,218 ft) above sea level! We had to stop here because the view was simply breathtaking, and because Aoraki is apparently often shrouded in clouds, we thought this might be our only chance to see its entire height! And I should mention Lake Pukaki because it was amazing in its own way. There is so much powdered rock, crushed by glacial erosion that gets washed into the lake that it takes on a very milky appearance which reflects the sky on a sunny day, turning it a turquoise colour that is really only best matched by a Crayola crayon of the same colour!

It was windy, so we got back into the vans and started the fairly long drive down the Mt. Cook Road toward Mt. Cook Village, the views along which were absolutely stunning. I'm jealous of the students in my van because they got to stare out the windows the entire time, while I had to keep my eyes on the road. But if you want a fun road to drive along, this is one of them. It just rolls and wraps its way long the lake and the ever-impressive Southern Alps just keep looming in the distance! Well, if the drive wasn't thrilling enough, once you're past the head of the lake, you begin driving through the wide and flat river valley that drains the Mueller, Tasman, and Hooker Lakes which are all fed by glaciers. And while you can't see the glaciers, as they are hidden by huge glacial moraines and tucked away around the mountains, you do see the incredible wall of ICE that is known as the Huddleston Glacier, which frankly, I thought was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen! It's just this massive, steep wall of ice that you just couldn't stop looking at!

Looking down to the Mt. Cook Village from the Red Tarns. The Huddleston Glacier is the big wall of ice plastered
on the side of the Southern Alps in the distance. Mueller Lake and its end moraine seen in the bottom of the valley.

Aoraki (the Maori name for Mt. Cook) features prominently in Maori history. The Maori people believed the South Island to be a canoe that Aoraki and his brothers were using to voyage the world. It tipped and the brothers climbed onto the top of the overturned canoe and turned to stone. Geologically, Mt. Cook is positioned in the Southern Alps which are the result of convergence along the Alpine Fault which is the boundary between the Indo-Australian tectonic plate and the Pacific plate. The fault is mostly a dexteral strike-slip fault, but there is oblique convergence which has uplifted the mountains on the South Island. It is the Alpine Fault that causes most of the earthquakes in New Zealand, and also as it cuts across the north part of the South Island it goes offshore east of the North Island where subduction of the Pacific plate under the Indo-Australian plate results in the volcanism the North Island is famed for!

Well, while all of the students were excited to get out of the vans and start eating and drinking for the night, I had picked up a wee trail map and having heard that weather is rarely clear in the park, I thought I'd take advantage of it by doing a short hike up to the Red Tarns, some small ponds perched high up the mountains above Mt. Cook Village. Luckily summer in the Southern Hemisphere means plenty of light late into the evening, so I didn't have much to worry about - other than breaking my ankle with no one around! Well, the hike up was unrelentlessly steep, but I eventually made it to the tarns, which in and of themselves aren't that impressive, but you don't make that kind of hike to look at a pond, but for the view of the rest of the valley. Up here, you're so high up above the valley that you can see up and over Mt. Wakefield to Mt. Cook as well as up the Tasman River valley to The Armchair and Malcher Peak. The weather was holding up, so I decided to climb even higher to the shoulder of Sebastopol, the lowest peak in the National Park. Catching my breath, I decided my hunger would win over my want to reach the summit, so I raced down a big scree slope and headed back to dinner at the Mt. Cook Village.

The Huddleston Glacier and Mt. Sefton (left), Aoraki/Mt. Cook (right), and the Mueller
Glacier's end massive end-moraine (centre-bottom)

Weather was clear the next morning again, blue skies and few clouds, so I walked up toward The Hermitage - the famously fancy resort hotel in the National Park that looks directly over to Mt. Cook - for a few morning photos before joining back up with the students. We drove up to the Mueller Glacier overlook for a few more student talks. During one of the talks, we all of a sudden heard this huge crack that sounded like thunder, followed by a cascade of booms and crashes. It was so startling that everyone turned their heads to the glaciers behind us. Though we couldn't see anything, it was pretty obvious we'd just heard a massive block of ice break off the Huddleston Glacier, falling down onto the Mueller Glacier below. Coincidentally, the student giving his report was just talking about ice falls. Talk about timing!

Icebergs from the Hooker Glacier floating in Hooker Lake

Once the student talks were done, we started the long hike up to Hooker Lake and the Hooker Glacier that sits right at the base of Mt. Cook. We continued to hear booms of breaking ice behind us during the hour-long walk up to Hooker Lake, which was cool, but the weather turned, which was not. We could see the clouds rising up from the west and flowing over the mountain tops to our left as the wind picked up and threatened to rain us in. But, being geologists, we go out in anything and this certainly didn't stop us and the last few students presented their mini-reports. You couldn't really see the mountain peaks by this point, but you could still get great views over Hooker Lake which was just chockers full of icebergs in various stages of melting, all shapes and sizes! By the time we left Hooker Lake, the weather had cleared up once again, permitting us to drive around to the next valley over to the Tasman Glacier and Lake.

Lake Tasman is a recent feature to the landscape, having only formed in the last 40 years after the Tasman Glacier (left)
retreated to its current position!

Lake Tasman is impressive, if not for its size (7 kilometres long!), for the fact that 40 years ago, it was not there! Forty years ago the Tasman Glacier's terminus was at the lookout most visitors take the short walk up to from the car park. Now, however, Tasman Glacier ends in the lake and icebergs calve off its front. Though the retreat is impressive and offers the opportunity to take speed boat tours around the lake, it just means our changing climate is killing off these magnificent glaciers!

We headed back out of Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park toward the town of Twizel where we'd be based for the remainder of the trip. Over the next 5-6 days, the students would be working on small group projects in the area, and we, the trip leaders, would drive them wherever they needed to go. But first, we had another stop to get to up beyond Lake Ohau on the other side of Twizel. By the time we got beyond the shores of Lake Ohau, the weather came back with a vengeance.

