Hike (part II)

On a lot of the tramping routes in New Zealand, the Department of Conservation maintains huts for people to stay in overnight. For a small fee, you get to sleep in a dry, warm location each evening. On some of the major routes, you have to reserve them in advance, but in most locations, they are first come first serve. We were on a pretty popular route, but not one that required reservations. There is always a slight chance the hut would be full when you arrived and you would have to tent camp or push on for the next hut (which would almost certainly be at least 3 additional hours of hiking.) We were there towards the end of the season, mostly on weekdays, so there was generally plenty of space. The one Friday night we stayed in a hut, it got pretty crowded.

The best hut we stayed at was the Upper Travers Hut the night before crossing the Travers Saddle. It was above the tree line and quite uncrowded. (For many hikers, meeting fellow trampers and socializing is an exciting and enjoyable part of the adventure. For some of us introverts, the "communal living" as Don called it, was more something to be endured. )

Upper Travers Hut

Inside the hut, there is usually a wood stove, and space for cooking. Depending on the size of the hut, there can be from just a couple to 30 or more bunk beds each with a sleeping pad. All you have to do is supply the sleeping bag. There is generally a source of rainwater. Outside, there are vaulted toilets. As can be seen in this photo, everybody is looking for places to hang all their damp hiking clothes to dry.

Common area in Upper Travers Hut

A gourmet dinner

Most of the huts had an outdoor deck with benches where people could put on their boots and get ready. In the photo below, the hut had a roof over it, though this was not universal. They all had a protected room where you entered. Presumably in bad weather, this is where you could shed your wet/rainy gear. It seemed that boots and hiking sticks were generally left out in this room. In the photo below, this is the small room visible through the window on the left. 

Getting ready to depart the John Tait hut

Nelson Lakes Hike

The centerpiece of our trip to New Zealand was the five day hike in the Nelson Lakes area. We scheduled with Southern Wilderness for their "gourmet" guided hike covering a part of the Travers Sabine Circuit. The red dashed line shows the whole Travers Sabine Circuit. We started at "1" in St Arnaud and took a boat to "2". From there we hiked from 2 through 5 and took a boat back to 6. The lower three of the huts with green circles show where we spent nights (we spent two nights at the hut at point "3".
The section from "3" to "4" was an optional day hike up to Blue Lake.

The hikers: Me, Mig, Don and an Australian lady named Norma:

Boat ride to trail head at beginning of hike

The guides: Angus and Toni. He is now the owner of the company having taken it over from the previous owner. They were both very friendly and seemed to enjoy what they were doing. It has got to be grueling, but satisfying work. They did all the cooking on the trip and carried nearly all the food. I tried picking up his pack at the beginning of the trip and it must have been around 60lbs.

Boat ride back at end of hike

The entire hike was probably 60-70km (40 miles). On 3 of the days we did a net 400-500 meters of elevation (not counting ups and downs in between). With a 25lb pack, I wasn't sure how tough that would be. It turned out just about right. Even though the distances weren't that long, the track was often pretty rough. We were walking along steep slopes, and clambering over roots, rocks and streams. There were a number of places where a stumble could have led to painful, possibly fatal consequences. A few shots of typical parts of the trail:

Roots, mud, tree trunk

Steep Slope

Roots, roots... there's a trail there somewhere...

... more roots... and more steep slopes...

The trails are maintained by the New Zealand Department of Conservation. Though rugged, they were generally well marked and had bridges at key points. We encountered several swing bridges which were my favorites. Usually, they are limited to one person on them at a time.

Single person swing bridge

Scree slope

We were in a mountain range called the Southern Alps which provided some beautiful scenery.

Climbing towards Travers Pass

Enjoying view shortly after crossing the Travers Saddle

On the second to last day, we had a day trip up to Blue Lake, one of the clearest lakes in the world (photo below). Behind Blue Lake, at the top of the ridge behind it is another lake. Water from this lake feeds into Blue Lake by filtering through hundreds of feet of earth and most of the particulate matter is filtered out in the process.

