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Solo Hiking in Mount Aspiring National Park
Hiking a custom route in Mount Aspiring National Park, New Zealand.
Hike
Hike
Day 1
The evening prior I had been dropped off on the Earnslaw Burn Track Parking, where I also had pitched my tent and started this first day of the hike.
As the name of the carpark suggests, I started on the Earnslaw Burn Track. This is a track that follows the Earnslaw Burn valley, which ends all the way at this massive cirque, which is (not surprisingly) named the Earnslaw Glacier.
Once I reached this point I took in the views of the endless waterfalls, that flow of the glacier, before it was time for myself to go off track and leave the valley.
I followed the (dried up) stream of the Lennox Pass. It’s a bit of a scramble, especially near the top end with the scree. But at no point did I think it was too difficult or hard to do. You simply take it easy and one step at a time. Not forgetting to look behind you and see the amazing Earnslaw glacier from a different angle.
Once on top of the Lennox Pass I could see all the way over the Rees river, far into Mount Aspiring National Park. As is pretty normal up at these ranges, I got blown all over the place and didn’t stay up for too long here. Now it was a gentle downhill towards Lennox Creek.
Going down, it was gentle only for the first few hundred metres, until I reached the tree-line. From here the bush became so dense I had to fight my way through, often crawling on my stomach to get under trees or pull myself up over rocks, barely able to hold on to some roots of a (dead)tree. I really underestimated how difficult this would be...!
The whole reason I was walking here was to reach Lennox Creek At The 800m Contour Line. According to a guide book and internet blogs, there should have been a crossable section here, over the massive big chasm (which is the Lennox Creek). However, when I reached this point, all exhausted from the bush whacking, I could only spot sheer drop off cliffs (of over 20m) with a roaring river deep down below. To make it more frustrating, the horizontal distance I had to cross was only like 3 metres...!
After some looking around, for the supposedly crossing, I took my loss and decided it was not worth spending more time here. The longer I walked along the edge, the more chance something could go wrong. And if I had fallen in, the only way for me to get out was to get pulled down along the river until it mouths into the 175m big Lennox Falls, that would not have a high rate of survivability…
Getting over the Lennox Creek would only be possible upstream. The only thing I now could do was bush whack my way up again, through the thick bush and hard to get over rocks. While doing this, after about 1.5hours having only covered 500m horizontally, I spotted somewhere that allowed me to Cross Lennox Creek.
While it still involved some climbing up and down, the risk was much lower here, and the river less ‘rough’. The only downside, this part upstream was above a T-split, so after having crossed this river, I had another one to cross…
This Northern split of the Lennox creek was unfortunately still in a massive chasm with no way for me to cross safely.
It is near the end of the day now (8pm but still light), so I decided to Pitch My Tent up in this T-split section and get a good night of sleep. I was so destroyed from the whole day, at this point I was on my feet for over 12 hours having done a lot of intense bushwhacking.
Having seen the area around me, I even decided to initiate a SOS with my Garmin Inreach. I thought, it’s better I let people know what is going on before something bad happens. Once done, I managed to communicate well with the emergency services and we decided I would try the next day to hike parallel along the Lennox Creek, until I was at 90 degrees of the Earnslaw Hut, where the river should become passable.
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Hike
Day 2
And so we did. As soon as I woke up I packed up my stuff and gave a prompt to the emergency services. I was up and running. Now I fought my way through the bush, parallel to Lennox Creek. You knew not many people had walked here as the forest was full of dead trees that no one had ever stood on. That made me want to be very careful, as I didn’t know if a tree would fall over if I used it to pull myself up.
There was one trick I used that got me through it a bit faster and that was making use of deer trails. They were all over the place and when I spotted the first one, I tried to stay on as long as possible. This significantly increased my speed and eventually I cleared the forest. I had covered 1km of distance in an hours time. Which I was all happy with, because when I spotted the Lennox River I could see it had quieted down and gave for a Simple Crossing.
