Mishaps and misadventures that were more fun than enduring a global pandemic

In Australia, our lockdown measures landed hard and fast in March. Campgrounds and most high-visitation areas in NSW National parks were closed. Similarly, in NSW state forests, all camping areas and high-use day use areas were closed. Most walking tracks and low-traffic open spaces stayed open (for essential exercise only), but places that encouraged the gathering of large numbers of people (e.g. visitor centres, cafes, picnic grounds and barbeque areas), were off limits. Since then, restrictions have eased. Then they were tightened again (sorry, Victorians). State and Territory borders across Australia have opened and closed more often than a hungry hiker’s bag of trail mix, and you can’t leave the country unless you apply to the Department of Home Affairs for a travel exemption.

Now, with Christmas just days away and the residents of New South Wales locked out of every other state and territory again, thanks to an outbreak in Sydney’s northern beaches, it’s hard to imagine a time when we will be able to make any sort of plans to travel. Thousands of families hoping spend Christmas together after a long year separated by harsh restrictions have had their hopes dashed, myself included. My own sister, a resident of Melbourne who I haven’t seen since since March, had to make a mad dash back to Victoria to beat their sudden border closure, just days after arriving in Sydney. Christmas 2020 has not panned out as any of us had hoped.

So, to avoid getting sucked into the Great (covid-induced) Depression, I’ve been recounting other challenging times that have come to pass. These days, I would trade my left arm to be out in the mountains, realising I’d taken the wrong fork in a trail two hours ago. Or to be stopping for morning tea on a hike, and discovering a leaking water bottle had soaked through the entire contents of my pack. Or to be trudging through knee-deep mud in a torrential downpour on blistered, swollen feet. Now, in times of actual hardship, such campsite calamities and mountaintop mishaps seem nothing more than minor inconveniences.

That time we vomited our way across a Swiss mountain

A few years ago, my best friend and I spent five glorious weeks hiking our way across the Austrian, Slovenian, French and Swiss Alps. While our fitness exponentially increased over that time, our personal hygiene standards certainly did not.

We patted and scratched every animal we passed on the trail; goats, sheep, cows and slobbery dogs. We cooked every dinner in the same crusty pot. We collected drinking water from streams, lakes, waterfalls and town square water fountains with little regard for its source. We shoved sweaty sticks of salami into our packs and walked under a hot European sun, and then ate them days later. It’s as if we were intentionally doing everything in our power to get sick.

I challenge you to walk past a Swiss cow and not give it a scratch

A herd of goats requires a lot of pats

We got sick.

Day six of the Walkers Haute Route (a 14-day hike from Chamonix in France to Zermatt in Switzerland) had been a demanding day; we’d crossed three high passes, including the 2,965m Col de Prafleuri, the highest of the entire walk. We had traversed rocky bluffs, steep scree slopes, rocky gullies, glacial rubble and even snow. We passed Cabane de Prafleuri late in the afternoon, and set up our tent on the grassy slopes overlooking the tallest gravity-fed dam in the world, Lac Des Dix.

Heading towards Col de Louvie from Col Turmin

Crossing a rocky, barren terrain on approach to Col de Prafleuri

Feeling pretty worn out and with a storm brewing, we hurriedly set up our tent and collected drinking water from a small stream nearby. Sure, as we peered upslope, it looked like it looked like there were some cows grazing in the distance. And sure, there were some odd-looking invertebrates squirming around in the water. But it had been a long day, there was no other water source in sight, and we just wanted to cook dinner and fall into our sleeping bags. So we ignored all the basic rules about safe drinking water, quickly filled our bottles and headed back to camp.

Settling in for the night, high above Lac des Dix

The thunder that crashed across the mountains that night might have drowned out the grumbling and growling of our increasingly unhappy stomachs, but as the sun rose the next morning, there was no escaping the fact that all was not well. Not well at all. Too queasy for breakfast, we shouldered our packs and nervously started to make our way around Lac des Dix.

