Despite the title of this post, yesterday I got back from a wonderful weekend away on the Copland Track, which is about a 30 minute drive south of Fox Glacier in New Zealand’s Westland National Park. The full Copland Track is something that I couldn’t tackle without some immense help; it turns into a route past the point that I went to and then heads into ice and snow across the Copland Pass. On the way in, I met three people that had come across the pass from Mount Cook, and one had to be rescued by the other two twice. His knees looked pretty much nonexistent; apparently he slid down a lot of ice and could see the blood trail where he’d been. Not fun, so I stuck to the first 17kms (11 miles) of the track.

I started the track on my own after being dropped off by the Intercity/Newmans bus at the entrance on the main road. The bus driver was really helpful, and told me not to worry if the weather got bad and I had to miss the bus, even though I had a ticket booked for two days later; he said it wasn’t worth risking my life for, which I agreed with! He also told me how to get across the first creek without getting my feet wet and said that if I did that, my feet would stay dry for the rest of the walk.

The walk in took me nearly 8 hours, even though it was only signposted as 7, because I took quite a few flood bridges over creeks that looked a bit daunting to me with my large pack. The track essentially consists of rocks followed by rocks in creeks followed by more rocks again. Luckily, the creeks weren’t very high as it hadn’t rained in a number of days, so I got through with only one fall in the Unnamed Creek. All of the water was quite impressive though, especially the Copland River, whose aqua waters flowed to the right of the track for the vast majority of the time.

Once I arrived at Welcome Flat, where the Department of Conservation hut is located, I was greeted by Sally the hut warden. She was extremely friendly and helpful, especially in regards to weather plans (since the weather was supposed to turn rotten the following day). After talking to her I went to the main attraction of the hut: the natural hot pools that occur less than 100m away! There are 4 pools, the first of which is a cool 60 degrees C. I went in the third pool, which was quite a nice temperature, although barely waist deep when I sat down. It felt great on my tired feet and worn-out ankles, but unfortunately the sandflies were out in force. After five minutes of madly swatting, I gave up and went back to the hut.

The best time to enjoy the hot pools is after dark, once the sandflies have finally gone to sleep. Everyone staying in the hut went out on Friday night, since it was predicted to be the only non-rainy night where we could see the scenery around us while we bathed. Even in the darkness, we could see all of the (lightly snow-capped) mountains surrounding our hut; the location is absolutely second to none. As Sally said, we were in paradise. The hot water of the second-warmest (and deepest) pool felt amazing as we sat talking in the cool night. Sally had a group of friends visiting her for the weekend, and there were also two other trampers that arrived shortly after dark–a Canadian named John and an American girl named Rhoda. Luckily all of us got along (except John, who didn’t make an effort), since we ended up spending a lot of time together!

The next morning, we woke up to the expected rain. Rhoda and John, as well as two Hungarians that had been camping, headed off into the rain, hoping to beat the rising streams. The Copland is well-known for its lack of resistance under the strain of weather; as soon as heavy rains come in, all of the creeks crossing the track go into flood and make it very difficult to cross (plus, there’s an active landslip that can’t be crossed during bad rain due to the risk of falling rocks & earth). The Hungarians were lucky enough to make it past Shiels Creek, the closest creek to the hut (about 20 mins walk) and the only major unbridged creek on the track before it went into flood; John and Rhoda were not quite so lucky. When they arrived, the creek was raging and they took a lot of time scoping it out, trying to decide how they would possibly cross it without serious bodily injury. Then, out of the blue, John decided to cross without Rhoda and barely made it to the other side. Rhoda sensibly refused to risk her life attempting to cross, but John refused to cross it again. Instead, he threw their remaining sandwiches to her, said that he had to go back to the car so the food in it wouldn’t rot, and left her standing there. Really a top guy, huh? She’s lucky she was so close to the hut so she could easily return and wait until the creeks were at a more crossable level…and she’s also lucky that there were people at the hut, especially since John seemed to think that two PB&J sandwiches would last her for an extra day!

The story of this weekend is quite long, and there are a lot of details I can’t leave out or else it won’t quite make sense. I managed to spend a good amount of internet time on the phone today, sorting out a bit of business I will describe in the next post, but now I have to go grocery shopping and wash my clothes so I can have some dry, warm, clean clothes to wear tomorrow!

Also, I have added pictures from my trips to Gillespies Beach (the closest beach to Fox) and to the base of Fox Glacier here, which I took the day before I started the Copland. Pictures from around Welcome Flat Hut can be found here. I’ll add the rest of the pictures from the track tomorrow, since they are on my other camera that I didn’t get around to uploading today.