New Zealand -1500 miles on foot through- The Land Of The Long White Cloud

Stairway to Heaven

A flight on a small jet plane took me from Auckland to Queenstown, in New Zealand's South Island.  My 1500 mile walk would start at Cape Reinga, way up in the North Island, but before that, I needed to obtain photos from the South Island, while it was still summer.  I'd also figured that on the walk I would most probably fall behind schedule and it would be good to have back up material prepared for the reports on New Zealand's mountains, glaciers and sea life.

So it was, that with Icehouse's 'Hey Little Girl' playing on a cassette tape, a beaten-up old bus wended its way by the pale blue Lake of Te Anau and dropped me at a spot in the mountains known as The Divide.  Three days hard walking lay ahead of me.

Since the marathon of 1992 I had run regularly, but only short distances of about 5 kilometres.  The last time I had walked long distances was back in 1989, when I had walked 6,000 miles across Britain and America.  And now I was about to set off with a 60 pound pack to walk the Routeburn Track.  The distance was only about 24 miles, but the tracks were supposed to be rocky and the scenery mountainous.

With the pack strapped to my back I stooped forward.  The track up from The Divide sloped upwards at a 30 degree angle.  To my right were ferns and trees covered in hanging goblin moss and epiphytes.  I passed an overhanging branch that had peeling paper bark and reddish coloured wood.  The first section of the walk was in shade and, as I climbed higher, the air began to cool.  even so I sweated away under the burden of the pack.  I soon had to stop to take off my goretex coat.  To my embarassment, a couple of elderly hikers in their sixties motored on past me.  I took some satisfaction, though, in the fact that their packs were much smaller than mine.

In my pack I had three days food, water, tent, sleeping bag, stove, fuel, waterproofs, clothes, and much more besides.  The plan had been to use a palm held computer, called a Cassiopeia, to send information onto the Internet.  Unfortunately, in tests, I could not get it to work properly, despite the glowing claims of the manufacturers.  In place of the Cassiopeia I carried a laptop, with a detachable CD-drive, as well as numerous cables and adaptors.  In my waterproof coat I had an underwater camera, an auto focus Pentax zoom and a Casio QV-300 digital camera.

With knees aching, and back complaining from the weight of all the gear, I staggered on for an hour to reach the turnoff for Key Summit.  During that hour I stopped several times to eat chocolate.  The track twisted and turned.  Off to my left I could see the tops of mountains appear through shifting clouds.  Small patches of snow still clung to the tops of the craggy pinnacles.  The harsh call of the mountain parrot, or kea, carried on the air.  Finally, the track levelled out by a shallow tarn.

Sphagnum moss lay around the still mirror of water.  Dotted amongst the pale green of the sphagnum were red sundews, their small tendrils glistening with tiny dewdrops, ready to snare and digest unwary insects that were foolish enough to try to drink the fluid.  Up here nutrients were in short supply and the peaty soil harsh and acidic.  Tussocky alpine grass, with tough, wax coated leaves and hardy herbs and shrubs lay in clumps around Key Summit, but stood less than knee high.  Silver beech trees formed a low canopy in a grove close to the tarn.  The silver beech branches were twisted, with gnarled, wrinkled, silvery-grey bark and small dark green leaves.  The trees, looking more like bushes, had been bent at an angle by the prevailing winds on the exposed mountainside.  Although the trees were several hundred years old, they had only grown to between six and eight feet in height.  Ancestors of these trees had once grown in the ancient land of Gondwana.  The fact that silver beech are found in South America, Australia, New Guinea, New Caledonia, New Zealand and, as fossils, in Antractica, was one of the pieces of evidence that these places were once all joined together in one large land mass.

A plaque close to the track told the story of Key Summit:

'If you were here 250 million years ago you would have been standing on a steaming mass of volcanic rock and lava.  The Alpine fault under you began to slowly, but steadily fold and fault, forming the rough outline of the landscape you see today.  Ice ages came next, the last about 10,000 years ago.  Huge glaciers flowed out of the mountains, grinding down hard rock and sculpting U-shaped valleys.  The glacier ice laid 500 metres thick above Key Summit.  After glacier ice swept Key Summit free of vegetation, frost, rain, and chemical reactions cracked open and broke bare rock.  Mosses and lichens grew in the cracks and soil built up.  Herbs and shrubs took root in the deeper places.  Plants growing here have to endure cold, low oxygen and acidic soils.'