The End

Well, things didn't work out as expected in New Zealand so I decided to come home unexpectedly early. Overall I was able to do everything I had planned on before going. We did some climbing, fishing, sightseeing, jet boating, camping, and multi day hiking. I was hoping to do some more fishing and we had one more mountain that we wanted to climb but that just means some day I have a good reason to go back :)

The flight back was way longer then I ever want to do again but for the short term notice (about 10 hours from when Michael called to change my flight to when I boarded the first airplane) Air New Zealand did an amazing job. I showed up in Invercargill and the attendant at the front counter told me I was going to be one of the first ones to fly on their brand new Boeing 777-300 from Auckland to Los Angeles. He asked if I had any preference for seating and I told him first class would be fine. He chuckled and said he would see what he could do but no promises. He checked my bags all the way through to Bozeman which was awesome (we had to pick our bags up twice and transfer them last time) and didn't charge me anything for my extra bag ($100 when we came down).

Overall I had 18 hours of time in the air and 18 hours of layovers on the ground with 5 flights. Oh and I didn't get first class on the flight from Auckland to Los Angeles but I did get the best seat in Economy. I had the very first seat in economy which was an exit row with more leg room then I could use if i stretched all the way out and no one was sitting in the seat next to me. The airplane was spotless and economy is still the same style seats but the first class and business seats looked very comfortable. They did upgrade the tvs. They are much more like a computer now. Touch screens and you can order different drinks and foods over them other then the normal ones provided (although it costs money). But there are probably 50 different movies to watch a lot of them brand new, 500 different cds to listen to and 10 different radio stations all for free. I managed to watch 4 different movies and get 0 hours of sleep.

Overall it was a great life experience and someday I hope to go back and see/fish other parts of New Zealand.

I hope you enjoyed the blog.

Jeremy

Sunrise over the equator.
New 777-300
Top of the South Island

Working

Spent Monday through Friday trimming trees since we "missed the last week of work". David showed up on Thursday so our mode of transportation was gone for this weekend. Saturday I really didn't do much of anything, practiced playing the guitar which is a new thing I am starting to learn over here. I have a lot of partial songs that I can play. I'm working on being able to play the song Blackbird by the Beatles all the way through now.

Today we went to church in Gore which is about an hours drive away to the North. It reminded me a lot of Journey with the large stage in front with the full band and a lot of singing which I love. The message was pretty good too. We stopped at McDonalds for lunch on the way home since they are the only place in Southlands it seems that has free internet and even they limit the amount of data you can download (50mb). Then came back to do a few chores around the house. I took off around 5pm on a 4wheeler to fish a small creek we drive over every time we go to town. There were some big fish but the water was very murky brown, i'm guessing from the dairy farm upstream, that it was hard to spot them. I ended up only catching one brown trout around 20" in two hours, but it was nice to get away from the house.

Back to work tomorrow for what sounds to be another Monday-Friday week. Lots of trees to trim...

Greenstone/Caples Backcountry Rivers

The long week is over and mostly went off without a hitch. Michael and Molly's journey sounds like it was a success and I managed to survive five days in the wilderness on my own. Here is a quick run down.

Monday night I was running on fumes in the car so I was not able to make it to the trailhead because the one gas station in town closed sometime before 9pm. So I slept in the car that night. Woke up at 8am the next morning filled the car up with gas and was walking up the greenstone valley before I knew it. It took a bit longer then I was expecting with my heavy pack full of food and fishing gear but I was still the 3rd person at the hut so I got a prime bed location. I stopped just long enough to grab a quick bite and headed to the river with my fly rod for the evening in a deep gorge that might have been my favorite spot of the whole trip. I hooked up with two huge rainbows both of with broke my line so no pictures (no pictures no proof so it will stay a fish story but i saw them and was even able to touch one of them!).

The next day I walked further up the greenstone river fishing along the way with my gigantic pack but had some great success in the afternoon catching and landing seven rainbows from around 18" to 25". I wish someone else would have been around to get some pictures of me holding the fish but the ones below will have to suffice.

The third day was spent climbing up and over the McKellar saddle around 3,000' of elevation gain which was much steeper then expected and similar to Miter peak with a lack of a trail in most parts. I skipped the upper Caples hut as the river was fairly small and walked another four miles to the Mid-Caples hut. I had a quick fish in the afternoon and caught one medium sized rainbow before the sandflies chewed my ankles up.

Sandflies are nasty little small nats that seem to be impervious to DEET and love to bite around the ankles and wrists. They are fairly small so you can't feel them land on you and once you feel them bite it is to late and you can guarantee that you will be itching all night. The bites also swell up so my ankles were quite swollen most of the trip.

Day four was dedicated to fishing and funny enough I caught the least fish. The only thing I got in the afternoon was a sunburned and sandfly bites, although I did catch one in the evening.

The fifth day I was running out of food so I had a quick breakfast and was back to the parking lot at 10:30. I drove back to queenstown and booked a dorm room in a hostel just so I could use their shower to take off the layers of sweat, sunscreen, and bug spray.