It wasn’t long before I was frantically searching the treeless mountainside for somewhere to drop my pants; bad things were about to happen and I didn’t need any passing hikers gawking at what was about to unfold. In desperation I finally found a large boulder about 200 metres from the trail. When I returned some minutes later, it was to see my friend on all fours, emptying the contents of her stomach across a beautiful patch of Swiss wildflowers.

Note the severe lack of trees, shrubs or any other form of shelter for one to perform urgent ablutions behind

Fighting nausea, stomach cramps, vomiting and other gastrointestinal troubles, we consulted our map and miserably concluded that we had no choice but to push on to the small village of Arolla, 14 kilometres away. A totally acceptable distance on a normal day, a horrific distance when you have to stop and expel the contents of your intestinal tract every 100 metres. So we heaved and hurled our way past Lac des Dix, sidled along Glacier de Cheilon, and scaled the series of ladders to Pas de Chevres. Unbelievably, the steel ladders and catwalks affixed to a cliff face below a 2,885 metre-high pass offer an easier route over the ridgeline and down into Arolla, than the steep scramble over loose scree via Col de Riedmatten. 

Slowly ascending the steel ladders to Pas de Chevres

From Pas de Chevres, gravity and a few Panadol aided us down into Arolla, and we fell into the first hotel we came across. Hotel du Glacier was hard to miss; every window, door, balcony and doorframe of supported an explosion of flowers. Though we didn’t stop to admire the floral overload, we were too busy concentrating on trying to contain our own explosions.

Hotel du Glacier, Arolla

We threw more than half of our entire two-week hiking budget at an ensuite room for one night (a shared bathroom in the hallway just wasn’t going to cut it, given the circumstances). And while other guests enjoyed cold beers on the sunny hotel terrace, overlooking the alps, we sadly spent our entire stay alternating between sweating in the shared double bed and chundering in our precious bathroom. It took a good five days to fully recover, a devastating way to conclude our alpine hiking adventure.

That time we got lost out in the open

It was early afternoon when we three friends set off on what was supposed to be straightforward 14 kilometre tramp to Deep Creek Hut, an historic and basic 6-bunk hut used by the musterers of Mt Pisa Station in years gone by. We were looking forward to cracking open the bottle of red wine stashed in our pack and kicking back by the hut’s stone fireplace in just a few hours.

After a long brunch by Lake Wakitipu in Queenstown, we unanimously voted to not drag our bulging bellies up the immediate climb up to the 1140 metre-high Tuohys Saddle from the usual starting point of Tuohys Gully car park. Instead, we smugly navigated the series of steep switchbacks in our tiny hire car and parked at Waiorau Snow Farm. From this high point in the Pisa Range, it should have been an easy (and mostly downhill) stroll to Meg Hut, and then another eight kilometres through the range to Deep Creek Hut.

We set off from the snow farm, past the mess of fences, access tracks, utility sheds and other (hideous) ski-related infrastructure. With months of chat to catch up on (two of us reside in Sydney and one lives in Melbourne), we ambled along the wide track as it wound past the schist tors and around the grassy slopes.

Setting out from the Snow Farm, we arrogantly throught we were in for an easy stroll

Wandering past the schist tors that are characteristic of the Pisa Range

Heading deeper into the Pisa Range

It wasn’t until the sun disappeared behind darkening clouds, a few hours later, that we stopped to take stock of where we were. Which was still high in the range, and nowhere near Meg Hut. We were nowhere near anywhere, actually. For we had mindlessly followed the wrong track almost from the start; there were ten times as many tracks and access roads criss-crossing the slopes than were marked on the map, and we’d made the rookie mistake of trusting man-made features instead of the topography of the land. We’d wandered so far east that we were now staring down at the churning, angry waters of Roaring Meg. Our plans of reaching Deep Creek hut in time for wine o’clock were fading as quickly as the daylight.

Just in case we weren’t appreciative enough of our monumental stuff-up, it started raining. As the wind picked up, we struggled to hold onto the map as we calculated the quickest route to the hut. Reluctantly, we used the nearby junction of two fence lines as our new starting point (blindly hoping that a mapped fence line might be more reliable than unmapped tracks), and there began our cross-country adventure towards Meg Hut.

