Hopeless Creek and Lake Angelus, Nelson lakes National Park

The second trip of 2015 was a long awaited trip to the Nelson Lakes National Park. We had three days for a trip so pondered a number of different possibilities.

We decided on a pleasant round trip from St Arnaud: Day 1 - St Arnaud to Coldwater Hut, Day 2: Coldwater Hut to Hopeless Hut, up the Hopeless Creek, over Sunset Saddle and down to the tarns before Lake Angelus. Day 3: Tarns to Lake Angelus, then down Roberts Ridge and back to St Arnaud.

Day 1: We plod along the very easy track on the Eastern side of Lake Rotoiti. It's a gentle and pleasant 2hrs walk to Lakehead Hut. Lakehead is a big, ugly hut. There's only a few people in the hut (it sleeps 27), but it's set back away from the lake and the nearby Coldwater Hut is right beside the lake, so we decide to head there instead.

The very serene Lake Rotoiti from St Arnaud

UGLY....Lakehead Hut

The track to Coldwater from Lakehead actually goes South, away from the hut, and DoC estimates a time of 50 minutes to get there. We decide instead to venture across the Travers Valley and river directly to the hut and manage to cross the river without any trouble and arrive at Coldwater 20 minutes later.

Coldwater Hut

Coldwater has much more character, with a beautiful stone open fireplace inside and stone work on the outside. It sleeps 10 and has plenty of room inside. There's four people already at the hut, but they're all very friendly and make great conversation.

My mates Matt and Jude were keen for a swim, but it's clouded over and the wind's picked up, so I don't feel a pressing urge for a swim. Just as well, because soon after Matt and Jude jump in, there's a yell and commotion coming from the water. Jude's been bitten by an eel! It's large enough for it to bleed and we can see the bit marks on the back of his legs.

Jude's eel bite!

The eels hover around the jetty in front of the hut and hold their ground even when prodded with a stick. They're pretty big! They provide great entertainment for half an hour, until the incessant sandflies prove to be too much, and we all venture inside for the hut.

The hut very thoughtfully has bug screens on the windows, so you can ventilate the hut while cooking, without letting a whole horde of sandflies in.

Day 2: The next morning, we get cracking early, as we have a big day ahead of us.

We walk an easy two hours up the Travers Valley to the Hopeless Hut turnoff. Here, the track gradually climbs for an hour and a half to the fantastic Hopeless Hut.

Walking up the Travers Valley

Hopeless oozes with character, with big windows showing off fantastic views of the range, wood paneling all around and even two double mattresses on the bottom rows of the bunks. Also, there's a bonus room downstairs with no mattresses, which could be used as an overflow space if the hut is full.

Hopeless Hut

Hopeless Hut interior

After lunch here, we begin the grunt up to Sunset Saddle, 1000m up! There is a track leading out of the bush from Hopeless and then a cairned route begins. It's hot work in the January sun. At the end of the valley is a big bluffed cliff and waterfall, and the route scrambles up a big scree face, before heading over the waterfall to a beautiful tarn.  The route carries on above the tarn before flattening out alongside another tarn and then climbing steadily again to Sunset Saddle.

We have to somehow get to the top of that waterfall!

Looking down the Hopeless Valley

Scree slope ready for srambling

Tarn above the waterfall

Matt climbing up to the first tarn

Unfortunately, it's clouded in a fair bit, so the views from the saddle aren't that great. We head up nearby Mt Angelus (2,075m) anyway, as we can't be bothered climbing all the way back up to it the next day. It's an easy, if steep, scree scramble. 

View of tarns from Sunset Saddle

From the saddle, we descend to the first tarn and find the one campsite that's not soggy and wet! Matt very bravely goes for a swim in the tarn. After a cramped night of 3 guys in a 2 man tent, we awake to a clear sunny day and descend for an hour past Hinapouri Tarn to Lake Angelus. It's a awesome spot, with great views and a very pleasant setting. Angelus is a large, modern and popular hut, but we were glad to be able to camp away from the all the people the previous night.