The next day was fairly uneventful. The rough weather had cleared up and the students used the day to plan their projects. Twizel itself is a pretty dull town. It was founded as a working camp during the construction of the dams that were built on Lake Ohau, but remained a popular stopover point for travelers going to Mt. Cook (not to mention cheaper than staying in Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park. While there are some nice coffee shops and cafes in the main shopping area, there isn't much to speak of - especially of the locals. While eating dinner at the Power Station Bistro I noticed one man down his beer outside and promptly walk to a short brick wall and urinate on it! Welcome to Twizel, indeed!

I played chauffer for students heading up back into Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park over the next three days to collect data for their projects. Depending on which group was where, and when they needed to get to their next stops, I often had anywhere from an hour to a few hours by myself before I had to meet any of the students and move them. This was nice because it gave me time to do a few shorter walks and explore the park a bit more. One of the days I walked up the Mueller Glacier trail to see the head of the glacier which had retreated around the corner of its valley, out of sight from the main view point. Right at the bottom of the Huddleston Glacier. No one else was up this far and I enjoy sitting in the sun in the middle of this amazing landscape. I felt so fortunate to be able to experience it in all its sun-shiny glory!

Suspension footbridge over the Hooker River. Aoraki/Mt. Cook shrouded in clouds

I also joined a few student groups on their quests to collect field data. This varied from walking up along the crest of the lateral moraine along the edge of Tasman Lake looking for students who had gotten well-ahead of me, helping students measure boulder dimensions in streams coming down from creeks draining the steep valleys to the west of Mt. Cook Village, and taking one more walk up to the iceberg choked Hooker Lake.

I had no plans to see any more of the South Island on this trip, and though I was a bit let down about not being able to do that before arriving, I don't think I could have asked for a more amazing experience that just being able to wander and explore the Hooker and Tasman Valleys in Aoraki/Mt. Cook National Park. It really must be one of the most spectacular landscapes I've been to. It's drastic, but accessible; staggeringly expansive, but easy to get around; busy with tourists, but big enough that you don't have to go far to get away from them!

Pianist playing his own music during a beautiful Queenstown sunset
over Lake Wakatipu

The students had a final day in Twizel to write up and hand in their reports, so the last day near the mountains wasn't all that exciting. Finally, we were ready to leave Twizel and made the long drive back to Queenstown for our last night in New Zealand. We arrived early afternoon and many of us had previously signed up to go whitewater rafting to celebrate the end of a long week. We dropped our things off at the hostel and met down in the town at Queenstown Rafting where we were fitted up with wetsuits and packed into large vans with a trailer packed with rafts in tow behind us. This is no big deal, except to get to the launch site, we had to drive down Skippers Road, a long, very tightly-winding road that is cut into the side of mountains with very steep slopes! To put it in perspective, if you sat next to the window, you couldn't see the edge of the road and it looked like there was nothing beneath the van! In fact in one or two places, there almost wasn't anything beneath the van... One tight turn has been so abused that the edge of the road has eroded to the point that side of the van on the inside of the road gets scratched by the rocks sticking out of the slope! At another point on Skippers Road, the road appears to be intact, but when you look back up at it from the river, you see that a big chunk of rock, that would otherwise support the road, has simply fallen away! If you're afraid of this kind of driving, there's no hope for you because no matter which side of the van you sit on, you're going to be exposed to one of these hazards!!!

But the rafting itself was awesome! I've only been whitewater rafting once before on the New River in West Virginia where the water levels that year were low enough that the big rapids had diminished many of the rapids, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Well, the Shotover River is pretty much a narrow, narrow canyon with rocky cliffs on either side and in most places the river is as wide as the raft! I've got to give it to the raft guides because they have some of the hardest jobs in the world in keeping us all safe! While we didn't flip, like we did on the New River, there were so many times I thought we were goners! Two girls did fall out at one point, but we safely got them back on the raft just before they were pinned between the rocks and raft! The trip culminates a tunnel that was blasted into the mountianside to funnel water for gold mining in the mid-1800s, the final rapid is shooting down the mill run right where every raft in front of us was waiting and watching, hoping someone would flip. We didn't, but had a great time and it was an awesomely adventurous way to end a week in New Zealand!

That night was spent out in Queenstown watching a beautiful sunset over Lake Wakatipu and eventually some mechanical bull-riding in one of the town's innumerable options of Western/Cowboy-themed bars. Flights back to Sydney the next afternoon gave me a little bit of time to walk around the local Saturday markets along the lakeshore in what ended up being a very nice sunny relaxing way to end my last visit to New Zealand in a long time! Definitely not the last, but a long time at least!

Scotland: Ben Lomond and Ben Vane (Munros 1 & 2)

Ben Lomond
 
Date: 15 April 2014

A few weeks back, Glasgow experienced a rare weather phenomenon: we had eight days of beautifully sunny and warm weather! The first of these days, we'd been coming out of rainy doldrums and being Scotland we weren't sure how long the sun would stay, so even though it was a Tuesday, a friend of mine from the University and I decided we'd take advantage of the weather while it was still good, made plans, and drove out to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, taking a small one-lane windy road around the north shore of the famous lake to the foot of Ben Lomond - the southernmost of the Scottish Munros.

Scotland is famous for its brilliant hillwalking everywhere, but especially in the Highlands. Here, any peak that is over 3,000 feet above sea level is classified as a Munro - anything less is classified as either a Corbett (2,500-3,000 ft above sea level) or a Graham (2,000-2,500 ft asl). There are 282 Munros, and anyone who attempts to climb them all is called a Munro Bagger. Having never done any hillwalking in Scotland before (save maybe the walk to the Old Man of Hoy in the Orkney Islands), I figured what better way to claim my first peak than to hike up to the summit of the southernmost Munro as well as being the peak with the name of the National Park it is in!

The walk took us about six hours, round-trip, and while it was not a challenging hike, per se, it was a beautiful one, nonetheless. Ben Lomond is tall (974 meters, or 3,196 feet above sea level) and since you start very near sea level, the whole elevation is yours to climb. Well...climb is a bit of an overstatement. The walk up Ben Lomond is a pretty easy ramp along a well-marked trail. About three quarters of the way up, the ramp does steepen and the going gets a bit slower, but it's still not challenging if you take your time.