The trip was a pretty decent experience. I didn't get to fish as much as I was hoping for mainly because the weather was so nice the sandflies swarmed me any time I stopped moving. So I spent a lot of time walking or in the huts reading and sleeping. The total trail length was 30 miles but with all the walking up and down the rivers it probably ended up being closer to 50 miles.

Back to work tomorrow. David comes back again on Thursday and will be here for most of the rest of our time here I just found out. I'm not sure what is going to happen then as our use of the car is pretty much gone for the weekends. So this might be the last big post…

Enjoy the pictures.

View from the top of McKellar Saddle.

Looking down the Greenstone valley. The river winds back and forth very similar to the Gallatin back home but no trees.

Some of the rainbows were spawning from the lake the river drains into. They don't look as healthy as the local fish.

More Miter Peak Photos from Michael's camera.

Walking up the ridge.

Cool shadows, you can see our tent, small white dot on the ridge.
Working on the tan :)
Middle of the jungle section.
Molly in the thick of it.
Ok gotta go.

Miter Peak, Milford Sound

Michael, Molly T., and I left the house Friday afternoon bound for Milford sound to climb Miter Peak the next day. Michael had mutual friends with the owner of a Sea Kayak company in Milford Sound so we had scored a free boat ride across the sound Saturday morning and they would pick us up Sunday afternoon. Once we arrived in Milford sound we found there were only two small hotels and one camp site. All of which were completely full. So Michael made a phone call to the Kayak company to see if they knew of any good places where we could pitch a tent with out the DOC (Department of Conservation) officers finding us and kicking us out in the middle of the night since there is no off site camping allowed. They told us just to come down to their employee housing and they had a bed and a beer for us. Turns out the bed was in the back of a Toyota Four Runner but better then having to drive the two hours back to the nearest free camping site. So we crashed in the back of cars for the night and woke up to an amazing morning and boat ride across the sound at 8am.

Miter Peak is not climbed very often and because of that there is not really much of a trail for the 3/4 of the climb that is in the jungle. After finding what we thought was just a drainage gully with less ferns and vines then the rest of the hillside we noticed some old flagging tied to one of the trees so then we knew we were actually on the trail that we had heard about. It turned out out to be six nasty hours of pretty steep climbing and descending hanging onto trees, roots, grass, or what ever else you could find. Most of the time the trail was wet or muddy. But it made for a great feeling once we busted out of the tree line onto the fields of tussock before the rock portion of the climb.

We set up the tent for Molly to hang out in just before where the exposed climbing began and Michael and I took off for the top. We had heard all sorts of stories that varied between people falling off the climb to their death in the ocean below, all the way to it was a good climb with no rope needed. So we had no idea what to expect and decided we would turn around at 7pm so we had light for coming back down. It turned out to be a bit sporty in places as the rock was terrible most of the way. It seemed almost everything you would touch wanted to move or slide. And the talk of being able to fall all the way into the sea below wasn't to far off in a few places. But we made it up in half the time we expected and had amazing weather with zero wind to hang out and soak in the views.

There were two interesting things about climbing this mountain. At about 9am the boats, planes, and helicopters all start their engines and start taking tourists out. So there is constantly noise in the air of some engine going past you. At one time I counted six airplanes, two helicopters and five boats all out at once. So that sucked. The thing that made of for it though was standing on one of the highest mountains in the sound looking out over the Tasman Sea only a few miles ahead of us, being able to see for hundreds of miles it seemed.

All in all it was a great trip with many more details that I don't have time to write about now. We stayed in Queenstown last night and I am headed to the Greenstone Track tonight or tomorrow.

Cooking dinner with a view.

This was taken about half way through the jungle one of the first times we could see above the trees.
On the top, Tasman sea in the background.
Amazing camping spot.

Quick stop at the Oriti

We noticed the wind wasn't blowing as usual so we made a quick stop at the Oriti River for a few hours. This river is much more like home because most the time you can't see the fish and just have to guess where they might be. I caught three small fish not worth a picture but the sunset was amazing and the water felt great after our hike today.

Photos from the weekend.

A quick day trip up Ben Lomond this afternoon 6 miles roundtrip with 3,000' of elevation gain. The sign said it should take 8 hours round trip. Michael and I did it in 2 hrs 45 min round trip. A good confidence builder :)

On our way back to the house now get some rest for another week of tree trimming then Michael's girlfriend aka "bird" here, comes thursday afternoon for 10 days. We will stick together for the first weekend then they will drop me off and go for a drive to the top of the south island and I am thinking of doing the Greenstone Trek which follows the famous backcountry Greenstone River which is supposed to be in an amazing setting with decent fishing.

Rain on its way from the top of Ben Lomond.

Looking down on Queenstown
The little dial at the top rotated and when you pointed it at a mountain it would display the name. Pretty cool idea.

Dancing the night away on new years eve! We squeezed our way to the front there was a huge crowd behind us.

2nd larger trout I caught on a tiny bead head nymph. I knew there were trout in the pool but the river was a bit murky from some rain and I didn't see this fish in the deeps.
2nd larger trout
1st "smaller" trout caught sight fishing with a beetle.
1st smaller trout