Blue Lake

New Zealand (Geology)

Before going to New Zealand, I had to do some research on the country's geology. Perhaps there were important geologic features to see or rock samples to gather...

Prior to 200 million years ago, New Zealand was submerged off the coast of Gondwana (a super continent made up of Australia, Antartica, Africa, India and South America). Many of its rocks formed from layers of sediment deposited on the ocean floor by runoff from Gondwana.

100 million years ago, New Zealand had risen above sea level and formed the coast of Gondwana, right next to Australia.

85 million years ago, it split off from Gondwana. At the time of the split, its plants and animals would have matched those of its nearest neighbors (Australia and Antartica). As time passed, though, they would diverge substantially.

Interestingly, the territory of New Zealand is split between two plates: the Pacific plate and the Australian plate. The boundary between them runs across the south island. The North island is entirely on the Australian plate. In the south, the two plates are sliding past each other (kind of like the San Andreas fault), creating the Southern Alps. In the north, the Pacific plate is being subducted under the Australian plate, creating a line of volcanic activity.

New Zealand plate boundaries (Image stolen from here on Wikipedia)

When one plate subducts under another, the sinking plate carries water down under the upper plate. As the water gets squeezed out of the lower plate, it causes the rock above it to melt and become more buoyant. The resultant magma migrates towards the surface giving rise to chains of volcanoes. (There is a thorough Wikipedia description here.) Hence, there are a number of volcanoes and a lot of thermal activity on the North Island. In the last several thousand years there have been a number of major volcanic eruptions. The Taupo eruption 1800 years ago is probably the largest eruption in the world within the last 5000 years. 

Here's a map of New Zealand's volcanoes (all on the North Island). 

Map of NZ volcanos (from here)

Both islands are prone to earthquakes with at least several minor quakes occurring each day. (They are mostly too small to feel.) Already in this century, there have been a couple large earthquakes on the South Island.

As future posts will hopefully show, a lot of the places we went to were strongly affected by this geology. Mountains, volcanoes and gold deposits all owe their existence to the collision of the Australian and Pacific plates.

Red Rock Canyon (Geology)

Red Rock Canyon is a park about 25 minutes outside Las Vegas. It is within the Mojave Desert (which covers part of Nevada, Arizona and California). It is named for the outcroppings of red Jurassic sandstone. These were formed from a vast area of windswept sand dunes that were present about 180 million years ago. Like sand dunes today, the sand was not laid down in a horizontal plane. With changing winds, the sand was layered in a variety of different orientations leading to the cross bedding that is visible today.

Cross bedded sandstone (and humans)

The dunes in the Jurassic age were quite extensive. We later took a trip to the Valley of Fire (about 60 miles away) and they had rocks from the same field of sand dunes there.

Interestingly, the sandstones had a variety of different colors (yellow, pink, white, red). I am not sure (and it seems geologists are still debating) how exactly the coloring came to be. In some places, it does not follow the layering of the rocks, but cuts across different layers, indicating that the color was added (or removed) after the sand/rock was in place. (In other places, the color does seem to follow the rock layers, though...)

The red coloring cuts across the rock layers (Valley of Fire)

The other key geological feature of the area is the Keystone Thrust. Caused by compressive forces to the west, layers of rock from the west were pushed up and over rocks from the east (for 10s of miles). This resulted in a sequence of rock layers being repeated one on top of the other and some older rocks being on top of younger layers of rock. In this case, the two distinctly different layers are the red/white Aztec Sandstone (180 million years old) and the gray paleozoic limestones that are up to 500+ million years old. (The limestones were deposited over the many millions of years when this area was at the bottom of a shallow sea.)
In this picture, the layers of limestone (cliffs in the back) were on top of the younger red sandstone in the foreground. The layers of limestone eventually wore away, re-exposing the sandstone.

Here is another shot of the Jurassic age sandstone that had been buried under the limestone. The sandstone was deformed (bent upwards/backwards) as the limestone slid over it.