Beautiful views of Loch Lomond all the way up to the summit

My friend and I kept a good pace the entire way up to the top. We had to since even though the sun was out, the wind was a bit chilly, but the views from the walk of both the summit - which would be hidden by clouds for short periods of time - and the beautiful lake beneath us were stunning! There was still snow up at the top on the steep, north-facing slopes, and though we enjoyed it at first, we quickly steered away from it, realising that the possibility that any of the snow packs could collapse and avalanche down the mountain was pretty high!

By the time we got to the summit, the weather had cleared up enough for some good photos and the views of the Arrochar Alps across the lake and the Trossachs to the north were great! We had lunch up there shortly after 1:00 pm, but didn't stay long since we still had to descend. Rather than going down the same way we came up, we headed down a smaller ridge that ran parallel to the lakeshore, bringing us right back to the parking lot. Once down from the top, the wind died down a bit more and the clouds all but vanished. We stopped for a wee snack and watched a Royal Air Force jet fly through the lake valley below us for some sort of training mission. By the time we got to the car, it was nearly 4pm so we had one last little snack on the lakeshore before heading back into Glasgow.

(there's more below the Ben Lomond slideshow!)



Ben Vane

Date: 19 April 2014

Later on in the same week - again, the weather couldn't have been better - a larger group of my friends from the office and I carpooled out to the south side of Loch Lomond to climb Ben Vane, another Munro, 915 metres (3,002 feet) above sea level. While not as high as Ben Lomond, Ben Vane offered up some extra challenges. Mainly, we had to find our own path from the access road up to the path on the trail guide, and higher up the trail got quite steep and we zig-zagged our way up between large rock outcrops, scrambled over boulders and other rocks, and slipped our way over some small snow patches, all the while dodging sheep and trying to keep our feet dry while walking over purely soggy ground!

One of the many sheep that dotted the hillslopes on the way up Ben Vane - keeping a keen
eye on us as we summit the Munro. Ben Lomond in the background.

It was great, though. We started off at the Inveruglas parking lot on the shores of Loch Lomond and had to walk up a very long access road past a hydro power station. We couldn't find the trail from the access road up to the ridge we were supposed to follow to the summit so we just marched on up a big long slope, dotted with boulders and massive rock outcrops sticking up from the water-saturated muck beneath our feet. We had perfect views over Ben Lomond and Loch Lomond and with plenty of shaggy sheep running every which way, there were plenty of pure-Scotland moments!

Once we got to the top of the ridge, we followed its gradual path up to the base of the real mountain. Here, the path took steep hairpin turns with large steps up over rocks with a big outcrop every so often that offered a good place to take a break for a moment and steal some fantastic views of the surrounding Arrochar Alps!

The walk was a long and steep one - a bit more strenuous than Ben Lomond. It was one of those mountains that every time you think you reach the summit, there's more to go! The path eventually gives way to some scrambling up and around some rocks, down some rocks, and over some snow banks, but we finally reached the top and were rewarded with stunning views of Ben Lomond, Ben Ime, A'Chrois, the Cobbler, and Beinn Narnain. The schist rock that underlies the Arrochar Alps stuck out in many places at the summit, showing off its beautifully warped and metamorphosed structure, giving the whole summit an incredibly unique geologic feel!

The thing with Munro Bagging (at least from what I've experienced in the two hikes I've done), is that you don't linger at the summits for very long. We stayed up at the top for maybe fifteen minutes before turning right back around and heading down. But the whole walk was well worth it. We had a good group of people, a fantastically nimble dog, and stunning weather! And I can't wait to tick-off the other Munros of the Arrochar Alps off my list soon!

Australia: Kings Canyon / Watarrka National Park

Travel Date: 20 August 2013

We didn’t have to wake up as early this morning as we did the previous morning, but after an early rise, and a quick pack up of our swags and gear back into the bus, we made the short drive to Kings Canyon in Watarrkah National Park. Kings Canyon lays claim to being the world’s largest canyon, surpassing all others including Arizona’s Grand Canyon, because “technically the Grand Canyon is a chasm.” I had even read that Kings Canyon was even more impressive than Uluru, so needless to say, my expectations were very high!

From the parking lot, Adam pointed out the canyon which cuts its way through the sandstone ridge to the north, and to the trail that we were taking which follows the rim of the canyon. Looking at it from the parking lot, it was clear that my expectations of grandeur were going to be dashed. Semantics aside, the canyon is definitely not bigger than the Grand Canyon (not by a long shot!) and in my opinion, not more spectacular than Uluru.

Panorama of Kings Canyon in Watarrka National Park

 With that said, Kings Canyon is marvelous! The trail heads up Heart Attack Hill to the top of the rim and winds in and out and between impressive sandstone formations that have weathered over time into these dome-like features. Erosion along joints – natural fractures in the rock – wore down the rock in grid-like patterns and some of these more deeply-eroded joints are what separate one dome from the next. And in the extreme case of Kings Canyon, stream erosion cut down hundreds of metres into the sandstone carving out a spectacularly beautiful canyon filled with eucalypts and other green trees. You might even recognise the landscape of Kings Canyon if you’ve ever seen the seminal Australian film, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert as this is where the shot of the three drag queens stand on the Canyon’s edge in their fabulous dresses and feathery headwear!

Dome structures created by erosion along joints in the sandstone dot the
landscape of Kings Canyon in Watarrka National Park

The trail eventually takes you to the narrowest part of Kings Canyon where you descend a few flights of stairs to The Garden of Eden, an aptly named oasis where water collects in large permanent water holes spanning the narrow canyon width with towering rock cliffs rising above your head. Palms and more tropical gum trees fill the lush Garden in stark contrast to the scrubby and white ghost gums growing up on top of the canyon. The ponds were a great place for a small lunch and break from the sun, but soon enough we headed up another flight of stairs and continued to an amazing canyon lookout where we could belly up to the edge of the canyon and look straight down the cliff faces!

The trail finishes by coming down the mouth of the canyon opposite Heart Attack Hill and those of us at the front of the group lamented as we waited for the stragglers who were taking photos of every single flower, rock, small lizard, spider, or whatever they could find. Adam was about at his wit’s end trying to keep us on schedule, but we eventually mustered back at the bus and we began the 6-hour drive back to Alice Springs.

