New Zealand is known for being the fantasy world of The Lord of the Rings. The pretty nature used to bring the incredible fantasy world of Middle Earth to life. This story is about our adventure to one of these iconic places that are wild and beyond beautiful. I am talking about the location of Rivendell in The Hobbit, Earnslaw Burns. The simple, last minute backpacking trip to this wild and incredible place was unexpectedly full of excitement and adventure, so much so that I didn’t want a 4000-word blog post so it’s in two parts.
The Concile of Earnslaw
This trip happened kinda accidentally. Our original plan for the last few days in New Zealand was to explore the area of Mount Cook but heavy rain all week derailed our plans. We scoured the weather map and headed towards the closest spot with blue skies, Wanaka.
Once we got there, we had to think about how we are going to spend our last two days. Apparently, eating lamb and Ice cream for two days wasn’t an acceptable plan, to the others anyway.
While researching around, Nathan piped up, “Remember that place in Glenorchy I spoke about? Earnslaw Burns, it’s not too far from here so maybe we can make an overnighter out of it.” I remembered the place he spoke about, this middle of nowhere valley with high cliffs, glaciers, and waterfalls. I was convinced at once and as always Abel did not need any convincing to go backpacking either so we started planning.
Abel and I wanted to fit in some kayaking the morning of the overnighter, and since we figured the trail to Earnslaw Burns is only 9 km long, we didn’t need that much time. So we slowly started our day after camping out on the pretty lakeshore of Lake Hawea. Did some kayaking on Lake Wanaka, ate some ice cream and then drove over while gleefully pulling over at tourist stops. We arrived at the carpark at almost 5 pm. Pretty standard start time for backpacking.
Good kind of procrastination
Result of Procrastination
As we were getting ready, a family appeared from the trailhead, just finished with their hike. Hoping to get more details, I went up to chat about their hike. They seemed a little surprised that we are starting now and said something along the lines of, “It took us 7 hours to get to the destination and we left at 9 am this morning to get down.” Uh Oh…. Oops. “Why did it take so long? It’s 9 km with low elevation gain” I asked. “Well… The trail is not maintained, we had to get over so many downed branches left from the winter snowstorm. There was a lot of mud so we moved very slowly. It was long and we are pretty experienced trampers.” Hmm… Welp… Back to plan A of lamb and ice cream? Just kidding.
At this point, I wasn’t ready to give up yet so we started talking about it together. Abel hesitantly said: “Well I kinda want to give it a shot.” and that pushed everything into motion. Fortunately, Nathan felt adventurous enough to go for it as well. He said we should go ahead though as he is not on par with our speed. Instead, he was going to try his best and camp when it gets dark. Since the weather was good and the trail was well defined, I felt good splitting up. So Abel and I shouldered our packs and headed out. (Maybe the expression should be hipped our pack, most of the weight should be on your hips when you are backpacking. #funfact)
The Fellowship of the Hike
The next three hours was pretty hardcore, we set our pace and timed our breaks so we would hike about an hour and then take a 10-minute break. We walked and waited for the hard part of the trail to come up but then slowly we realized that the difficulty of the trail was highly overrated. There was a lot of down trees but it barely slowed us down. We were making a good pace of 3km per hour of furious focus, driven by the goal of making to the glacier before dark.
Is that frustration I see?
We broke the tree line after three hours of hard walking, exhausted after climbing over and under branches, walking uphill to just go back down again. The moment we looked up, all the aches and tiredness went away as we dropped our jaws in amazement. Nothing really prepared me for how pretty this is. I wanted to slap myself for almost being convinced to not go by a stranger. In front of us was a giant mountain rising high over the valley, clouds swirling, strips of ice hanging on to its steep face, crackling out in all directions. The next hour was a breeze as we were too overwhelmed with happiness to realize how tired we were. We strolled alongside a peaceful creek at the bottom of the valley, meandering our way towards the glacier as the waterfalls slowly made their appearance. We made our goal to get as close to the glacier as possible.
Our first sight out of the treeline. I don’t think the best of NZ’s ice cream gets better than this.
Hiking in the valley after the treeline, the sun is setting and we still got a long way to go.
Our Rivendell
After a lot of bushwhacking towards the glacier, we realized finding a campsite was much harder than we thought. The ground was completely covered in shrubs. So after a lot of scouting in the near dark, we finally stumbled upon a piece of meadow. This little meadow was next to two giant boulders. When I say giant I mean as large as a large boulder, totally out of place in this field of shrubs. 😛
With a sigh of relief, we threw our packs down and Abel started setting up his tent. I looked around and had this cool idea; It is a beautiful night with no clouds in the sky so why pitch a tent? I found a flat section of grass under an overhanging section of one of the big boulders and it was perfect! Well… there were three big spiders chilling on the rock face right over my sleeping bag but whatever, this is not Australia.
As for the other rock, turns out it’s pretty easy to climb to the flat top. It was big enough for two people and stoves so we made that our kitchen. From there, we had a perfect view of the glacier and the countless waterfalls, sounding out a choir of strength and beauty. As it got darker, the stars came out and sparkled the night sky, a touch of perfection to this scene. I can still remember being there; The sound of the rushing water’s melody: The air so crisp and chill you can almost taste it. It was a perfect night and the perfect spot. We stayed up late sitting on that rock, eating couscous and freeze dried ground beef, talking about life and letting our eyes wander greedily to take in all that was around us.
I knew it was time for bed when I dozed off sitting on that rock. I slept so well that night, never felt so at peace and connected with nature. Hard to forget those moments of waking up in the middle of the night, to open my eyes and see the starry sky above and then drifting back to sleep like it was all a dream.
This made me realize that sometimes, we are too afraid to expose ourselves and get out of our comfort zone. Taking to the habit of pitching a tent no matter what to make us feel safe from the wild. It’s good to explore outside your comfort zone sometimes. Sleep outside and you will realize that how different and exciting camping can be.
At this point, you are probably wondering why there’s a part two. I didn’t think there would be a part two when I went to bed that night. I thought we were just gonna hike out in the morning since we had to bring the car back to Queenstown. But yea, things did not go according to plan. Also, I wonder what Nathan is up to. 😛
