So, finishing the Cascade-Saddle Tramp was just the first part of the story that day… we now needed to get back to our home/van, Dougie… which was parked 150km away in Wanaka. The Cascade-Saddle, like a lot of the great multi-day hikes in New Zealand, is a point-to-point hike – meaning you start in one place, and end in another… really far away. So you have to figure out how you’re going to get back when you’re done. Originally, we’d bought bus and shuttle tickets for the rides from Wanaka to Raspberry Creek, where the tramp started ($35 each), Chinaman’s Bluff where the tramp ends back to Queenstown ($50 each), and the bus from Queenstown back to Wanaka, where Dougie was safely parked ($25 each). Grand total = $220… All that beauty at the top of Cascade Saddle Pass doesn’t come cheap!
My dear wife Amy thought it would be more fun (and cost-effective) if we hitch-hiked, instead of taking the shuttles and buses. I was a bit reluctant… it’s the shoulder season, so those empty trails we’ve been enjoying also mean fewer cars heading to those trailheads… and at the end of the hike, we’d be kind of stuck (and screwed) if we couldn’t find a lift. Amy has this romantic notion of hitch-hiking ('think of all the interesting people we can meet while going from place to place!'), while i have what i would consider to be a more realistic view (sitting around waiting for a ride that may or may not come, instead of going from place to place). So we compromised… we hitched to the start of the hike (and spent our $70 savings on dinner-and-a-movie date night at the Wanaka theater), and kept our reservations for the shuttles and buses at the end of the tramp.
But as it turned out, we ended up finishing a day earlier than we’d expected. (We’d planned an additional night on another ridge, but with a later start than expected on the first day, didn’t think we could make it. In the end, our legs ended up having plenty of climbing without an extra day of lots of up… followed by lots of down).
So, we finished hiking on Day 4 around 12:30pm, with a shuttle pick-up scheduled for the next day at 2:00pm. ‘No problem’, says Amy… ‘we can hitch a ride, cancel our shuttle, save lots of money, and have an extra day to spend somewhere!’
Many of you may not know this about me… but one of the reasons that I’m usually so laid back is that I do a lot of ‘worst-case-scenario/contingency planning’ in my head. I think through the different ways a situation might likely turn out, get comfortable with the least desirable scenario and realize it’s usually not the end of the world, and then can embrace my typically care-free attitude. So I did that…
Scenario 1: we catch a ride with some trampers hiking out (…but we didn’t see THAT many people at the last hut who would be hiking out… and they looked much more like the kind of people who might be looking to hitch a ride FROM us, rather than have a ride to offer).
Scenario 2: We catch a ride with some day-hikers that have come to the end of our hike for a short day out (…but there were some pretty cool glaciers to be seen on a short day-hike at the start of our hike, and our hike ended in the flats… not the kind of day-hike that attracts a lot of folks… and it’s still the shoulder season).
Scenario 3: We catch a ride with the shuttle… maybe some other hikers have scheduled the shuttle for that day, or maybe they just screwed up our reservation and would come a day early on accident? (…but as previously described, not so many hikers headed out, and they don’t really look responsible enough to have arranged a shuttle… and the shuttle accidentally coming the wrong day but the day we happen to need it? I’m starting to grasp at straws here).
Scenario 4: We’re spending the night at Chinaman’s Flat… for lunch, dinner, breakfast and lunch the next day, we’ll be having hot water flavored with beef bullion, half of a peanut butter sandwich (jelly finished up already), a bag of dried mango, and some hot cocoa. Oh, and the heavens have darkened, the wind is whipping up, and a major storm is predicted. But at least there’s a shelter… which is unfortunately infested with sand-flies. But I’m enjoying my book, we’ve got a great tent, and plenty of warm clothes. It won’t be that bad. We’ll have something to laugh about later.
Comfortable with my scenarios, I was now ready to tackle the question of transportation out of there. In the last ½ hour of our hike, the 6 people that had stayed at the hut the night before passed by us (have we mentioned that we’re not super-fast hikers?). Our eyes lit up… Scenario 1, perhaps? Amy pushed us forward, attempting to keep them in our line of sight. As it turned out, the scruffy looking Europeans DID have a van… but apparently they’d bonded with the other American couple that stayed in the hut with them. Blast! We tent-dwellers can never overcome the bonds formed among the hut-dwellers… We watched as they moved all of their baggage around to make room for 6 people to drive happily away in their camper-van… leaving us with our sand-flies, whipping winds, darkening skies, and soon-to-be-falling torrential rains.