Looking up the trunk of a ghost gum in Watarrka National Park

We had yet to use the bus’s 4WD capabilities, but instead of taking the paved road back to the Stuart Highway via the Lasseter Highway, we bounded off the pavement making a bee-line straight back to the Stuart via a series of dusty, dirty, bouncy, bumpy dirt roads that no normal vehicle would survive! It was great fun and the vibrating floor provided for a nice foot massage after three days of intense walking! Everyone seemed to be enjoying it except, of course, for the Canadian fashionista who clearly had no concept of what four-wheel-driving was all about. At one point, the bus came to a stop as Adam had to get a clear look as to how best to navigate through an area of soft sand. The fashionista opened her eyes as we stopped, looked out the window and in a moment that defies all logic turned to me and asked, “Is this Alice Springs?” There were no buildings to be seen anywhere around us and we’d only been on the road for a few hours, and in disbelief at her question just stared at her and shook my head. “We’ve still got at least three hours,” I said. She just scoffed and started getting all worked up again at how annoying it was that we weren’t there yet, and what was this bumpy road? She couldn’t even get a good nap! While she was a very nice person, surely with good intentions, I could not wait to get away from her negative attitude. It just astounded me that someone could be so unprepared and not have even the slightest idea of what she was signing up for when she booked her trip. She was a trooper and did everything the rest of us did with a smile, and a joke, and funny stories, but I was glad that in a few hours time, I was not going to have to listen to her complaints ever again!

The rest of the drive back to Alice Springs was pretty uneventful. We didn’t make any more stops, and we didn’t see any more wildlife, but that was alright. Once we were back on the paved road everyone started to nod off. Being on a trip for a few days, with the same people day-in and day-out can be tiring when you know who you’re with, but when personalities don’t match, 3 days can sometimes feel much longer!

Back in Alice Springs, everyone was dropped off at their hotels and hostels and I’m sure no one wanted anything more but to take a much-needed shower and just a bit of quiet alone time for a short while! I know I enjoyed mine! That night, though, we all reconvened at a pub for tour-discounted dinner and beers. It was sort of the last-hurrah as we all talked about our amazing three days in the Outback and talked about what our next planned adventures would be.

It was overall, a great three days of good company, amazing scenery, rich culture, and fun. It made me realise that organised tours and playing backpacker can be really fun, and sure, you might not see those people again, you all shared an experience, and that is really what traveling is all about, and this was no exception. An amazing three days were now over and I had one more night in Alice Springs before my flight left the next morning.

The morning of my flight, I had a few ours left to explore bits of Alice Springs and I walked to the café at the Olive Pink Botanic Garden across the River Todd. It is a much longer walk than it looks on the map, but the café was really good, and the botanic gardens were nice for a quiet morning before flying back to Sydney, re-entering the busy city life. A quick walk up the hill in the Botanic Gardens gave me one final glimpse of the dry, but brilliant landscape that is the Northern Territories and I’m already looking forward to the day that I return there.

Australia: Kata Tjuta

Travel Date: 19 August 2013

Just like watching the swirling colours of the sunset on Uluru the night before, watching the sunrise behind Uluru, illuminating its neighbouring rock formation, Kata Tjuta (better known as The Olgas) is not to be missed! Our tour was woken up nice and early in the pitch black and chilly cold. We quickly collected our belongings and rolled up our swags, and clambered into the tour bus for a 40-minute drive west to a viewing platform bang in the middle of the two amazing rock formations.

The sunrise in the east behind Uluru

The Olgas are in some ways more impressive than Uluru, albeit being much less known (though they feature prominently in the opening sequence to the Disney film The Rescuers Down Under). Whereas Uluru is one massive rock, Kata Tjuta is a cluster of towering rock stacks with rounded tops, and they are even taller than Uluru! Geologically, the rocks at Kata Tjuta and Uluru date back over 500 million years! An ancient mountain range to the west that was created during the Petermann Orogengy was the source for all of the sand and boulders that were eroded from the mountains and deposited in a large basin to the east of the mountains. Over time, these sediments built up and compressed earlier depositional strata into the sandstone and conglomerates that make up these rock formations. Over time, further compression and faulting tilted the rocks such that previously horizontal strata are now almost vertical! While Uluru is mostly sandstone, large boulders stick out of the steep conglomerate rock walls of Kata Tjuta.

We stopped at a designated viewing platform for the sunrise and along with at least one hundred other people waited as the sky started to lighten up behind Uluru to the east and eventually the sun peaked up over the horizon, silhouetting Uluru in the distance while illuminating the massive domes of The Olgas, turning them from shades of gray to pink to orange and yellow and red. It was a beautiful setting to be sure; however, the sheer number of people and cameras continuously clicking and the Canadian fashionista’s complaining about the cold made it much less peaceful as it could be, though if you could block those sounds out in your head, you could just imagine what it would have been like to see this every morning without the nearby roads or viewing platforms, and the whole experience takes you to a whole new place.

The breaking sunlight on Kata Tjuta (The Olgas)

Again, we had a lot of ground to cover today, and Adam, our guide, wasted no time in getting us back onto the bus and brought us to the parking lot at the locality of Petermann. The sun was already high in the sky. Considering the throng of people at the sunrise viewing platform, there were amazingly few people here at Kata Tjuta. As much as I loved how quiet it was here, it’s really too bad that so many thousands of people come all the way out here, to the middle of this huge country to get on a bus, drive to a viewing platform, take a few photos, and hop back on their plane. I can’t lie, I also took a lot of photos, but that is never enough for me. I couldn’t come all the way out here and not have an experience, to walk through the landscape, or listen to the wind and birds, or feel the sun’s radiating heat. I wish more people desired experiences in nature. Maybe we’d all have a better appreciation for our planet and our environments and become better, more humble people.

