By Tadhg McLachlan, Chris Russel & Xanthe Smith, 19 February 2024
UnLostable Sheep Tours
Brewster Glacier & Haumia Tiketike to the Wills Valley
Lost Sheep:
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Chris Russell - 5 years service as a locatable sheep, until found was most lost 'on' the Hauhungaroa 'Track', Pureora Forest
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Tadhg McLachlan - 4 years service as a locatable sheep, until found was most lost up an unnamed tributary of the Tukituki River, Ruahine Range, age 16.
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Xanthe Smith - 4 years service as a locatable sheep, until found was most lost in a croc bog near the Cedar Bay hippie commune on Kuku Yalanjii country.
Fantail Falls to Brewster Hut - Xanthe
My trip to Haumia Tiketike began with a sense of calm that set a wildly unrealistic standard for the 48 hours that would follow. I began alone, plodding uphill from Butterfly Creek (apparently it's actually called fantail falls?). To Brewster hut was a cruisy climb. I'd set off a solid two hours before Chris and Tadhg were due to reach the car park, so I raced against the dying of the light to reach the tops before sunset, aiming for a view of the glacier and summit before I set up for the night. My hauling was rewarded, and I hit the top after two hours and had a squizz across the valley to the glacier. It was a chunky white block cast against the massive scrim of Haumia Tiketike. Waterfalls, rockfalls, and kea calls folded through the valley. It is a freaky land that is so thick with peaks that it has become scrunched up, with the heavens becoming larger in comparison. Brewster hut is nice and boring. The kea were trying to zhuzh it up by gnawing on the door frames. I had hearty yarns with the other hut dwellers, read my books, and then conked out while waiting for the others– chances were they’d wake me when they arrived anyway. OR SO I THOUGHT….
Fantail Falls to Brewster Hut (but late and unorganised) - Tadhg
I told Chris I would meet him at the trailhead at 7:30pm which was only slightly ambitious given that I finished work at 5pm in Franz Josef Waiau, 2.5 hours away. I waltzed through the one set of traffic lights on this 200 km stretch of road and was actually only going to be half an hour late due to sunset appreciating when I got stuck as the first car in a timed 45 minute road closure on the Gates of Haast. Obviously there’s no reception so I guess Chris just thought I’d died for a while. After the least amount of car faff ever we headed up the Brewster Hut highway. We forgot to get water from the Haast River so 15 minutes up the hill Chris chose to hurl himself off a bank to fill our bottles in a stagnant creek. We passed seven (7) descending parties who all asked if we were okay, if we were crazy or wished us good luck all in varied levels of concerned european accent - massive ego boost, got us to the hut in half the DoC time. The hut was fully booked online so we didn't go inside, so we didn’t see Xanthe and we didn't see the multiple free bunks - we slept under the hut. I was comfortable but too cold. Chris was uncomfortable but warm enough. Statistical analysis reveals a sleep had by all. We saw three kea, a cool armoured worm thing and lots of stars.
Brewster Hut to Brewster Glacier - Chris
We got up real early with Tadhg's reasoning being so we could faff on the glacier, which isn’t what we used the extra time for, but I’m glad we did get up that early, as you’ll find out. We set off in the dark, saw more kea and got to the bright blue glacial lakes. We then suddenly lost Xanthe, she was a bit behind while we were climbing over this weird rocky terrain. And so we waited for her… a concerning amount of time passed. Tadhg went back thinking she must have fallen off a rock and concussed herself. I went ahead to a higher view point. “XANTHE” echoed across the glacier bowl. Tadhg gestured that there was no sign of her, I turned around and there Xanthe was way ahead right at the base of the glacier! She had snuck past us behind a wall of rock. After re-grouping it was time to put on crampons and helmets for the glacier travel. We soon encountered many crevasses which is actually a good thing I learnt, because it means that they aren’t being obscured by snow. Visible crevasses are good crevasses. They were also all a slightly annoying width apart where I feel like I could jump across them, but I don’t trust landing with crampons and onto ice yet. But at least we only ever had to walk sideways like 20m until we would find a cool ice bridge to get us across. Plenty of photos and videos were taken for the gram. I also had to break every frozen puddle I came across, very satisfying. After crossing the glacier we headed up the west ridge of Haumia Tiketike which was very chossy and got to the ‘step’ that we had heard about but instead of continuing up to the summit we just relaxed there for quite a while at 2300m, with no wind and beautiful views of the alps in all directions and Aoraki! It was a certified zen moment. We then decided it would be cool to bash to Wills hut so we don’t just go back the way we came. I came up with a route that looked ‘feasible’ based on the contours, but I couldn’t see what the terrain was actually like because the brewster cliff was in the way, so I was like 70% confident. Tadhg had read somewhere that Fleming creek is a good route down to the valley.
