A First Weekend of Adventuring In Arthur's Pass
- Riley Stevenson
- Mar 4
- 12 min read
I woke up Friday morning a little hungover and a lot excited. I grocery shopped with Dylan, packed my backpack, and by 10:30, I was piled in the car with four friends, heading Northwest towards the mountains in the car we now share.
Our destination was a hike on the West coast that Dylan picked out, after a week of sharing links back and forth in our Whatsapp group chat and trying to lure new friends to join us. About an hour and a half into the drive, we stopped in Sheffield at the famous Sheffield Pies, a stop we made during field camp, where I remember feeling out of whack socially and unsure how things would unfold. This time it was all smiles, a second coffee for me, and a delicious cottage pie, which felt beautifully full circle. As we sat considering our weekend plans, we added up the mileage/hourage for the hike Dylan picked (one weird fact about NZ is that pretty much all hikes are measured in terms of hours rather than miles or kilometers, even the non-touristy ones) and realized we were in for an average of 10 hours of hiking over the next two half days and one full day. So we pivoted, and returned to one of our original plans, the Edwards-Hawdon Route in Arthur’s Pass, which many of our peers hiked the weekend before us. Thankfully, there’s pretty much one road to each place here (quite familiar), and our path was taking us straight through Arthur’s Pass anyways, so it was a small pivot.
Onwards we drove, winding up through the mountains, through the landscapes where we’d first learned about glacial geomorphology and become friends. We drove by Cass, our beloved painting and hiking spot, and checked in at the visitor center for maps and advice.
By 2pm we were at the trailhead divvying up food and discussing the likelihood that anyone would join us. We had some friends potentially interested in hiking with us, but were losing service and putting it in their hands whether they joined us or not. Accompanied by a chorus of sandflies buzzing, cursing, and leg slapping, we headed off into the Hawdon Valley with no idea what awaited us.
We decided to do the hike backwards from the typical route, which starts in the Edwards Valley and lets out into Hawdon. We had heard that the Hawdon hut is “super accessible” and thus often full on Saturday nights, so we decided to get there early Friday instead. In hindsight, we made an awesome and correct choice, and I’d recommend hiking it this way to anyone headed up there based on the difficulty and route–but not the hut capacity (we’ll get to that later).
The Hawdon Valley track started with a bang of confusing route-finding and river crossing. We had originally balked at this hike because it’s considered Expert by the Department of Conservation due to the amount of route-finding, which I now believe to be tourist-deterrent more than anything. After getting our feet wet and hiking for about an hour and a half in our water shoes (Crocs and Chaos for the East coasters, flip flops for the West coasters… ahhhhh, regional differences) all while telling outdoor horror stories, the river crossings slowed. The trail criss crossed through beech forest and the river valley itself, all small rocks and downed logs, ever-changing but not difficult. It is hilarious that this is considered “super accessible” here, as I certainly wouldn’t call it a walk in the park. Two hours in we snacked and put our shoes back on, sitting in a light rain shower and staring up at two stunning converging valleys.
After a little more than an hour more, and with mostly dry feet, we emerged suddenly into the Hawdon Hut clearing. A quaint cabin, built in 2009 after getting burned down in ‘07, we were ecstatic to have had an awesome day of hiking and now get to sleep in a hut. We dropped our packs in the empty hut and headed down to the river for a dip, gazing up at greywacke mountain peaks above us.
The crew for this trip was me, Lucca, Elodie, and Dylan, four out of five of my fellow car-owners and some of my closest friends here. I wasn’t nervous about the four of us taking on a backcountry adventure, but I would say our dynamic proved even better than I ever could have dreamed. We played and laughed in the river, soaking in the bone-chillingly cold water and taking the first pictures for our upcoming nude outdoors calendar.
Back up the river bank and we had bunkmates! Four Americans had arrived: two sisters, their mom, and a friend. The sisters had bought a van and were driving around NZ for six months, exploring and hiking tons. We proceeded to have an hour-long conversation with them in which they found mutual surfing connections with Californian Lucca and gave us enough recommendations to fill every weekend here and then some. They were awesome and we were so glad to meet them. Dinner was stir-fry, a Riley/Dylan joint effort, and afterwards we played cards by candlelight and caught a serious case of the giggles, one of my favorite states of being.
I recently broke my watch in a minor bike crash (ya hear that haters? Yeah, I bought a bike, re-learned how to ride a bike, and then veyr promptly and very publicly crashed it. Fuck yeah) and have found being watch-less to be extremely disorienting. In the middle of a round of Cambio, I asked what time it was. When Lucca said “9:20”, I gasped, scrapped the round then and there, and kept saying “it’s too late! We have to get to bed!”. By 10 I was curled up in our shared sleeping loft, ear plugs in, eye mask on, assuming that the two friends who said they’d join us ended up thinking the better of route-finding in the dark.
