Three Men and a Tramp

They say that the only danger in New Zealand is yourself.  There are no natural predators, unless you are referring to possums or pack rats that prey on your food.  In Montana, there is always a lingering fear of grizzly bears, black bears, mountain lions and even rustling up a moose that sticks in the back of your mind while enjoying the great outdoors.  Every move, from making noise while hiking, storing your food in a tree 100 feet down wind from where you sleep, pissing on a rock so the salts in your urine doesn't sit in the soil and make a salt lick for a bear, where you spit your tooth paste, or wearing bear pepper spray or a side arm and more importantly how to react to an encounter is a necessity unless you want to end up in the latest mauling news.  In New Zealand, none of this applies.  There is nothing here that can harm you unless you decide to make every bad decision possible in the name of fishing.

We began our journey in high hopes of epic brown trout fishing on a tributary of Lake Monowai called the Electric River.  We heard from a guy back home as well as a couple locals that this river was on their "to fish" list and it was also circled in our atlas from a buddy of ours that had visited this area two years ago for a 5 month hiatus.  On paper, this place seemed like a gold mine and worth the extreme effort to get there.

We drove to the trailhead that began our hike or in Kiwi terms "tramp" and did our final check of our packs to ensure we had enough food and gear for what we planned to be about 5 nights in the bush.  Each of our packs, with our gear for camping and fishing weighed about 50-65 pounds, mine for some reason pushing that 65 lb. mark.  But, I've carried a pack that heavy before and what could possibly be different this time around?

The first lag was about a 4 1/2 hour tramp to a hut a little over half way to the final Lake Monowai hut where the trail ends.  Having not done any serious hiking as of yet, we were pretty beat after this first wave of hike, especially since we lost the trail at the end and ended up finishing the last kilometer in mucky terrain with briars the entire way.  There was one point where my feet got entangled in some of the weeds, about 100 yards shy of the hut and took me down, immediately jump starting a wave of cramps up my calves and my hamstrings.  While on the ground, I couldn't move my legs or my feet, so I couldn't relieve any of the cramps for what felt like minutes but was probably more like 30 seconds.  There were plenty of four letter words yelled at this point.  But, I recovered, finished the hike and we decided to stay the night at the Clark Hut.

We made dinner, had a fire and tried to recuperate our legs for what was going to be a much longer day the next morning.  Sleep came and we were on the trail again by 10 the next morning, feeling motivated for great fishing.  The next lag to the Lake Monowai hut was only 2 1/2 hours and we got there by about 12:30 pm, stopped to grab some lunch and stretch out a bit before the final approach to the Electric River.  We knew that the trail ended at that point and that bush whacking was in our future, but we had no idea what was ahead of us.  We threw the packs back on and entered what is essentially as thick of a jungle as you will find.  No trail.  No flat terrain.  Though we didn't want to admit it, we were entering hell on earth.

On my GPS, it said we were a shade under 4 km from the Electric River as a crow flies.  If you look at that as your local 5 km run at your "Santa Scamper" it would take you roughly 20-30 minutes to run.  It took the three of us 8 1/2 hours to travel roughly 5 km.  It was by far the sketchiest thing I have done to date and I can guarantee you that it won't happen again.  About two hours into the hike, I asked Zach if we had signed the Visitors Log at the last hut and he said, "Oh shit, no.  Did Les?".  We called up to Les with the same question and he replied "No, why?", knowing clearly why we asked.  If something would have happened to us, we essentially didn't exist.  If one of us had broken a leg, turned an ankle, or injured ourselves in a way that made it impossible to return, there was nobody coming to find us.  At that point, it got real.

The terrain we were hiking over with, let me remind you, 60 lb packs on would not be easy even without gear on your back.  After 4 hours of hiking we had only covered just under 2 km and were averaging about .5 km/hr.  The land from the lake shot up 3,000 ft in less than a mile so we were always walking on about a 60 degree side incline.  As soon as you thought you were making progress, you would run into a bluff that you had to back track and climb 100 feet up or down to pass over.  We would be climbing up and grab a root that happened to be rotten and it would tear away leaving you dangling by the one strong hold you had or tumbling down the mountain side.  We all took tumbles, but the scariest occurred when Les was descending down a bluff and attempted to swing down to a good foot hold.  When he began swinging, the momentum from his pack propelled him off the tree he was holding on to sending him into a creek that flowed off a 12 foot bluff onto a rocky shore.  At the last second, as he was about to shoot off the edge, he split his legs and caught himself between two rocks.  There were plenty of close calls, but no serious casualties, other than bumps, bruises and about as low of a morale as is mentally possible.

When we finally got there, my legs were about as exhausted as I have ever experienced and when we reached the beach where we were going to camp, I had career ending cramps in both of my hamstrings, causing me to essentially crawl the last 100 yards.  Setting up camp was not as fluid as it has been in the past.  We were all like zombies, physically and mentally exerted to our breaking points.

We woke up the next morning to the sounds of a helicopter and immediately we thought that some assholes had come to fish the water we had fought for.  On any other day, we would have sprinted out of our tents to wave them off, but our bodies were too sore to move and there were clouds of sandflies around our tents.  If you have never experienced sandflies, or as the Maori call them Te Namu, they are, in large numbers the most evil creature on earth.  The have the stinging effect of a mosquito, but the swarming effect of killer bees.  When I first stepped out of my tent, I was wearing a t-shirt and my arms were more black than skin colored, and every fly that was on me was biting me simultaneously.  Every morning, it is like gearing up for war and if there is any exposed skin on your body, Te Namu will find it.

 

We soon find out that the Electric River doesn't have a single brown in it.  But, instead, on the stretch we fished, which was maybe a mile long that is eventually stonewalled by a waterfall and can't be reached by foot, there were about 10 rainbows all averaging about 15 inches long.  Zach did however rope into a nice 3 1/2 pound rainbow, but overall, shit for fishing.  We came all that way, battled through jungle and had 4 full days of hiking for a half day of mediocre fishing.  Pretty heartbreaking.

We ended up hiking out the next morning through the same bluffed out forest we came in through and pushed through to the Clark hut, signing every visitor book along the way.  When we made it to the car, all of us almost had tears in our eyes, overjoyed by the fact that we made it out alright and that we could finally take the packs off after essentially spending the last 5 days with them strapped to our backs.

We learned an incredible lesson and will sure as shit not try anything like that again.  Our blisters and sores will heal, but that journey will forever stay with us.  It made all of us stronger mentally, but also made us realize that sometimes it's just not worth the risk.  I thank God that we all made it back alive and I look forward to a really nice hot bacon and egg meat pie tomorrow morning in Te Anau.

 Pictures don't do the carnage justice

You live and you learn, but you only learn if you live through it.  Not a bad motto to keep in the back of your mind.