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Once a month we send out an e-newsletter, giving behind the scenes insight into the production of the magazine, sneak previews of upcoming issues as well as interactive features.Over the hump
Three days of hard slog are rewarded with spectacular Southern scenery and some welcome creature comforts. Words Sally Duggan; Photos: Nick Duggan.
SOD’S LAW SAYS that just before a big tramp, every ache and niggle in your body makes itself felt. Nick’s knee had been playing up all year and on the morning before we started the Hump Ridge Track he shuffled stiffly out of the backpackers’ into the clear blue Tuatapere dawn to haul our packs out of the station-wagon. The caged parrot on the veranda fixed him with a beady eye. “Hello Grandad!” he squawked.
Guffaws from the teenage son Ben, but Nick and I weren’t much in the mood to be reminded of our ages and physical limitations. The Hump Ridge Track is a three-day, 53km trek along the base of the South Island, taking in coastal bush and sub-alpine landscapes. It is the same length as the Milford Track, but more challenging, and the first day’s walk is notorious for its nasty finish – a 914m climb up the Hump Ridge to the Okaka Hut. The track operators offer a helipack option, where you pay to have your pack airlifted to huts to meet you, but in a penny-pinching moment we had decided we’d tough it out and carry them the whole way.
“So how bad IS that final climb?”someone had asked the staff member running the compulsory pre-track brief in the Tuatapere track office the night before. And even though he was a local with a southern burr and a straightforward turn of phrase, he prevaricated like a politician. “Well,” he said finally, “the really, really tough bit is only 20 minutes long.”
That morning we started early as advised and by 9.00am we were on the coast, a wild expanse of driftwood-littered sand and glittering ocean with the dim bulk of Stewart Island on the horizon. It felt as if we were walking along the edge of the country, and we almost were. Keep walking and we’d get to Puysegur Point which stars in the weather reports on National Radio as the south-western outreach of the South Island.
After a few kilometres we headed inland and hit our first stretch of boardwalk. On most New Zealand bush walks, boardwalk is a bit of a novelty: a short, smooth stint that comes as a relief from the standard dirt bush track. On the Hump Ridge Track there are 10km of it, forming dramatic mini-highways through the forest. All of it was hammered together in three-metre lengths by volunteers working at a local sawmill at Tuatapere, then dropped into position by helicopters.