Haumia Tiketike to Chris Death Route - Xanthe
I have two enemies in this life: scree and downclimbing. Our descent managed to include both. After lizard-ing it up on Haumia Tiketike for a bit, a member of our party, who shall remain unnamed for his own protection, suggested a route down to Wills Hut. We shall henceforth call this Chris Death Route. To begin Chris Death Route you must go cross-eyed at the topo and aim for the crunchy ridge west of the summit. You slither down this face through a combination of crawling, leaping, and butt-sliding in a terrifying manner. You must wade through knee deep boulders, seduce the choss and answer the alpine grasshoppers riddles, three. To keep you motivated there is a beautiful vista of the valley 1500 metres below that will catch you when you fall. I may have wanted to kill Chris, but the view was deadly. After around two hours descending the almost-cliff, we moved into a edelweissed slot canyon that cut a walkable track through the mountain. It was canyoning without the water, making for faster travel, ideal. Our bottles were nearly empty, not ideal. Before the threat of natural selection could force us to take drastic measures we stumbled across a spring bubbling up from the uncharacteristically parched terrain. With full water bottles, the stakes were significantly lowered, and we galavanted for a bit. Things turned jovial, we butt-slid down the slopes, whistled to the kea, and took botanical photographs. We fell in a scrub hole. Too tired to be deterred, we thrashed onwards. The bushline arrived at last-light. After some snacking and hmmmmmmming at topo on Chris’ dying phone, we had a plan of attack. I was wrung with sleepiness, but devoted to the final push, each minute carrying us closer to the hut far below.
Fleming Creek to Wills Hut - Tadhg
We left our last clear view of the sky and what would have made a pretty nifty emergency biv at 9pm exactly. At this point no one had done the maths to work out that we had already been on the go for 15 hours and had 700m descent still to go. The topo indicated that this spur was ‘not too steep’ (Chris), ‘pretty consistent’ (Xanthe) and ‘better than down climbing an 8m waterfall’ (Tadhg). The topo did not indicate dozens of 2-6m deep transverse rock channels that you could either follow gently down to the right or go straight over each one, pinball-machining off trees and clutching at elbow deep moss. We wanted to get to the hut sooner rather than later so we chose the later option. Once we were in the up-past-bedtime-bush-bash mindset it was pretty easy going because we butt-slid most of the way. The one bluff that was an exception to the easy-going-ness came about three hours in - Xanthe went to check out a potential downclimb to the right, throwing her pack down first. The tree her manoeuvre was dependent on disintegrated as soon as she touched it and she disappeared out of my torch beam. After what felt like yonks, Xanthe hit the ground. Another yonk later a quite winded Xanthe said “Yeah, nah, mate I don’t reckon that way goes. I’m not injured aye but I'm just gonna go check out this tree over here”. Xanthe has been repatriated back to Aotearoa from FNQ and reserves her Australian accent for dire circumstances only so I was #worried. Chris then bravely went left where the bluff was even higher, to find another option. With his pack still on he lowered himself off the bluff and monkey-barred down trunks for a few seconds but then the trees ran out and he also crashed through several seconds of air time. Xanthe yelled at me to not go Chris’ way. Chris yelled at me to probably not go Xanthe’s way. I went Xanthe’s way so that if I died it would be less drawn out. I lowered myself off a potentially bomber rock and only had to drop a metre from hanging. After an emergency chocolate break we decided to stoically push on. Chris’ phone died so we didn’t know if we were upstream or downstream of the hut. I think it took a lot of effort for us all to put out big kid pants back on which was a waste of damn time because we popped out of the bush less than 2 minutes later, 10 metres from Wills Hut, I shit you not. I have never been more excited to see a hut in my life. Chris went to initiate some double high fives but they got lost in the hysterical screaming, laughing group hug. It was 12.15am. We did an 18 hour day. For the maths nerds that the tramping club attracts for some reason; We bush bashed down 700m over 1km. This is a 70%metric downgrade. The inverse tangent function of the grade expressed at a decimal fraction gives the angle in degrees. arctan(0.7) = 34.99° also known as prime avalanche slopes (but it was dark so we didn’t see any snow). Another fun maths fact that im glad we didn't know at the time is that Wills Hut is 300m downstream of where it is marked on the map.