Scenario 2 wasn’t looking so good either… The parking lot was pretty sparse. Not so many day-hikers in these parts. Amy held out hope for a shiny new Dept of Conservation truck, until I explained that it probably belonged to the hut warden that was at least two-days walking away. Scenario 3? Not so likely, given that there were no other trampers finishing the hike that day. Everyone at the last hut on the route was now accounted for: 6 happy hut-dwellers in their campervan, heading for showers, burgers and laundry in Queenstown, and Amy and Dave preparing some peanut-butter sandwiches while dodging sand-flies.
Things were looking bleak. I started to prepare Amy for the fact that we’d be spending the night there. I was just glad that we had the shuttle coming the next day, at the very least… because had we gone with Amy’s plan and cancelled all of our shuttles, we could have been stuck there for who knows how long.
Still, my wife, ever the optimist, held out hope: “Maybe someone will come this way just out for a scenic drive?” I had to laugh this one off… and explain to Amy that people didn’t come 75km from Queenstown, for a scenic drive, to look at some river flats. So she started to prepare our ½ of a peanut butter sandwich.
Suddenly, we hear a car in the distance… driving towards the parking lot… pulls up to the river… stops… turns around… starts to head back out. Dave, using his most winning, sheepish smile, puts out his thumb. The car stops… back up… and offers us a ride. They started by explaining that they NEVER pick up hitch-hikers, but just this once, why not? We asked what brought them out this way: “Just out for a scenic drive.” I can’t make this stuff up. 10 minutes have passed since we arrived at the parking lot.
We ended up having a wonderful ride with our new NZ friends Colin and Deb. They lived in a small town about an hour south of Christchurch, and were on a short holiday in Queenstown. (Thought they’d take a drive for the day, to see where that particular road ended). It was really great fun to talk with them about the area, get some perspectives on everything from sheep farming, to rugby teams, to the local controversies over possum control. Among other things, Colin works as a volunteer fire-fighter and a member of NZ’s Urban Search and Rescue Unit. Amazingly, the unit had never been deployed in its 17-year existence, and the government was considering the option of disbanding it… just as the first Christchurch earthquake hit last September. He was deployed then, and again when the February earthquake hit (we’ve since been to Christchurch and seen the damage… it’s truly staggering). He was personally part of 6 life-saving rescues. As he was finishing up his work there, the Japan quake hit, and NZ sent his team up to Japan (Japan had sent a team to NZ in its hour of need, and even given what NZ had just been through, they wanted to reciprocate in Japan’s time of need). Pretty incredible stuff.
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| Enjoying a burger with our saviors, Colin and Deb |
When we arrived in Queenstown an hour or so later, we were thrilled that they let us thank them by taking them out for Ferg-Burgers. What’s a Ferg-Burger, you ask? It’s really worthy of its own blog-post. Lonely Planet describes it as the greatest burger in NZ, and possibly the entire world. Don't worry -- I may be down a few kilos, but I'm still a Clydesdale, and I didn’t disappoint any of my fans out there. I ordered the ‘Big Al’ – the biggest burger on the menu. ½ pound of pure NZ angus beef, ‘a whole lotta cheese’, bacon, lettuce, tomato, a beet, and 2 fried eggs… on a gluten-free bun. And not to be out-done, Amy impressively polished off her burger, Mr. Big Stuff, which was everything the Big Al was, minus the beet and the eggs. (Colin went for the ‘Tropical Swine’ – pineapple and bacon on his burger, and Deb went for the original ‘Ferg-Burger’). Needless to say, no dinner was necessary that night. Deb and Colin invited us to stop by their home on our way up north, but unfortunately, we were heading through their town before they’d be returning. Then they wanted to know where else they could take us that would be more convenient for us. Really great people that we were really lucky to meet. (You might be lucky to meet them too… we left them a note offering places to stay all over the US if they make it this way… with all of our friends around the countryJ).
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| The "Big Al": One impressive burger... |
Anyway, not wanting to push our karma too far, we took the bus from Queenstown to Wanaka, where we were happily re-united with Dougie. And the next day, we cancelled our scheduled shuttle and received a further refund.
As it turned out, hitch-hiking our way home provided a unique and great experience in and of itself – and a wonderful end to our last tramp. What can I say? My wife is always right.
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