A couple interesting rocks:

Interesting pattern

Iron concretions

The collection of rocks I brought home with me. I thought it was a dozen or so, but when I unpacked, it came to 27...

Awesome book describing the geology around Las Vegas. I recommend reading the sections of interest in advance if possible, since it took (me at least) some time to digest.

Bonnie Springs

Located in the Mojave Desert, Bonnie Springs is about 25 miles west of Las Vegas in the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. There is a motel there and a recreated old western town. A perfect base for hiking in the main part of the Red Rock Canyon about 10 minutes away.

Valley with Red Rock Canyon, Bonnie Springs and the town of Blue Diamond. I love this type of terrain. This view is looking northwest towards the Wilson Cliffs that span the entire western edge of the valley.

Just before sunrise. The entrance to the western town with Wilson Cliffs in the background:

Motel. The accommodations were basic but adequate. Exactly what I was hoping for. The staff was very friendly and helpful, even finding us cooking oil one morning when we realized we forgot to buy some.

There were quite a few animals running around the grounds including roosters (our alarm clocks) and a ton of peacocks. 

One evening, we found about 8 peacocks 30 ft up in a tree, roosting for the night. I would have loved to see how they got up there.

There were sometimes wild burros next to one of the motel parking areas. Not native to the region, their ancestors were abandoned by prospectors in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

The last day of hiking we returned a bit early and the old western town was still open. Kind of curious (especially about the hanging at 5:00pm) we meandered over to check it out. It was juvenile, hokey, awkward (audience participation encouraged) and full of bathroom humor.

Still, there was an awesome quote from one of the actors as somebody in the audience left in disgust: "Oh, don't leave now. It gets worse."

Waiting for the show to start. Still naively optimistic.

Finally, the show is nears the end

Gorge Wildlife Park

Our last day before leaving, we stopped at a wildlife preserve near Adelaide. I was hoping to get a better view of some of the animals we have seen or could have seen in the wild around Woomera (kangaroos, lizards, snakes and small mammals and marsupials.) The park mostly had larger mammals and birds.
The highlight of the visit for me was feeding the wallabies. They were a little bit timid when you first approached them. They ate very gently out of our hands. I could see having one of them as a pet. They are smaller and cuter than kangaroos.
Feeding an albino wallaby.

 

I love the coloring of this one. When we first showed up, the joey was outside the pouch. As we got closer, the baby bounced over to his mom and dove headfirst into the pouch.

This one had his eyes closed almost all the time.

We also got to hold a koala. Two handlers brought out koalas and a stash of eucalyptus branches for them to eat. The koalas contentedly munched on the eucalyptus leaves as they got passed from person to person.

 

Elsewhere in the park, there was a pen with koalas. This guy was actually awake, though sleepy. Accoring to this PBS article, to survive on their diet of nutritionally poor, difficult to digest eucalyptus, they have very slow metabolisms and spend most of their time sleeping when they are not eating. In fact, it is likely that their brains have shrunk to roughly half the size they were before the koala switched to a diet of only eucalyptus.

 Yawning

Pernatty Lagoon Mine

On a day we went in early and finished early, we took some time in the afternoon to locate a geocache about 25 minutes south of Woomera. It was on the outskirts of the Pernatty Lagoon Mine. It is a copper, silver and cobalt mine that has been in operation for over 100 years.
The ore is found in a layer 3-10 meters thick at a depth betweens 10s of meters and 400meters. The parts we were able to see were open cut mines where the layers of earth above the ore had been removed.
There were nice signs welcoming us to the visitors area where there was a viewing platform overlooking the open pit mine.
Dave and Duncan following path to viewing platform:

Viewing platform:

View:

There was a lot of green to be seen. The rocks contained green (copper sulphate?).

There was a leach field area below the mine on the edge of a salt lake. Some green liquid flowed into it from the mine. It was very pretty, but it looked kind of toxic. This is the dried out pond:

Duncan surveys a pond of green liquid while keeping his cellular mutations in check: