13 March 2011

Still alive & still raging

A week is a long time in football.

It follows that six weeks is slightly longer, particularly when you'd given the impression that your tacky little website would have "updates".  Which implies "up to date".

Obviously, things have kinda slipped.

But try spending three months in the backcountry and see how much care you have for schedules, or plans, or the indoors.  When you do get into town, it all comes down to priorities: pizza, resupplies, route info for the next leg.  It's hard to bring yourself to spend hours in an internet cafe, although invariably you end up spending at least two figuring out how to get the viruses on the computers compatible with your digital camera.

I do have the scrawled diary entries though, and photos.  I'll type it all up at some point.

At the moment, I'm in Queenstown having traversed as far as Makarora from the north and circumnavigated Stewart Island in the south.  Some interesting country between Arthur's Pass and Makarora.  Fond memories of fine days on rugged tops in Westland and the generosity of hunters everywhere in the Canterbury alps.  Less fond memories of never ending scree ascents, epic river crossings and those days spent in tents before conceding that the river will never drop.

Anyway, through the poor weather of the season and circumstance I'm going to generously allow myself to include my 2006 traverse from Makarora to The Divide as part of the overall conceit.  So, strictly, the only thing required of me is to cross Fiordland over into Southland by one of (who knows how many) routes.

To everyone that I've crossed paths with so far: you're awesome; to those on Te Araroa: keep going; to friends in ChCh: hope the recovery is going well; to everyone at work: suck sh-t; and to the small set of people who've stitched together their own traverse over the years: you still live on in hut books, and we probably have the same dreams and nightmares.

 

3 comments:

  1. That 3rd photo looks like the start of a calendar. "Clint's Southern Traverse" indeed. It looks like you're scaring the other hikers.

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  2. maybe i'm one of those who live on in the hut books, having done a traverse a couple of years ago, i think the weather i got was better than this season, i tried a arthurs to mt cook this jan, got rained out.

    awesome work, special journey, well done, it's amazing what you can achieve from one foot after another.

    Olivia (and max the monkey)

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  3. Olivia & Max: you do indeed live on...

    Actually I met some hunters on the Wairaurahiri - they come down every year at about the same time and said that a few years ago they met a girl who was doing the traverse, except it was her second go through the Princess Mtn's as her tent had been shredded... was that you?

    A few names that recurred in hutbooks: Emma R, Paul K, Aaron W, Helen E, Olivia H, Andrew B

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