Angelus Hut and Lake Angelus

Lake Angelus

Lake Angelus and Angelus Hut

The track back out past Angelus is pretty simple, following gently along Roberts Ridge for 3 hours, before steeply descending to the carpark. The views are just awesome, and we can see most of the peaks of Nelson Lakes, plus the Richmond Ranges and Kahurangi Ranges further North. Being up on the tops for so long on such a clear, sunny day is a magical experience.

Views from Roberts Ridge

Kea Hut

Bushline Hut

St Arnaud and Lake Rotoiti from Roberts Ridge

I decide to take the slightly longer track past Bushline Hut, so I can add to the hut talley, while Matt and Jude go directly down Roberts Ridge. From the carpark, it's about a 45 minute walk to  St Arnaud. A better way to do the loop would be to park at Roberts Ridge carpark and follow the track on the Western side of the lake to Coldwater Hut, which is slightly shorter than the Eastern track and this way would avoid the hot slog along the road back to St Arnaud.

Another great summer trip!

Tramping times:

St Arnaud to Coldwater Hut via the Eastern side of Lake Rotoiti: 2.5hrs
Coldwater Hut to Hopeless Hut: 4hrs
Hopeless Hut to Sunset Saddle: 4hrs
Sunset Saddle to Mt Angelus summit: 15 minutes
Sunset Saddle to Lake Angelus: 1hr
Lake Angelus to Roberts Ridge carpark (direct): 4hrs

Sawcut Gorge, South Malborough, January 2015

Second trip of 2015! A quick jaunt up the Ure river to Sawcut Gorge and Isolation Hut. 

We headed up the didymo infested river from Blue Mountain station, hitting the river after 10 minutes walking through the farm. The track to the gorge and hut is entirely along the river, and involves several river crossings. In January though, the river was low and gently flowing. 

Walking up the Ure River

There are plenty of great swimming holes along the way (and friendly eels!), and it's a pretty scenic place to walk. 

After about an hour's walk, we arrived at Sawcut Gorge. It's pretty spectacular and a very cool place to walk through. 

Sawcut Gorge

Sawcut Gorge

A further hour up the river, we arrived at Isolation Creek Hut. It's a very tidy and well located hut and we had a great night there. Had the place to ourselves until a very attractive British man arrived to keep us company after dinner! 

The next day we retraced our steps back out again! We made sure to clean our boots thoroughly to kill the didymo. 

Isolation Creek Hut

Liverpool Hut, Mt Aspiring National Park, January 2014

Over the 2013/14 summer break, I'd planned many tramping adventures over the two weeks I had in the South Island with a bunch of friends. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't playing ball and it pretty much rained every day of the break. So we had to cancel many of the trips we'd been looking forward to for so long.

After making our way down the South Island (and cancelling the Mt Tapuae-o-Uenuku climb in the Kaikoura ranges and the Copland Pass trip by Mt Cook because we couldn't get up or over flooded rivers), we arrived in Wanaka rather fed up with the weather and the destruction of our plans. 

One trip that we were able to do, was to Liverpool Hut in the West Matukituki Valley. The valley is a popular tramping area, being only an hour's drive from Wanaka, with plenty of options available for tramping adventures. 

The last few kilometres of the gravel road to the carpark are pretty rough, with a few fords to cross, but in dry weather these shouldn't pose any problem for an ordinary 2WD car, except to test the suspension (cars with low clearance not recommended!).

The original plan was to head to French Ridge Hut (1600m), which is at the top of a spur leading up to the Bonar Glacier and is a key starting point for the climb to Mt Aspiring. However, a washed out bridge and a raging Matukuituki River put that plan to bed. The next best alternative was to Liverpool Hut (1200m), which lies on the flanks of Mt Barff, opposite French Ridge. 

The day started out mostly overcast, but sunny enough to warrant sunglasses. But with dark clouds looming to the West, it was never going to last.

The track begins from the Raspberry Flat carpark and initially travels through scenic farmland/ river flats, next to the river. The walk is easy going, but with a lot of stream crossings. In dry periods, most of these can be crossed, by utilising boulders placed by previous trampers, without getting your feet wet. Given the recent rain, we didn't quite manage to do this.

