Karamatura Stream Bash

I've officially fallen behind on this. Who would've thought. Anyway, this will hopefully be a short one--I need to be up at 5am. It's mid-semester break and there are more trails to be tramped!

A few weekends ago I went on a streambash. Kiwis apparently think it's totally cool and acceptable to go off trail and hike up river beds and clamber and climp up waterfalls and grade 5 rock faces. Completely safe and sane, right? Right.


Trail head. Whoever can guess what animal that is gets a cookie! Just kidding. I don't even know what it is. And the cookies are all mine!








Yep. Climb up it.


Ahhh. Waterfalls.


Yum.



It's not wet and slippery at all. You'll be fine.



And now we jump IN!!



Bath time was never this fun when I was little.



I'm queen of the waterfall!



And of course, there're cliffs.



More crazy hiking. First you must swim across this..





then scramble up this.




But then there's another waterfall! This has been dubbed "shampoo ad quality waterfall number one." Because the previous ones weren't?



Again, not slippery at all. And when you fall it's fuzzy and soft, too.




This is what I call a waterslide!!!




This hole was over 6 ft deep, and like 2 feet wide. How cool?




If you look closely you can see that this is a human step ladder. You call this a hike??




After the stream we did a little bush wacking(the call it bush bashing) up a tributary and valley onto a ridge to hike out on the actual trail. While we were in this part of the hike all I wanted to say was "back in 'nam..." but I thought the Kiwis would probably think I was crazy and have no idea what I was talking about.
So all in all, this was the most insane, most gorgeous and most wet and fun day hike ever. Ballbuster ain't got nothin' on streambashing. But you don't get away with this much fun clean: the next morning I woke up with cuts all over my body, feeling like I had gotten beaten the night before. All worth it, right?

Whatipu

While I was on the climbing trip last weekend, one of the girls was talking about how the Tramping Club(tramping=hiking here.. doesn't it sound dirty?) was doing a bush school for beginners this past weekend. I decided to sign up and go along in hopes of learning something new, and forcing myself to be in an outdoor education setting again. For those of you that don't know, I'd like to grow up and do something in that field, and since I haven't been around that type of thing in a while, I thought it would be a good opportunity to see some more leadership styles and such. However, before that happened, I had another week of classese to spend in Auckland:



I made a curry one night. I was pretty excited about it, and impressed I might actually be able to cook. It doesn't look that appetizing, but I thought it was delicious.



So in each of our classes, we're supposed to have a class rep. I'm not sure what that entails, but I know no one is ever interested in it, so it must not be that great. However, in my math class(in which I'm pretty sure I'm the only white kid), all the over achieving Asians jumped up at the opportunity. This is the most adamant of them fighting it out in front of the entire lecture theatre with a game of paper, scissors, rock(weird order here, I know). I thought it was hilarious.



And on to the tramping trip. The first day was hiking along a grassy beach.






These things were awesome and everywhere. They reminded me of Gladiator, which I immediately watched on Sunday night when I got home. Best movie ever?



So here in New Zealand, they don't really care about keeping your pack/boots/self dry and warm. Instead, they plunge into rivers and swamps. They often do "stream bashes" where they just hike up and down rivers/waterfalls and have a good ole time in the water(I'm doing one this sunday.. yippee!) Anyway, this is me having a fricken ball in the mud!



More Gladiator-ness in between swamps.




Yep, straight up swimming across with our packs. Also, check out the black sand dune in the middle ground.




Sorry Patagooches. You now smell for eternity. It's a good thing you were free and I didn't like you anyway.




View from campsite.



Ahhh...



This is Peter. He's cool. That is also a giant spider. That's not cool. They were in our tents. Very not cool.



Our crazy right winged, military navy leader teaching about something. Did I say he's crazy?



Hike out on a ridge the next day.



That's what we hiked along the day before.


Welp that's all for now. This week has involved actually doing lots of work for school. It actually feels nice to be productive, although I'm not looking forward to a paper. But as much as I'd like to pretend otherwise, I guess that's what I'm here for, eh? I'll leave you with this.

Froggatt Edge Orientation Trip

Last weekend I had the opportunity to go on the Auckland University Rock and Alpine Club's Orientation trip. It was relatively cheap and involved climbing--how could I resist? I didn't know anyone going on the trip, but I persevered through my anti-socialness, packed my pack and was on my way. Let's see... on the way down, we stopped at their traditional O-trip stop, a nice little hole-in-the-wall takeaway. I decided to break my no eating out policy(in effort to not end up living on the streets) and buy a little $5 fish 'n' chips(a Kiwi favourite) snack. However, no one informed me that once you get outside of Auckland, the word "cheap" actually does exist, and minutes later I found myself surrounded by the fishiest and chippiest feast ever. Yum! One of the girls in my car also enlightened me to another Kiwi tradition of deep-fried everything. She bought a deep fried Moro Bar, which is essentially a caramel chocolate bar, smothered in artery loving deep fried-ness. Best bite ever. Apparently you can bring in your own candy bars, too. What yummy grossness.

That night we set up tents under a crazily starry night, and I eventually found room to sleep in a very dodgy gigantic tent that was probably likely to collapse in the middle of the night. We called it the Fragile Palace. We did survive to see sunrise:




pretty pretty. Now into the car and off to the crag!



This is Froggatt Edge. 2.5 hours south of Auckland. Looks like Pride Rock to me.


Close up of the rock texture about to tear my hands to shreds. Yay! It actually was surprisingly soft and full of pockets. It's called ignimbrite, in case we have any geologists in the ranks.


So the crag is on a farm. Can you spot the cows? Haha... see what I did there?



So this is what they mean by orientation trip. Sooo many top ropes..


Sooo many people.



There were also boulder routes every which way you looked. One day I'll be good enough for this nonsense. Oh, by they way, this kid's real name is Paco. Ha.



Spider webs are scarrryyyy.


Kids here climb in boots with broken bones. And barefoot. I don't think I'll ever be that cool.


Some cool rocks, eh?


Mmmm... look at that perfect bolt line...



I like this route. It's got a nice bouldery start that makes me feel and look cool. (I'm really not.) The route to the right was even cooler. I'm definitely not that cool.




The driver of the car I was in was a very quiet, polite, proper, non-drinking fellow.. yet he did have an iDog in his center console. Awesome! Yet, odd.



Camp site #2. On a river/lake. On that little island was a great rope swing and tree to jump off of. This night we had a little party and they cooked us food. Tradition Kiwi barbeque of a not-so-good sausage and piece of bread(not a bun), with tomato sauce(think ketchup, but gross). It's starting to get old. But the night wasn't over yet, we did a little night hike out to see some glow worms, and came back to another feast of chocolate. Climbers love their chocolate here.. and they have all these crazy delicious kinds. They don't know the wonders of s'mores though. What a shame..



The next day a few of us started off with a little exploring adventure. We figured out we're really strong and started playing catch with boulders. Actually, the rocks are just really light here. Weird.



And we found a little river to play in!


Rocks rocks rocks! Back to climbing.


This guy was intense. Like pro climber intense. He climbed this route once to set up his draws. Had his whipped belayer girlfriend slowwwllllyyyy lower him down the route while he memorized it. Laid on a blanket for like 2 hours. Then redpointed the route. Either it was really hard, or he's full of himself.



How cool is that rib??


Look, a ninja! Kidding. That's just me.

So that was my trip. We drove home, stopped at the same takeaway(I was smarter this time and ordered a veggie burger and split chips with a friend). Got home, showered and crawled into bed. My kinda weekend..