Wills Hut to Gates of Haast - Chris
After all that I was pretty glad for a DoC track home. After a huge sleep and a slow, achy morning we were rearing to go. The track started with a pleasant wide grassy valley to walk down, then as the valley narrowed the track started to sidle up the side (but one of the better sidle tracks I’ve been on). Nothing too eventful happened on this track but I do have a photo of me holding a clump of my fudge that had all melted together (very eventful). But the track progressively got worse the closer to the road it got. It started with steeper climbs over small bluffs (and a steel ladder for one of them even!). Then I remember me saying “Does the south island get much stinging nettle?” because the track answered and gave us tons of it which I managed to dodge just but Xanthe and Tadhg were not so lucky… And then to top it all off, literally the last 50m of the track to the road is just a slip. Luckily it was easy to traverse and we got to wrap up with three flights of scaffolding onto the Gates of Haast. Now we needed to hitch back to the cars parked a few ks down the road. But you have to play mind games while hitchhiking. If someone sees 3 hikers they will probably go “Oh I don’t have room for 3” and carry on. Tadhg and Xanthe hid behind a digger while I stood alone with my thumb up. It was so funny how awkward everyone that didn’t pick me up looked because they had to slow right down because of the one-way bridge we were next to anyway. Tadhg jokingly suggested I should just hop in the next car GTA style. Finally a French man picked me up and he was also interested in hiking (more of a great walker though) so we chatted about that and he hadn’t heard of the term ‘hitch-hiking’ because in France it is called ‘auto-stop’ which I think is funny.
Notes on Route & Closing Thoughts
Tadhg - What goes up must go down so one report of people accessing Haumia Tiketike by following either branch of Fleming Creek up was good enough for me. I checked afterwards and this happened in 1966 so maybe my information was a little out of date but now it's been done At Least twice so it is certified that ‘It Goes’. One of those great trips where it was only fine because nothing went wrong. I, Tadhg McLachlan, endorse, in writing, other lost sheep attempting Chris Death Spur. Two thumbs up.
Chris - I, Chris Russell, also endorse the Chris Death Spur route, but I recommend sidling over to Chris Death Spur from the saddle just east of 2038 to avoid the ‘deathliness’, and I recommend going down the spur on the true left of fleming creek, not the true right because in hindsight, looking up from the valley the true left looks much less cliffy and more consistent in gradient. This may have been my favourite tramp ever because type 2 fun is the best type.
Xanthe - Our story is one of great luck or great stupidity: to recreate this trip, you’ll need both. A few extra items to help your effort: bonus muesli bars, a sponge cake, pack ponies, friends with jokes that are actually funny, root vegetables for the edible root ātua, a kea stuff sack, a map that isn’t on a cell phone, flood lights, minties, ruru and an airbag for when you inevitably base jump into a moa cave trap on hour 18. Our antics prove the gods have favourites, and I, Xanthe Smith, wholly endorse Chris Death Spur.