After our rough awakening and our emergency escape to Wanaka to dry gear...and car interior...things were seeming pretty grim and our field season may have been over. But that magical Wanaka sun had a peculiar effect in that as things dried we had greater enthusiasm to try to complete our fieldwork since we were so close to accomplishing our goals. By the afternoon we decided we could push for one more big day and called the helicopter pilot to say that we were back on for a flight the next day. We roundtripped back over Haast Pass (Gates of Haast in a great flooded fury!) and opted for a motel option, out tails still somewhat between our legs.
A flooded Gates of Haast
We awoke earlier and drove to the Cascade Road end where we organized gear before the helicopter arrived. This was going to be a big ambitious trip. I knew it. I thought Andre knew it. The plan was to get dropped off on the top of remote Mt Delta and sample our way down through its steep 1000m face to the Cascade River, which we would then packraft out back to our car, all in a day. The location was carefully chosen for the lack of landslides and being the best location to sample a (near) vertical profile, which could give us detailed information about the area's uplift history. Packs would be overloaded and the terrain unforgiving. We packed sampling gear, rappelling gear, and packrafting gear, and needed it all to escape.
The helicopter blasted over us and carried on to some other pickup location. After a couple minutes it finally spotted us and circled back. The pilot was of the friendly, old school variety. He misunderstood thinking he was supposed to drop us off at some exceptionally remote place near Aspiring but managed to communicate we were only going across the valley. Not more then ten minutes later we were dropped off 50m shy of the summit of Mt Delta. Happily we were able to convince the pilot to stay long enough for us to throw a rock sample in the helicopter. We would only have to carry three exceptionally heavy samples now instead of four! Time was certainly of the essence but we took a few minutes to drop packs and walk up to the Mt Delta summit. The view was hazy from the Australia wildfires but it was a nice vantage. The delicate looking (but allegedly quite hardy) alpine plants were super interesting and I could not help taking photos.
We clambered down the open, if squishy tops, with many beautiful tarns. At the edge of the tops we had to carefully negotiate cliff bands including some downclimbing which slowed our progress.
We soon reached the sub-alpine scrub where unsurprisingly our pace slowed dramatically and I took a lot less photos. We had hours and hours of slow progress pushing vegetation out of the way, crawling under it, or desperately clinging to it as we lowered ourselves down cliffs. It was mentally draining and dragged on and on. Progress was counted in vertical drop and the occasional sample collected when we reached an elevation milestone. Sometimes we ended up on the wrong side of an incised creek or got bluffed out and had to backtrack. It truly was some of the worst travel I have ever encountered, completely as expected.
Our pace was suitable given the length of day but the bottom 300m in the bush were by far the steepest and could present challenges. We found a great sample location right at 400m elevation and then almost immediately had a 25m dry waterfall to rappel.
Below we had more slippery rock scrambling and tree clinging to descend cliffs. It was as bad as ever and took 2 hours to go about 400m laterally, but at least we only had the one rappel to reach the valley floor. One last sample collected at the base of the last waterfall and then we followed the creek down to the Cascade River. It was great to finally be down and I felt a sense of accomplishment but we still had a long way back to the car. We inflated boats on the windy cobble bar and then set off for the 6km paddle. There were a couple tricky riffles right away and unfortunately Andre followed me a little too close and flipped. He was able to self rescue well and I snagged his paddle but now he was soaked and cold and so we had to paddle quickly. I was in my self-bailer and so I was cold myself. We had to stop to reinflate Andre's boat which suffered a slow leak from the tools inside not being properly insulated. What could have been an enjoyable paddle without the flip and freezing weather just became a race.
We pulled up on the last cobble bar before Cascade Bend, changed into dry clothes and hiking mode, and then set off on the deer trails and then old ATV track back to the car. I messed up on locating the start of the ATV track (climbing too high) which was an extra annoyance. We reached the road somewhere around 8p and drove on to Haast for a meal and sleep. It was easily one of the most challenging days of fieldwork I have had.
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