After about 1 3/4hrs walking, we arrived at Cascade Hut. Built in 1932, this lovely four bunk hut, with two separate bunk rooms and fires, is owned by the NZ Alpine Club and is not available to non-members. It looks like it would be a nice, cosy place to spend a night, or to camp out the front.

Cascade Hut

While soaking up some sun before venturing further up the valley towards the clouds, my mate Ben managed to catch a baby rabbit with his bare hands. What a bushman! Here's me posing with the happy fella! We let him go after that.

A further 20 minutes up the track is the colossal Aspiring Hut. It's a gorgeous hut, also owned by the NZ Alpine Club, but managed by DOC and available for public use. It's almost more of a luxury lodge, with its North-facing bench seats and large windows offering views of Mt Aspiring and thick stone walls upgrading the hut far above the much more basic corrugated exteriors of New Zealand's backcountry huts. Despite its size and popularity, I would loved to have been able to spend a night here and sit by the window reading a book with the fire crackling nearby. As it sits near the junction to the Cascade saddle route, I hope to get back here shortly to attempt the trip over the saddle to the Dart valley, leading to Glenorchy.

Aspiring Hut

The track continues up the valley on the grassy river flats for a another hour and a half, briefly going through some beech forest as the valley begins to narrow. Steep mountains tower over us and, I'd imagine, provide a fantastic sight were it not for the cloud smothering them.

The next part of the trip is not so easy. The climb to Liverpool is straight up - an all-fours climb from 500m elevation to 1200m in the space of about an hour and half. It's very steep and hard-going. The drizzle had set in by this point, to add to the fun. From the picture below, you can get an idea of the steepness of the terrain leading up to the hut. 

It pays to take your time on this track. There are a number of steep, slippery and narrow rock patches to get up and in wet conditions they're quite treacherous. Sadly, an experienced member of the Otago University Tramping Club died from a fall while climbing up to Liverpool Hut a few years ago.

Liverpool Hut looking East

The climb is well worth it though. The ten-bunk Liverpool Hut occupies a spectacular location, in a small alpine basin, offering fantastic views of Mt Aspiring to the North and the Matukuituki Valley West (in the picture above). French Ridge Hut sits almost opposite the hut, across the valley and a bit higher up. 

Unfortunately, due to the low cloud and drizzle, we couldn't see much of the views. Occasionally the clouds would peak slightly and we were treated to a small part of the view and our imaginations could run for a bit, picturing what the view would be like on a clear day and

I don't want to post another person's picture of the view on here of the view on a clear day, as I'm not too sure about copyright stuff, but Google Liverpool Hut images!

Approaching the hut

Although Liverpool Hut sits just above the bushline and is surrounded by tussock, it feels like it is much higher up. 

It has a 'freezer' door, a massive thing, designed to keep the cold and snow out. To add to the alpine feel, we were kept company in the hut by an alpine guide and his client, an Australian surgeon, who after a failed attempt to climb Mt Aspiring, had tried their hand on Mt Barff, just behind the hut. They had to turn back due to blizzard conditions near the top though. 

Liverpool is a very new hut, built in 2009, and has all the modern features of a modern DOC hut - double glazing etc. Although it has no heating. It's a very tidy and well kept hut, thanks to a DOC ranger based at Aspiring Hut, who regularly visits all the huts in the valley and maintains them. We had a pleasant evening, reading National Geographic magazines, watching Kea potter around on the deck outside and eating far too much chocolate.

Visitor outside the hut

The next morning, it really poured down. The only way back out is to retrace your steps the same way in. After an hour, and because the track was pretty much a stream by this point anyway, we gave up trying to keep our feet dry and proceeded to walk through every puddle we could find. It was quite liberating actually, and made the walk much faster. All of the side streams were running very high but didn't pose any problems crossing them. 

 So, despite the weather obscuring the views and a miserable walk out, it was still a great trip, with a nice variety of terrain. 

Approx timings:

Raspberry Flat car park to Aspiring Hut: 2-2.5hrs
Aspiring Hut to Liverpool Hut: 3-4hrs - take off 30mins for the return trip