We got off the bus and prepared for a hike through the Valley of the Winds which takes you from the parking area between some of the massive rocks that are The Olgas and into the valley protected between them. Even in August, Australia’s winter, the sun can become too intense to be outside this far in the Outback, so any hikes should start promptly in the morning. The Olgas are also incredibly sacred to the local Aboriginal communities, but curiously, outside of those communities, no one knows why. At Uluru, there are places where you cannot take photos because of spiritual significance, but there are signs explaining why the site is sacred. At Kata Tjuta, nothing is off-limits, but the whole area holds such a deep spiritual importance that only those in the Aboriginal communities can know what it is!

Down in the Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta

The Valley of the Winds is aptly named as air from the heating rocks rises and pulls in air from the surrounding area that gets funneled and focused in the valleys between the rocks. It’s not a difficult walk into the valley, but it is a stunning walk as you work your way between amazingly steep rock walls with massive boulders sticking out. The valley itself is made up of gently rolling rocky hills with scrubby vegetation and a few gum trees dotting it. The walk takes about three hours, provides spectacular scenery dotted with intricate flowers, and is incredibly peaceful as anyone you walk past just smiles and nods their hellos, not wanting to ruin the quiet atmosphere. Because no one knows the real significance of Kata Tjuta, there almost isn’t much else to say because there is nothing to interpret.

We finished our walk in the late morning and set up our lunch back at the bus before we packed up at set off for another long drive. We left Kata Tjuta, passed Uluru once more, and drove the hour or so back to the Curtin Springs Roadhouse for a quick break before turning off the Lasseter Highway onto Luritja Road toward Watarrka National Park, home of Kings Canyon. We stopped once more to collect firewood for that night’s dinner that was a fun, if not frustrating pit stop. The Canadian fashionista hadn’t been with us the previous day when we collected firewood and was trying to write postcards to send back home as our bus drove down the bumpy, dusty dirt road. Trying to write while driving over washboard road conditions is no easy task, and one more than one occasion, she would slam down her pen and shout something along the lines of, “I’m trying to write a postcard! Can’t the bus just stop so I can finish? This is so hard!” Complaints that received nothing but an annoyed look from me as I asked her what she expected! My postcards were barely legible because of all of the bumping around, but I thought it was part of the fun! Not only was I describing to my family what I was doing, but they could actually see it in the squiggles in my lettering! She didn’t seem to understand and got even more flustered as the bus swerved to the left and right. Once we stopped, she finally finished her postcards (though she took her time, probably not wanting to get her clothes too dirty with all the red dust) while the rest of us ventured back out into snake country to collect firewood.

A herd of feral camels in Australia

And we were in store for a treat before we left. As we loaded back onto the bus, someone spotted a little brownish-gold body bouncing between the trees and a single solitary dingo sauntered up to the bus! Frankly, I expected to see more dingoes than we did, but the curious little creature was the only one we saw and after figuring out we had nothing to offer it, he quickly sauntered away just as quickly as he came.

Further down the road, we were in for another treat as a massive herd of wild camels was socialising on the side of the road. Adam stopped our bus and we all got out, quietly stepping as close as we could to these amazing creatures without spooking them! There were dozens of them – mostly adults, but a few young ones, too and they just moved together, minding their own business. We stayed there, watching them for a while as another brilliant sunset lowered down toward the horizon. It was just such an odd sight, seeing the camels, not only because they are just funny looking animals, but because you just know they aren’t supposed to be there! The wild camel herds have naturalised so easily to the Australian Outback, their numbers can’t be culled. They’ve repopulated so well, and from such a small original stock, that people in the Middle East actually buy their camels back from Australia because the Australian camel genetics are so pure, they fetch quite a high price back in the Middle East!

The setting sun was blinding as we drove west  to Kings Canyon Resort but we eventually pulled in to our campsite for the night, got our fire up and blazing, made dinner, and set up our swags for another chilly night under brilliantly clear skies in the middle of the Outback.

New Zealand: Te Paki Dunes, Whangaroa Lookout, Kiwis at Aroha Island

Date Traveled: 03 January 2013

After a hellishly adventurous morning of hiking, soaking wet, in the rain out to New Zealand's westernmost point, I wasn't sure how much more adventure I'd be up for for the rest of the day. But then, as I was driving from Cape Reinga to Paihia, where I had accommodation booked that night, I passed the sign for Te Paki Sand Dunes and thought to myself, "I might not ever get the chance to come back this way in my life, so I might as well stop and see it now."

Coming over the first rise at Te Paki Sand Dunes

Good thing I did! Te Paki sand dunes are the highest dunes in New Zealand, and they are massive (though not as big as Sleeping Bear Dunes or Pictured Rocks). I parked my car and pulled out my rain gear, because it was still raining and I had had enough of being soaked to the bone, and crossed a shallow little stream to get to the base of the dunes. The blisters on my feet weren't enjoying being cramped up in shoes or sandals, even, so I went barefoot climbing the first steep ascent which opens up on top to a vast, wide, plateau of sand with a few rocky outcrops sticking out. On the other side of the plateau was another climb to what looked like the highest dune peak around and when I got to the top of that, I realised just how expansive the dune fields here are! According to Lonely Planet's New Zealand Guide, there are 7 square kilometres of dunes here offering all sorts of recreation activities like sand tobogganing (which you can rent from the little van in the parking lot) and the start (or end) of the famous 4WD off-roading expedition up/down 90 Mile Beach is also here.

Well, I knew I wasn't going to spend a huge amount of time here, so when I got to the top, I had a nice look around, took some photos of the area, and then starting heading down. But this wasn't just any saunter down the sandy slopes. Oh, no! Growing up going to the beaches, one of my favourite things to do was go dune jumping. Usually this involves finding a nice sturdy tussock of grass near the top of the dune, getting a running start, and then throwing yourself off that tussock into the air and landing on the downslope surface of the dune. If you land on your feet without breaking your legs, it's possible to then use that momentum and run all the way down the rest of the hill. There was no dune grass here, but the sand slope was steep and a good running start was all I needed and with arms windmilling through the air, I ran down in big, leaping steps to the sandy plateau.