Not long after that I found the Kea Basin Track and I was ‘back in civilization’. I closed off the SOS, thanked them for the mental support and continued on. I reached and crossed, the Rees River (which was ankle deep) and found myself on the Rees-Dart Track now. I followed this up to Shelter Rock Hut and Pitched Up My Tent, just across the hut on the other side of the river.
While the day prior it had been pretty miserable in a constant drizzly of rain, today the sun was out and it got hot (which means 20 degrees). I jumped into the river which gave me a nice refresher.
From my Garmin Inreach I downloaded a weather report and it told me not the best news. It was starting to look like a big rainstorm would enter the mountains tomorrow, forecasted with high wind gusts of up to 80km/h. My decision was to start early the next day, make my way to Dart Hut and assess the situation then.
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Hike
Day 3
Waking up, I threw my stuff into the backpack and off we were. The first milestone of the day was reaching the Rees Saddle. Which from Shelter Rock Hut is a gentle climb of about two hours. Once on top I took in the views of the valley below me. Far in the distance I could already spot clouds coming in, this wasn’t a good sign as I remembered the weather forecast that I got in the day prior.
After the Saddle it was downhill, along the river which you cross at one point with a Bridge. Good to note, this bridge is only there during the summer months. It gets removed in winter due to the high risk of it being destroyed by avalanches. Not long after this I sat in the Dart Hut eating my lunch and thinking about my next steps. As is common with serviced huts in NZ, the warden puts up a weather forecast on the board. According to this forecast, the rain storm would have started already in the morning, but at 1pm it still hadn’t rained here. I knew it was coming, but luck was on my side, it most likely would be later in the day. This gave me the confidence I wanted to push on and accept the risk I could be hiking in the rain storm for the last part of the day. As I was going towards the Cascade Saddle, I hoped it wouldn’t start until I had crossed this section.
Walking towards the Cascade Saddle I had some of the most amazing views you can get. The valley expanded significantly and the mountains became higher. This gave for some impressive views, especially once I started climbing towards the Cascade Saddle and I could see the Dart Glacier in the distance. However, at this point the rain storm had started and just before the saddle it had become quite bad. I had put on all my rain gear, which included a beanie, gloves and a buff because the temperature had dropped by a lot. That in combination with the rain and wind made for some miserable conditions. I don’t think I hiked in worse conditions so far, but was very happy I had taken this extra gear with me, for this ‘summer hike’!
Having seen pictures of the saddle on a good day, I could only imagine the views I was seeing now. Luck wasn’t on my side today as I could not see much more than curtains of rain, which was pretty impressive to see actually.
If the weather would have been good, I would have pitched up my tent either on top of Cascade Saddle Campground (which has a toilet) or just over it, on This Amazing Spot. But yeah, the rain was still pouring down and no way did I want to spend the night in these conditions. I pushed on and continued down to Aspiring Hut, reaching this in the beginning of the evening. It was so good entering a warm and cosy hut after being soaked in the cold for hours on end!
I devoured my diner, jumped into bed and was knocked out.
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Hike
Day 4
At this point in the hike it felt comfortable waking up to the sound of rain hitting the hut. Wherever you looked you could see these massive ‘rain curtains’ being blown through the Matukituki Valley. Having exchanged some words with the hut warden, I felt good as he assured me the 10km section back to the car park should not take much more than 1.5 to 2 hours.
Putting on my wet socks and shoes, I started and was lucky to be walking with a tail wind. I will admit the mountains looked super dramatic in these conditions and I managed to capture some amazing shots if you ask me. There’s always a positive to having such bad weather!
It was also cool seeing how aggressive the Matukituki river had become. The water was dark and soaring like crazy, on several occasions it flooded the river banks. Fortunately the track was ok. Only for one section did I have to cross a side stream, which saw me have knee deep water. As I was soaked anyway, I did not mind.
As the hut warden had told me, 2 hours later I saw some people waving at me. they were my ride home and I had completed the hike.
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