I woke up Saturday at 6:45 to the sound of my alarm and then Dylan shouting “yes!”, his secret to life. Immediately I said “so I guess our friends didn’t get here last night?”. Everyone said no, they’d arrived just after I’d gone to sleep and were on the sleeping bunk beneath us. I crawled to the edge and looked down, saying hi to two people I’d never actually met before. My next comment: “I’m so excited to meet you guys, but also I need to come down now, and I’m so sorry but I’m not wearing any pants”. A wild first impression, to say the least.
We had a quick morning, knowing we had a big day of hiking ahead of us. The American family had warned us about a 10+ hour day, and that this would be the hardest day of hiking we’d encounter in New Zealand. I was nervous about it, and glad we got a good start on the day.
We were out by 8 and the hike immediately headed straight uphill to the first of two passes for the day, Walker Pass. I chatted with our two new arrivals, Frances and Benson, two total chillers who were completely game for the day ahead after getting in after 10:30 the night before.
After a 45 minute straight uphill climb on slick rocks and roots reminiscent of hiking up Katahdin (as Dylan, who goes to Bowdoin, said “anyone who started their hiking career in the Northeast isn’t afraid of rocks”), we flattened out at the top of this pass, gazing back at the dark green forests crawling up the mountains, steep eroding tops, and the silvery gray river far below us where we’d just started our day.
This portion of the hike I misunderstood deeply, not realizing that we had multiple hours of hiking through Walker Pass until Tarn Col, known to be a stunning alpine pond and at the edge of the scary downhill climb to get down to the next pass. We were in Walker Pass for around 3 hours until Tarn Col, crossing another stream multiple times and bushwhacking heavily through the many scratchy shrubs of New Zealand. About an hour into Walker Pass, we found a perfect crystal-clear blue pool and decided to dip. I’d given in to having wet shoes already, so I swam in my underwear with my shoes and socks still on. The morning was cool and overcast, and although I was grateful for the swim I was chilly afterwards. I loved being with a group of people who were equally game to drop their packs and dive into icy water, and in general felt so grateful all weekend to be with this group of people so aligned in how we wanted to spend our time. It felt rare to end up on a trip of six people with very similar fitness levels and desired paces, where I felt like I could chat with any one of them for hours. I had a smile on my face from the minute we started until we got back in the car on Sunday, and I think I’ll always remember this as being one of the best weekends of my young life.
After our dip we headed uphill again, through a super dense creek heading up towards Tarn Col. It took us a while to find the trail here, and it was intensely steep but slow going enough that it didn’t feel particularly strenuous. At one point, Elodie fell fully into a ditch carved out by the roots of a tree, and I followed right behind her. Up and up we wove, chasing a German couple we’d also shared the hut with. After a couple more false summits we finally leveled out at Tarn Col, this tiny pond full of waving red fronds that actually didn’t look that inviting for swimming.
We sat and lunched here, hummus and veg lunch for the four of us, and Dylan and I quibbled about food management, and Elodie got to use the frisbee she’d hiked with all this way, and Lucca chopped veggies. I aired out my wet and brambled feet and lay out in the sun, poking its way through the clouds. At this spot we were surrounded by mountains on all sides, cloaked in clouds and mist at their peaks, which made everything feel far more magical.
We continued on towards what looked like the edge of the world. After surveying our course, which was described as a scree slope and I expected to be a straight-down, no-holds-barred, vaguely terrifying but short 400m down ended up being a rocky, grass-filled scramble, with lots of strong roots to grab onto and a vague, zig-zagging course down the slope. It was far less nerve-wracking than I expected, but still lots of slow, knee-screeching movement and sending rocks screaming down the slope below us. It took about 40 minutes to descend into a true moonscape, all scree hills and washed out, dusty grey. I felt so accomplished getting down, and took a moment to reflect on what a special moment of life I’m in, and how insanely grateful I am to be here. I will look back at this year with so much gratitude and amazement, and I love being able to recognize that while I’m in it.
After that we continued along a river, stopping whenever we felt like it to lie in the sun and dip in the river. I swam 7 times in 3 days, a perfect ratio. Dylan and I bickered about music while I soaked my toes and we kept moving, shouting “hole!” every time the ground beneath the waving fronds in our path mysteriously dropped away. Following this weekend, my legs are truly battered and beaten, with shin bruises from slamming into unseen rocks, sand fly bites, and infinite scratches from the plants ever present in the trail.
We made it to camp around 5, clocking an 8.5 hour day. It’s hard to describe how high my spirits were all day long–I can’t recall an outdoor trip that has filled me up quite like this one, with every moment filled to the brim with joy and laughter.
My favorite trips are the ones that inspire me to do and see and try more, whether from Frances’ diatribe about the worthwhile venture of only buying fresh bread to conversations about being overworked at school leading to Dylan’s comment about “doing less with more joy”. There is nothing I adore more than a trail conversation that makes me think a little differently, meeting new people who embody ideologies I want to try out and who make me think differently, with more adventure and more presence. This trip had all that and more, plus a truly unique landscape unlike anything I’d ever seen before I got to New Zealand. And we got to sleep in huts each night!
