West Matukituki with Molly

Hey All,

So we took advantage of the three day weekend celebrating Otago Day (our regional holiday) to head up to Aspiring National Park to wander through the West Matukituki valley and make our way to the Liverpool hut that we'd heard a lot of good things about. We met up with Molly in Wanaka at the DOC office to get our hut passes and head out. Turns out that the Liverpool hut was being rebuilt at the moment so we decided on the more challenging hike to the French Ridge hut. It turned out to be just glorious.

Our first day was a relatively gentle uphill through farm pasture. We got a late start and missed out exploring one of the side hikes to the Rob Roy Glacier. Something we're definitely going to have to go back to see. That's a glimpse of the Rob Roy Glacier behind them.

Here's a few pictures from the hike up the valley.Drea was on a mission to find a cowpie with grass growing through it. I'm still not sure why, but here's the winning one.

Beauty, eh?

We got into the Aspiring Hut to find it totally overrun with high school girls. A class of 40 or 50 students from one of the local girls high schools was there for the weekend. Lets just say the hut was not the most tranquil of places during our night there and the kitchen smelled strongly of burnt toast. Thankfully they'd left one of the bunkrooms for the non-students so we retreated there for the night. First order of business, kill all the sandflies on the window.

The next morning we got up early (with our hut neighbors it was hard not to) and hit the trail. We absolutely lucked out on the weather for the weekend as it was perfect. Just a few clouds and only the tiniest hint of wind. We hiked for a couple of hours before stopping for a side trip to one of the glacial waterfalls.

From there we continued on to a small river crossing (saving us a 30 minute hike to the bridge) at the base of the mountain and the start of our uphill climb.This water was COLD!!!

The hike uphill was brutal. It felt more like rock climbing and less like hiking. I think we spent half of this hike on all fours scrambling over rocks and roots over some very steep sections of track. Luckily the roots made quite good handholds.

At this point we were only about half way up but thought we were about three-quarters of the way up. Although the track did get a little less difficult from here it was still quite a grunt up to the top. On the way up Molly had one goal for the trip. See Kea. Kea are an alpine parrot native to New Zealand and known for being quite a troublemaker. Well, Molly accomplished her goal and then some. There were 10-20 Kea up at the top that were kind enough to pose for lots of pictures.

We explored the area around the hut and enjoyed the incredible scenery.

Toilets in New Zealand make for great scenery!

The next morning was a continuation of the incredible weather. We started making the long way down from the top and enjoyed spectacular vistas along the way.




On the way back down the valley we took advantage of the warm weather and this incredible pool along the river to go for a very brief swim.The jump from the top of the rocks was great. Here's a few action shots....

Drea went first:


Molly thought it was a bit on the cold side..

And finally my turn:






This was such an incredible trip. We headed home tired but inspired by such a great weekend. Molly stayed with us in Dunedin for a couple days and we got to introduce her to our chickens before heading on her way back to the states. Good luck in your new job Molly!

Love to all,
Dave and Andrea