Hoping like hell that the fence line we’re following is the same one as the one marked on the map

Following the exposed and treeless ridgeline, we expected to be able to make quick progress through the grass. Except we hadn’t counted on having to battle the most obnoxious occupant of this upland tussock country along the way; speargrass, or Spaniard. A loathsome, stiff-leaved plant with razor-sharp edges and prickly spines that delights in drawing blood from the legs of any innocent trampers that brushes past it. One close encounter with this botanic horror was enough, and so dodging speargrass became an almost-welcome distraction from the driving rain and blustery wind.

Following the fenceline and dodging speargrass all the way towards Meg Hut

Heading straight down the steep spur to Meg Hut

We finally found ourselves at the end of the ridge, with nowhere to go but straight down the steep spur.  We were over the moon to spy a tendril of smoke curling out of Meg Hut’s little chimney. It was 6pm by the time we threw our sodden selves through the door of the hut; there would be no hiking on towards Deep Creek Hut now. We stripped off our wet gear and dug around for the bottle of red wine stashed in one of our packs; never was a drink so badly needed!

The quaint and cosy Meg Hut. Deep Creek Hut would have to wait for another time

That time we walked off the side of a snowy mountain

There are dumb decisions, and then there is deciding to hike down from the summit of Mount Buller via the steep and exposed West Ridge Trail. In winter. With snow and ice underfoot. With only 2.5 hours of daylight remaining, and not a single source of light between us.

We are not normally this stupid. I can’t recall what was involved in our decision-making process that day, but it clearly wasn’t common sense. I mean, it’s not like we had the physical capability to ultra-marathon our way down the mountain; of the three of us, one isn’t too good at walking uphill, one isn’t too good at walking downhill, and one trips over a lot. So I think it’s fair to say that our afternoon beers at Mount Buller’s Tirol café must have fuelled a false confidence that we’d easily make the descent before the sun set.

It’s all fun and games while you’re drinking in the sunshine…

It was just after 3pm as we stepped off the 1,805 metre-high summit, with clear blue skies above us and an endless expanse of white clouds below us. A spectacular cloud inversion stretched as far as the eye could see, engulfing the West Ridge and surrounding mountains. The dusting of fresh snow crunched underfoot and frost clung to the gnarled shrubs along the narrow track. We never stopped to consider that the sign that read “EXTREMELY STEEP SLOPES BEYOND THIS POINT. A FALL MAY RESULT IN DEATH” may apply to us.

Ok, so we’ll try not to fall….

It’s all downhill from here, so how hard can it really be?

We very carefully picked our way down the western ridge, negotiating patches of slippery snow and treacherous ice-encrusted rocks.  With the grace and speed of a group of  three-toed sloths, we inched our way down the mountain. Where the track dropped off the ridge and into the frigid shadows, we poked along steadily. But where the track thrust us out into the afternoon sunshine, we stopped often, to savour the view around us. If we had packed our jetboil, we would have perched on the side of the mountain for afternoon tea. Thank god we didn’t (in fact, we packed absolutely nothing of use, but more on that later), because if we had stopped for tea, I’m pretty sure our frozen corpses would still be sitting on Mount Buller today.

Frozen and ice-encrusted vegetation

Enjoying the last of the winter sun’s rays

A perfect spot to stop for afternoon tea…. if we had packed any

Dawdling our way down the mountain, it was 5pm when we dropped below the clouds.  Suddenly, we found ourselves enveloped in thick fog, and peering through the eucalypts in search of the track. To make matters worse, the sun had also disappeared, and darkness was rapidly falling. I found myself moving forward using my peripheral vision only, almost-blindly navigating though the gloom.  It was almost pitch-black when we stumbled across our car, which we had arranged to be left for us on an access track at the base of the mountain. How none of us snapped an ankle that day remains a mystery to me.

We lose the sun, and I feel sure we’re about to lose the track and our way down to our car as well

Moving faster now to make it make to the car before we’re completely enveloped in darkness