Colin Sproule's Travel Blog

I’ve just come back from the Reese-​Dart Track last night and boy was it ever a great trip!

On the first day I shut­tled up to the track start with about 9 other peo­ple and started hik­ing imme­di­ately to avoid the crowd. It was a pretty easy 5 hour day of walk­ing through a marshy some­times knee deep muddy val­ley and then into a grad­ual climb along a river. After 5 hours you reach a nice hut called Shel­ter Hut. There were already some peo­ple there and by the night there must have been about 12 – 14 peo­ple. The nice thing was that the bunks were in a sep­a­rate build­ing than to the kitchen. A lot of peo­ple went to bed quite early so it was nice to hang out in the kitchen. It also started to rain so even better.

I met another Cana­dian and her Kiwi boyfriend who were walk­ing the track the oppo­site direc­tion. That made my first night there last night. Them, myself and an Amer­i­can all played cards late into the night and we drank some of the wine I had packed with me in a platy­pus bot­tle. Was a very fun evening.

The next day I woke up and it was rain­ing pretty hard. Every­one was pretty bummed out and started talk­ing about stay­ing an extra night in this hut to avoid the rain. I was really con­fused by this because at this point it was only 8 in the morn­ing! I learned that a lot of peo­ple were doing the hike in 5 days instead of 4 like myself. They plan to hike to the next hut and then stay 2 nights. The sec­ond day they would do a day hike up to cas­cade sad­dle. Either way I didn’t under­stand why they would wait at the first hut.

Around 10:30 the rain became merely a driz­zle so I headed out by myself. It was incred­i­bly foggy but a nice tem­per­a­ture for walk­ing so I set a fast pace and enjoyed the walk. You gain 500m on the sec­ond day in one big steep spot. It was not too bad but due to the cloudi­ness I did not get any view from the Reese Saddle.

I kept going and amaz­ingly found myself at the next hut only 3 hours after I left. As soon as I made it to the next hut the weather cleared up and I started think­ing about the Cas­cade Sad­dle. It’s sup­pose to take 5 hours one way but based on how quickly I fin­ished today’s hike I decided to go for it. I made some hot choco­late first and changed out of my rain clothes and took off around 2:00.

The hike up to Cas­cade Sad­dle was really awe­some. You hike along a big river and a glac­ier area where huge rocks have been left behind. It’s a fairly grad­ual uphill until the last hour which is quite a bit of almost scrambling.

I was mak­ing excel­lent time when i ran across some peo­ple who were com­ing down from the sad­dle. They let me know I was only a half hour from the top and then one of the women inter­ro­gated me on my plans and was being very neg­a­tive about my safety in hik­ing both the sad­dles in one day. It was very off putting but oh well. 10 min­utes later I was at the top and it was glo­ri­ous! I tried to make a video, some of the sound is messed up and I almost plum­met to my death at one point, but it should give you an idea of the view.

I spent about a half hour up top (I would have loved for it to be longer) but started mak­ing my way back down so I didn’t get caught on a trail after the sun went down. I walked along the river off the track on the way back as I could see from up high it was shorter than fol­low­ing the very hilly trail. I imag­ine the trail is that way to avoid the river when it is high. While walk­ing I cam across a glac­ier pool that was very small but incred­i­bly deep! It looked really clean so I stripped down and took a very fast swim. It was ridicu­lously cold and felt a bit like being punched in the face. It was really amaz­ing how deep it was, maybe 15 feet!

After that I did some run­ning along the trail to warm back up and I ended up catch­ing up to two Amer­i­cans who had also been up to the sad­dle. They both do work in Antarc­tica dur­ing the sum­mer and since they fly through Christchurch they spend a bit of time in New Zealand each year. I walked all the way back with them. For me it was a 5 hour round trip, half the sug­gested time!

Back at the hut some of the peo­ple from Shel­ter Hut had made it and some had strangely stayed behind even though the weather cleared up. Dart hut is very big and was recently rebuilt as the track has become very pop­u­lar in the last few years. The hut is huge and almost too nice. There were a lot of peo­ple at this hut includ­ing a group of 9 mid­dle aged women who were a lit­tle over­whelm­ing. Appar­ently a few nights before there had been 50 in the hut, yikes.

The next day I was awoken to every­one once again pack­ing and talk­ing loudly at 6 in the morn­ing. I tried to will myself back to sleep but couldn’t. I made some break­fast and then read until about 10:30, well after every­one else had left. It was nice to have some quite time. The next day of hik­ing was mostly mean­der­ing through the for­est and some mead­ows. I took my time and enjoyed a few short naps in the grass. The only thing of note was this awe­some place called rock bivy. It’s a giant rock bivy that can sleep about 6 peo­ple and even has a rock stove and fence built. I really wanted to sleep there but then I would have had to hike another 2 hours the next morn­ing and I needed to catch a shut­tle at 2:00.

When I made it to the next hut there were a ton of sand flys so we were pretty much stuck inside. I was glad I had waited to leave that morn­ing. I went for a quick swim in the river and got eaten alive by the lit­tle bas­tards. I spent the rest of the day read­ing and chat­ting with a Dutch guy name Robert who had sim­i­lar music taste to myself. He was also a com­puter programmer.

The last day I once again left well after every­one else and walked the very easy 4 hours to the carpark where a shut­tle was wait­ing. The day of walk­ing was sunny with a cool breeze and absolutely delight­ful. I shut­tled back to a small town and then some Ital­ians from the hike gave me a lift into Queen­stown. Queen­stown is chalk full so I hilar­i­ous stayed at the hol­i­day park in my tent. 4 days in the back­coun­try in huts and one day in the city in a tent. I grabbed a burger with Robert that night and enjoyed some beer by the lake at sunset.

Twas a great trip and the weather was very coöper­a­tive for the area. I would highly rec­om­mend this track!