Here on the plateau, one of the rock outcrops caught my interest. It was circular from above and looked almost dome-like except that while the middle of the dome and its edges were still in tact, the rest had eroded out by some means of chemical or physical weathering. Up on the dune slope I'd just run down, there were a few other people using their footsteps to make large pictures in the sand. I think the one group of kids must have been from Switzerland since they made a big square with the cross in the middle.

I crossed the sandy plateau and dune-jumped my way back down to the creek and crossed over to my car, brushed off and got back on the road. Not much further down the cape, there was a sign pointing toward "New Zealand's Northernmost Pub" and I thought I should stop in for a bite to eat and charge my phone at the same time. I figured it would be some British-esque pub with a warm fire, carved wood booths, and a generally cozy atmosphere. Boy was I wrong. This place I don't think ever was cozy or welcoming, and while the staff was friendly and accommodating, I didn't want to stay there a moment longer than I needed to and I don't suggest anyone stop here. You will be sorely disappointed!

The Whangaroa lookout

Finally, I was on the road again and kept driving for a few hours, listening to local Maori radio which had some good music on there, including a lot of Christian songs I remember singing in elementary school, but sung in Maori with a South Pacific twist. I'd read about another spot that I thought might be worth looking into. The hills in and around the town of Whangaroa (remember, in New Zealand, Wh- is pronounced F-) are generally forested except for their tops which are exposed, bare, rocky knobs made of conglomerates and granite - if I remember right! The hilltop in Whangaroa offers an awesome 360° vista of the entire area and the Whangaroa Bay right next to it. I found the parking area at the Saint Paul's Rock Scenic Reserve and started up the trail which was really slippery thanks to the mixture of mud and rain. To get to the top of the rock, though, the trail climbs up through the exposure and you need to hold on to chains fastened into the rock to pull yourself up to the top! It was a nice view indeed. Even in the gray late-afternoon you could see all the way out to the ocean, see all of Whangaroa Bay, and even an expansive oyster farm.

I didn't stay long, though, just long enough to get a 360° panoramic shot but then I got back in the car and kept driving. My destination for the night was the Aroha Island Ecological Centre, just east of Kerikeri. I'd read about Aroha Island in the Lonely Planet guide and after reading that they have a few northern brown kiwi birds living on the island, I didn't think I had a choice but to book a camping spot here! Kiwis are exceptionally rare in the wild in New Zealand. In fact, many New Zealanders haven't seen a kiwi in the wild! Since I've been on my "must see all Australian wildlife in the wild" kick, I figured I may as well add kiwis to the list and do my best to see them in their native habitat, too! And Aroha Island was the perfect place for that; they offered nightly tours of the island for an additional charge saying that most tours see a kiwi. But when I checked in, the lovely woman at the Welcome Centre said they weren't doing any tours...but that I could use one of their flashlights and have a map of the island and see if I could see them for myself!

I set up my tent in the last remaining hours of daylight and backed up all of my photos from my hiking adventures at Cape Reinga to my iPad, waiting for darkness to settle in. The woman told me that the kiwis are seen all hours of the night and that they start roaming around 10:30pm. I was told to not make much noise because while kiwis have bad eyesight, they hear very well; I was also told to use the flashlight given to me which had a red filter on it because the kiwis couldn't see that red light, and that any regular flashlight would scare them off for sure. It started raining again, though not too hard, and I figured I'd have to put my rain gear back on if I didn't want to get wet, but that meant I'd be making a lot of noise while walking along the path. The island isn't large and only take about 30 minutes to walk the perimeter, so I set off with the red light and the map.

The woman also mentioned that I would know the kiwis were there long before seeing them because they make a very distinct snuffling noise. Kiwis are different from most birds in that their nostrils are located at the end of their beaks and since they use their beaks to sift through the soil while looking for food, they constantly have to clear their airways and in doing so make a very dry wheezing sound. Well, even with that information, I couldn't hear much more than the rain dripping through the leaves and my rain pants brushing up against each other. I moved so slowly along the path, thinking every noise was a kiwi, that it took me about half an hour just to walk half the island. I started along the other half thinking I was on a wild goose - errr kiwi - chase when I heard it!

One of the two wild northern brown kiwis I saw on Aroha Island

Above the pitter-patter of the rain I thought I heard people talking and I thought it must be some other kiwi-scouts, but looking ahead, I didn't see any lights but kept hearing a dry, scraping, snuffle sound. I rounded the corner in the path, and sure enough, right in front of me, no more than 2 metres away were two adult kiwis! They were big! I mean big compared to what I imagined them. I always thought they were maybe the size of a grapefruit, but these were each the size of a rugby ball, stuck up on what looked like three spindly legs, but then I realised the third leg was just their beak! I didn't want to make too much noise but I wanted to get closer to see if I could get some photos of them with my phone. I'm not sure if it was the rain or if their hearing isn't as great as the woman told me, but I was able to sneak within a metre of them both without them realising, or caring, that I was there! I just stood there for about 20 minutes watching these amazing birds do their thing, rooting through the soil along the path looking for food, and they eventually moved off and started heading down the hill toward the water. I decided that if they were going to leave, I'd try getting a few photos of them with my flash on, and while they moved away after the first flash, they didn't seem to be terrified by it and stayed relatively close, so I took a few more before leaving them to eat in peace! I think my heart was pumping just as much as it had been that morning when I was trying not to be swept out to sea by incoming waves! Here, on tiny Aroha Island, was some young Yank who just wanted to see kiwis in the wild, and with very minimal effort was able to do what so few people have ever had the opportunity to do!

Needless to say, at the end of the day, hiking 15 kilometres, climbing a large sand dune, hiking to the top of a rocky lookout, and successfully sighting some wild kiwis, I was exhausted and slept very very well! The next morning, as I was packing up my tent, some very friendly ducks came by to wish me safe travels and to thank me for staying at Aroha Island, insisting that I recommend it to anyone who wants to have wild kiwi adventures while traveling through New Zealand. I told them I surely would!

New Zealand: Cape Maria Van Diemen

Date Traveled: 03 January 2013

This is the day I almost died...twice.