When we arrived at Edwards Hut it was already full, so we yard-sailed our stuff all over the front lawn and lay soaking in the sun before it tucked itself behind the mountains across the river. We snacked and chattered, met up with the Germans from the night before, and caught another case of the giggles. We followed the sun around the hut until we couldn’t anymore, then went down to the river to skinny dip and fill up our water.
Elodie and I talked about the fact that this trip made us feel the way we knew we were supposed to feel about New Zealand– awed, overjoyed to be here, in love with the landscape and the memories. This is a topic I’d like to expand on at some point, but this year I’ve really realized how much moving through a landscape changes how I feel about it. I didn’t find safaris to be life-changing because for me they lacked the sense of accomplishment, the heavy feeling of limbs working hard outdoors all day, the scratches and sunburn that accompany a big adventure. Without this sense of hard work, of propelling myself through a beautiful place on my own two feet or using my own two arms wrapped around a paddle, it’s hard for me to feel as connected or excited about a place, and I feel slightly outside the feelings of euphoria I might expect. My favorite moments in New Zealand so far have been while hiking or canoeing, experiencing a landscape slowly in a way that forever imprints on my memory. Field camp didn’t feature a ton of this, and being in Christchurch doesn’t necessarily lend itself to this kind of deep memory-making, so it was gratifying to do so with my new friends and also to have my position so hardily affirmed.
Saturday night we stuffed into the hut and ate mac and cheese with peas, a classic, with Dylan as head chef. We played cards and talked, I journaled as the light faded, and we tucked into bed in a ridiculous set of arrangements: Lucca on a bench/bed, me, Dylan, and Elodie sardine-style underneath the table and bench, Frances and Benson perpendicular to us at our heads between the tables, with three other people who showed up after us scattered throughout the hut kitchen floor. I slept soundly yet again (thank you earplugs!) but woke up once to happily gaze out the window at stunningly clear and bright stars.
Sunday morning the hut woke early, but shockingly we all remained asleep until 8. I was sure that when I lifted my head, either it would be 6:45 or everyone would be awake around me. In fact, neither was true, and we all stirred at the same time and spent a slow morning getting ready to go. The theme of Sunday was moving slow, stopping when we wanted to, none of us wanting to prematurely end our adventure a minute before we had to.
We left the hut around 10:30 and headed downriver, craning our necks to look for a promised great swim spot. We found it about a half hour in, a deep blue pool with perfect rocks for sunning ourselves on both banks. We all jumped in, then gender-segregated on both banks of the river and talked for almost an hour, raising our voices above the rush of the water. Watch-less, I decided to lean in, and not care at all about what time it was or whether we should get going. Eventually the boys started putting their shoes on, and the girls waded back across, practically dried out and ready to hit the road.
Off we went, me and Frances in the lead. This valley featured much more elevation gain and loss, and big scrambles through the forest on the upper bank of the river. We had beautiful views back towards where we’d come from, and at one point stood high above a stunning double waterfall. We stopped plenty of times to swim and sun ourselves, appreciating the glacial till bright blue water and snack on the remains of our meat and cheese.
One of the things that is most annoying about essentially being a college freshman again here is that I’ve spent tons of time asking and answering the same three questions: where are you from, where do you go, and what do you study, and not much else, besides the in-depth conversations I’ve gotten to have with the people in my program and even more so with my good friends.
This weekend, though, I got to indulge in one of those deeper, affirming conversations with Frances, weaving our way across the riverbed talking about the science of hope, the power of home, our feelings about climate anxiety and despair, the paths our lives will take. It’s been a long time since I got to explain these beliefs so central to my core, to talk through how I think and what I hope for, and it felt good. I had that tying-together-of-disparate-threads feeling again, wondering and wandering about how this year has shaped and will shape the things I believe about myself and my intended life’s work and the world. With the sun beating down on us and the river rushing beside us, I felt a seed of hope growing, talking about the small changes I hope to affect and realizing with glee how excited I am to do the work, to be home and in the thick of it. It’s been a long time since I’ve been excited to do the work, when the time comes. For now, I’m excited for more conversations following footsteps across time-worn pebbles, beneath glacier-ground mountains, surrounded by sounds of connection and joy.
We made it back to the trailhead around 3:30, earlier than I expected, and left Dylan and Frances to hitchhike back to our cars. The rest of us lounged about in a dappled patch of grass, stretching tired muscles and talking again and again about how perfect and wonderful the weekend was. Even better, though, this is just the beginning, only our second weekend with a car and a wide open country to explore; only the first of many weekends that will feel just like this–maybe with a bit more rain or toil, blisters or running out of hummus, but full to bursting with this glowing, tired, full-of-life feeling. As Elodie likes to say, how lucky are we.
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