Mid-term Break

Yep. New Zealand living man. UC is off for three weeks. I'll be traveling so I won't be posting for a while. Cheers. 

The Most Epic Weekend (so far)

Goal: Hunt deer and tramp all weekend with Dan (met from climbing club), his girlfriend Mercy, and my friend Rachel. My purpose was to help carry the hide down so I could tan it and make moccasins.
Friday 
We set out on our 3-4 hour drive up towards Kiakoura. We arrived around 7:30pm and started our assent up steep, grassy hills. As the sun set, we continued up through misty vegetation to the peak about 900 meters above sea level in the dark with our headlamps. It was scary at times when I was separated from everyone but I remembered Dan's advice, "Just keep going up. It's New Zealand, if you hit bush, fight through it and you will eventually find a clearing." Below is a topo map of our projected route.

3.5 hours later we reached around 917m elevation and decided to catch a few hours of sleep before the sunrise. 

Saturday

I can't describe how beautiful it was in the morning. The sun rose over a sea of clouds and turned the mountains behind us a deep orange and blue.

As Rachel and I were waking up, Dan and Mercy went on a wee walk to check out the deer situation. They were roaring all around us. Ten minutes later we hear a shot and run over to see that Dan has shot two goats... with one bullet. No joke. One through the neck and the other through the head. 

 We spent the rest of the morning gutting and clean the meat off of the goats (yes, I now know how to gut a goat). I also retrieved the brains so I could tan the hides later. Since it was so early in our trip, we decided that Dan would run down the mountain, find a local's freezer to throw the meat into and then he would climb back up. The rest of us napped and relaxed as he did so which was lovely.

Once he returned and rested, it was close to 4pm and we were running low on water. There was no way we were going to make it to our second site happily. We decided the hike to Black hill and cut across the ridge instead. After a scary butt slide down a steep scree slope, we eventually found the perfect camp site under the beech forest right next to the flowing stream. We set up camp and had a delicious meat filled meal with instant mashed potatoes, peas, peanut butter and dried fruits.

Sunday

In the morning, we had a solid breakfast and tea and headed up the steep cliff again but in an area with more vegetation to hold onto. Once we hit the peak, we walked all day along the ridge line. 

 We were lucky, there was only a little rain but it was bearable. There were points where we had to bushwhack (literally push and break through) dense vegetation. In New Zealand, the plants all want to stab you. Matagouri (also called wild Irishman) is a very sharp thorny bush that was EVERYWHERE. At other parts we had to climb up cliffs and pass down our packs to each other in order to get down safely. Around 4 or 5 we stopped for some tea and lunch in a small beech forest patch then continued on our way, cutting through the side of a mountain on a lovely trail someone told us about earlier.    

The trail eventually led out to a grassy hill over which a road laid. We followed the road down the mountain as the sun set below the horizon. 

Once at the bottom, we had to sneak through a few yards and jump a few fences to get to the public road. Once on the road, it was a short walk away to the car then off we went to pick up our meat in the local lady's freezer. The 3-4 hour car ride and pit stops back, late at night, was filled with plenty of giggles and moments that are only funny if you were there.

We finally got back home around 3:30am on Monday. Then I took an online quiz for my Maori class, showered, and passed out. It was a successful trip. 

I will be defrosting and tanning the hides in the next few weeks.