I have never managed to string together logistically intense fieldwork quite like this Boxing Day! Making the most of weather windows, we managed to get a helicopter from Kaipo Hut back to Milford, drive to Te Anau to restock food and repack, and then drive to Manapouri for a fixed-wing flight into Big Bay! The flight in was fantastic, one of the better ones I have had in NZ. The Australian bushfires gave everything a sunray effect. Things got cloudy as we got to Fiordland and we flew over the ocean of clouds with only Mt Tutuko emerging as an island. We landed on the beach at Big Bay (which was in great shape allowing landing pretty much everywhere), and strolled the 5 minutes to Big Bay Hut. It was 7:30p but being mid-summer we still had hours of daylight!
We found a couple people already set up in Big Bay Hut. We started unpacking gear to settle into the hut but then had second thoughts. We could stay the night at the hut and wait until the morning to walk the 4km to McKenzie Creek where we would be camping the rest of the trip (per the plan). Or, we could use the pleasant weather to walk and set up camp tonight while things were dry. We both felt like walking a few miles would do us good after a day of planes, cars, and helicopters and so we left our emergency backup supplies at the hut and walked out to Three Mile Beach. With the low evening light piercing beneath the clouds (frontispiece), it was a spectacular walk and we were both thrilled with our decision. We crossed McKenzie Creek at the south end of the bay and set about looking for a choice campsite that would be centrally located, not flood, and not be too swampy, dark, or lumpy. We also wanted to go far enough away from the coast to get beyond the sandfly isograd (600m I guessed). It took some searching but we finally decided on a solitary beach tree on an alluvial flat a little out from the bush edge. It ended up being a great campsite and the sandflies were overall manageable.
The days were long and the weather was not great. On the second day we hiked all the way up McKenzie Creek to the Pacific Plate. It was cold and very wet and rough on the feet. We both felt very ragged by the time we returned to our camp.
The third day the weather improved. I wandered off to chase down marine terraces in the bush, while Andre sampled along the coast. I found some interesting things but generally the terrain was quite stubborn and hard going. In the afternoon we both hiked up to Point 340, which was disappointingly unfruitful.
The fourth day it rained again. We tied up some loose ends with the marine terraces and coastal sampling, and then shouldered our horribly heavy packs back up the beach to Big Bay Hut. We had a great feast for dinner at the hut. There were two other trampers. As I settled into my sleeping bag for the night exhausted and began putting in my ear plugs I heard the unmistakable sound of a mosquito. The sound prompted a razor-sharp memory of the last night I spent in this hut years ago and the all-night torture of mosquito buzzing and biting. I set up my tent on the patio of the hut and slept in it. The trampers got up early the next morning, and as they walked out said that they reckoned I had the right idea. Apparently everyone in the hut had a miserable night.
We finally got picked up around 10:00a and had yet another nice flight back to Manapouri. Amazingly we managed to wrap up our Fiordland fieldwork goals and so drove on to Wanaka to stage ourselves for the Jackson Bay area fieldwork.
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