Fog had rolled in to Tapotupotu Bay overnight and while it was light in the morning when I first woke, it was not too visible. I was at least refreshed from a good night's sleep, listening to the constant crash of the waves on the beach. I grabbed my camera and tried taking a few shots of the beach before packing everything up into my car, and then I drove back out and up to the parking lot at Cape Reinga, which was easier said than done because the thick fog decreased my visibility to maybe 10m in front of the car!

I figured that like the day before, the fog would lift around mid-day and the weather would clear as the day went on, so I dressed appropriately for that: sneakers, gym shorts, moisture-wicking shirt, a long-sleeved thermal, and a waist pack with two half-litre water bottles, about four granola bars, some red pepper slices, a few apples in the plastic bag from the grocery store, and some nuts. I figured that would be all I needed and even though I had rain gear with me, I decided to leave it in the car.

Cape Reinga Lighthouse in the blue morning fog

I walked down and out to the Cape Reinga Lighthouse again to try and get some good morning photos through the dense blue fog. On the way, I was dive-bombed by a few seagulls who were likely protecting their nest, but I should have taken it as a sign to just go back to my car. After visiting the lighthouse once more, I took the turn off down the path to the beach and it was eerily quiet with no one else around at 8am. The path runs right along the edge of sharp cliffs dropping down hundreds of metres to the rugged ocean below. I wanted to try and get some good shots looking down the cliff, but I knew better than to go too close to the edge, especially when the rocks were slick with fog.

I got down to the beach, which was kind of split into two sections. The beach I was on was a little tiny cove pinched between the cliffs I'd just hiked down and a steep little promontory about 20 metres on the other side of the beach. The ocean was very very rough this morning and straight lines of wave-trains rolled in one after another, constantly crashing over themselves, but the tide was low so I was easily able to walk around that steep promontory. But first, I sat and watched a cormorant at the water's edge for a few minutes before it got spooked by how close I was getting and flew off.

Cape Reinga, shrouded in mist, and reflected onto the beach

As I walked the 5 kilometres down the beach I couldn't get over the power of the ocean and the amazing beauty of the islands off Cape Maria Van Diemen in the distance through the fog and ocean spray. I was amazed at how quiet it seemed to be, almost the calm before a big storm. Other than the slight breeze and the waves crashing, there wasn't much to listen to other than the occasional chirp from some shore bird. Waves came in and left these glimmering thin sheets of water that slowly receded back into the ocean, allowing the surrounding hillsides to be reflected in them. It was a peaceful, almost mystical setting and with no one else on the beach, it was quite eerie!

About an hour and a half into my walk, the sky seemed to be trying to clear up as I forded a wide, but shallow, stream and followed the trail blazes (not extremely well-marked, mind you) up another promontory stuck between the middle of the sandy dune fields and the ocean. The rock of this tall hill was mostly these very slippery pink, green, yellow, and grey clays which if you weren't careful, you would see up close as your feet slid out from under you, sending you crashing to the ground. The surrounding dunes had creeped up the side of this hill over hundreds and thousands of years, and many of the bright-orange trail signs had been partially buried, so I had to be careful to keep my bearings about me. Even in the grey light, however, the landscape was beautiful. The trailing roots of the dune grasses were often exposed and looked like a long rope that had been draped across the dunes with a shoot of grass growing out every 10 centimetres or so. These ropes of roots criss-crossed the dunes and in some places, pretty purple flowers were growing on raised tussocks of dune grass.

Flowers growing on grassy tussocks in the dunes on Cape Reinga Beach

The trail wound it way around the hill, through the dunes, and on the other side, a wide expanse of dunes swept its way down to the beach toward the hilly knob that is Cape Maria Van Diemen. I almost missed the trail markers had I not seen the half-buried wooden sign pointing me in that direction. Cape Maria van Diemen did not seem too far away, but I soon realised how deceiving the landscape here could be. It felt like I'd been walking a good ten minutes toward the point, yet it didn't seem to get any closer! I did eventually come to a little rise, giving me a good look south down the coast and right out to a massive seastack, eroded away from the mainland by ages of wave action. But it was here I realised I was going to be in for some trouble.

While the weather seemed to want to clear up an hour earlier, it was on this rise that I got my first look at the weather over the Tasman Sea and all I could see was a wall of tall, dark, gray clouds. The clouds were a good distance offshore, but the wind was pushing them my way, and I could already start to feel the occasional rain drop. Being stubborn, I refused to turn myself around. After all, I was right at the bottom of the last rocky rise that was the westernmost tip of New Zealand. I could see the little utilitarian lighthouse at the top of the knob and decided that I couldn't hike out this far and not get up to that point, so I briskly started my walk up the hill. It wasn't too steep but the hillside was covered in these bushy, long-leafed plants and it was difficult to tell where exactly the trail was. I had to be careful because the trail I thought I was on was no more than a metre away from a steep drop down onto a rocky platform below and I didn't want to step into a hole covered by the plants and tumble down. Soon enough, I got to the top where the bushes thinned and grass took over. The view was impressive, looking back up to Cape Reinga off in the distance, and to Motuopao Island just offshore with its own private beach and another little light station on top. I scrambled to set up my camera on my pack so I could take a timer-shot of myself on top of Cape Maria Van Diemen as proof I'd been there, and as soon as I was satisfied with one of the two photos I took, the rain came.

Me on top of Cape Maria Van Diemen with Matuopao Island behind

I quickly emptied out the plastic bag my apples were in so I could wrap my camera - my bulky DSLR camera - into something waterproof and packed everything into the limited space inside the waist pack. I made sure my shoes were tied and my long sleeves were pulled over my hands because the drizzle had turned into a steady light right and it was not a warm rain. I hurried back to the bottom of the rocky hill at the end of Cape Maria Van Diemen and started my ascent up that wide, wind-swept sandy slope that seemed to take forever to get down. By the time I was halfway up that sandy slope, I was soaked. I was fortunate to have remembered to wear water-wicking clothing so even though I was wet, it wasn't stuck to my body like a cotton shirt would have been. And the woolly thermal I was wearing was at least keeping me somewhat warm in the cold rain, but I was still worried. I knew that hypothermia could easily set in and that symptoms of hypothermia included disorientation, poor decision making, and loss of a sense of time. Never having experienced hypothermia before, it was a challenge trying to decipher if any of the feeling I had were mental or actual physical. I grabbed a few protein-rich snacks out of my pack to make sure I wasn't going hungry and drank some of my water to make sure I wouldn't also get dehydrated.

