An inspiring national park

The name of the national park in Wanaka is Mt Aspiring National Park, but I found it to be rather inspiring so I changed the name in my head. Before heading into the park I did a walk through a Tartare Tunnel which was a man-made gold mining tunnel built at the turn of the 20th century, the entire west coast of NZ had the largest gold rush in the southern hemisphere so there are several of these tunnels around the area. This one just happens to be a longer one, and in the end the tunnel produced virtually no gold and was converted to a hydro-electric power plant. It was somewhat creepy in there and I got my first view of the famous New Zealand glow-worms, which were less than spectacular....oh well, at least something in New Zealand didn't live up to the hype. Lightning bugs are much cooler.

Going into Wanaka from the glaciers requires that you cross over the southern Alps to their eastern (dry) side. The terrain was remarkable different as soon as you crossed the divide. The west coast is filled with subtropical rainforest due to the amount of rain they get, but the eastern side only gets a tenth of the rain that the west coast gets so its a much dryer environment. The forecast was nice, so I hitched a ride to the trail-head in the Matukituki Valley....talk about an awesome name for a valley....and hiked up to the Rob Roy Glacier. Despite the fact that I didn't care too much for the name of the glacier, reminds me of Roy Rogers for some reason, the glacier was beautiful. There wasn't really a terminal face to it as the end of it extended out over a cliff, which makes for some dramatic (and loud) avalanches of falling ice. The ice was perfectly clean and was the perfect example of the famous blue glacier ice. From the viewing point you are somewhat far away from it but crevices and ice fall of the glacier looked menacing, not somewhere that would be safe to walk on.

The walk through the valley itself was breathtaking and really made you feel tiny. The valley was about 2 miles wide with mile high peaks on both sides. The walls are very rugged and cut at extremely steep angles because they were originally carved by glaciers during the ice age. The mountains on the left side of the valley were a masterpiece. New Zealand is at the merging point of 2 of the earths tectonic plates. One is going under the other which causes the uplift for the southern Alps. The mountains in this valley made this force remarkably clear. One side of the slope was a continuous rise upwards (the plate on top) while the other was a series of sharp ridges (bottom plate) that dropped nearly vertical from the valley floor, I'll have to find a picture to better show this, but take my word for it that it was really cool to see.

The valley was also covered with cows and thus lots of cow poo which raises the very interesting question, which animal poops more the yaks in Nepal or the New Zealand cows? I'll have to look into that. The valley walls were littered with hundreds of small to large water falls that made for a spectacular hike. I stayed overnight in Aspiring Hut in the park with a few other guests. The next morning I climbed to the top of Cascade Saddle which is the start of the Rees-Dart Track that goes down into Fiordlands National Park. It was a bit cloudy on top so the views weren't unbelievable but the hike itself was nice and exhausting.

Once I finished the walk I hitched a ride back to town and went to the famous movie theater there. I mean, a theater that has couches for you to sit on and has intermission to give everyone freshly baked cookies and homemade ice cream has to be famous right?

Wanaka has certainly been a highlight of New Zealand