By the time I got to the top of the sandy ramp, I was drenched - not a single bit of my clothes or person was dry or really warm for that matter. I knew I had to retrace my trail through the sand dunes behind the clayey headland, but once the ocean was out of sight, everything started to look the same. I did my best to follow the orange trail markers, but they weren't often visible, so I did my best to go back the way I thought I came, but each dune looked the same as the next and with footprints making trails in all sorts of directions, I couldn't figure out which was the way I came! I knew the ocean was generally off to my left and so I carried on.

Two figures started approaching me - they had been hiking from Cape Reinga, the direction I needed to go. I figured that since I was wet and they were wet I should at least let them know I was okay and ask if they had everything they needed, like water and food. They ended up being two girls, one from Scotland and the other from Ireland, who had met at a hostel and decided to do one of the loop trails in the area. They had indeed come from Cape Reinga but were covered in mud (apparently the mixture of rain and clay rocks had really made the ground very slippery and mucky) and after checking that we were all okay, wet but okay, we each went our own ways. I tried following their tracks and came across those clayey spots, taking my time to be careful so as not to slip and do something stupid like break my ankle. I definitely slipped and fell a few times, but other than being covered in sticky mud, I was alright.

I still couldn't really find the trail and began to wonder if I'd double-backed on myself and was heading in the opposite direction I wanted to be in. I was beginning to think I really did have hypothermia and that my brain was already starting to disorient my body. But I kept checking the time on my phone to give me a sense that I was moving forward and making progress and had a few more snacks and sips of water. There was going to be no way that the last people to see me ever was going to be two hiker-strangers. I just couldn't allow that. I thought of my family back at home, my folks who I hadn't been able to see over Christmas, my sister and her her husband who had just announced to us a week before that they were going to have a baby, and my brother and his wife who'd just been married that summer before. Thinking of them reset my resolve and I became determined to get back to my car. All I needed was to find my way back to the long beach walk. Once there, I at least knew where the trail was! I couldn't see the ocean yet, but I could see the upper reaches of the stream I'd crossed right before having to climb this hill, so I reoriented myself and after going up and down the next few rises I came to a lookout right above the stream I'd crossed before and believe me, it was a wonderful sight to see!

After the initial rain, I was able to take out my camera again. This is looking
back to Cape Maria Van Diemen and Matuopao Island with the dark
storm clouds coming in off the Tasman Sea

By the time I got down to the stream, the rain had stopped, though it was still windy, and I was definitely not going to dry out. I also still had another hour and a half hike to get back to the parking lot, so I rinsed my shoes off in the stream to empty them of any sand. I even stopped to take my camera out again, giving it a chance to dry off somewhat, but then I was off again and high-tailed it down the beach as fast as I could without overexerting myself.

The rain held off as I got nearer to the path at the bottom of the Cape Reinga cliffs, I realised I had one more obstacle in my way. As luck would have it, when I walked out from Cape Reinga the ocean was at low tide and the beach surrounding that steep little promontory was well wide enough. Not so on the way back. High tide was on its way in and the unrelenting wave trains were starting to crash over the rocky base of the promontory. I looked up into the foliage on the promontory for any sign of a trail I could take to go up and over the headland and while I found on that took me a few metres, it quickly disappeared and I carefully made my way back to the beach. It appeared I had three options: 1. Try the trail again and bushwhack my way over the promontory; 2. Wait for high tide to ebb back out away from the promontory; or 3. try my luck and passing around the rocky base before high tide got too high.

I decided to go for option number 3. The tide was still coming in but it wasn't all the way in yet, so I slung my camera over my back and carefully started finding footholds in the rock, hugging the base of the cliff as I shimmied across. The waves were breaking just a few metres away from me and the whitewater was splashing up over my feet. The going was slow, but at least there wasn't much distance to go. A few times I had to really hold fast to the rock wall and wait for a wave train to come through and then try to quickly hop across wide fractures in the rock between waves, but at least once the wave train caught up with me and bubbly water rising up well over my ankles. A few long reaches to sturdy foothold were almost missed, but after about 10 minutes, I made it around the headland to the safety of the little beach and cove on the other side. I took a few really deep breaths and looked back at where I'd just come from and was so immensely thankful to the Man Upstairs that I'd had the strength and perseverance to trust that my survival instincts would kick in and carry my across.

Looking back down at the rocky headland I had to skirt since there
was no trail over the top. At high tide, the wave trains kept pounding
the rocks and were big enough for water to rise over my feet!

And now, as the rain started to fall again, I quickly packed up my camera again and started the final ascent up the trail to the pathway at the lighthouse where throngs of people in ponchos were aimlessly wandering around, complaining about how miserable they felt and how wet they were, and I just brushed past them envying them and their rain-proof ponchos and dry clothes and otherwise warm tourist experience thinking, "If you only knew where I've just been, what I've just gone through, and what it took just to get back here!" As soon as I got back to my car, I pulled out my dry clothes and ran into the toilets to change out of the soaking wet clothes I'd spent the last three hours in.

Knowing I was safe in my car, back in dry clothes, I thought back to the previous five hours and came to a few conclusions. Firstly, it was so incredibly stupid of me to not have told anyone where I was going or what my plans were. I should have left a note in my car window saying what time I'd left and which direction I'd headed. And I should have checked the weather report (though there was no mobile service way out here or store to buy a newspaper from). Other than those untaken precautions, I also flipped through some of my photos and realised that I had done a hike that is epic in good weather and seemed legendary to me that I'd done it in the adverse conditions I'd been in. I decided that when all was said and done, it was an amazing experience I would jump at the opportunity to do again (of course being a bit more smart in my planning).

I said a few more "thank yous" to God before turning the key in the ignition, blasting on the heat, and driving off down the road back toward the mainland. It was only 1:00pm and I still had so much more to do today!