The One in which I Came the Closest to Dying

Year: 2016
Destination: Ivory Lake Hut
Goal: Shenanigans
Status: Barely Alive

Goooood Evening Ladies and Gents!
Welcome back to another episode of Is Luke Alive, with your host, Luke Notdeadyet Jensen. This is a special installment in the series folks; "Surviving the NZ: Snow Edition" with special guest Tyler Smallwood! Can we get a round of applause? Wooohooooo! Peachy. Moving on.

For this week's episode, we take you deep into Western New Zealand, where our two fearless adventurers make an attempt at the remote Ivory Lake Hut. To begin their journey, they stopped and consumed the most essential ingredient to their adventure, Subway, their power meal for the days ahead. After arriving at the trail-head shortly after, they spent the night in the car, eagerly awaiting their future expedition. We awoke to a bright and sunny West Coast day.

The morning and early afternoon were filled with a quick jaunt up onto the ridge. Now, this was by far, the craziest trail I have ever hiked on. I have done some pretty crazy bushwhacking, but when it comes to an actual trail, it was pretty dodgy. I would say that we were on the trail about 70% of the time, and that pretty generous... and also not including the times we purposely left the trail. Yeah, it was pretty hard to see sometimes, and who knows what happened to the trail markers.
Anywho, whoever decided to make the trail clearly never maintains it, but that wasn't the real issue. Turns out they also hated switchbacks, as we were literally hand of hand climbing through scrubs and around trees for a good portion of the day.

That night we stayed at Dickie Spur Hut, just on top of the ridgeline. After looking through the hut check-in book, we discovered that on average, about 15 parties make it to Dickie Spur a year, and fewer than that actually make it all the way to Ivory Lake. (Check out this dope picture-Creds: Tyler)

The plan for the next day was to traverse Dickie Spur Ridge, and Sawtooth Ridge, and then descend on the other side towards Ivory Lake Hut. This is not the typical approach of attack. Usually people descend from Dickie Spur, follow a valley the length of our planned ridge traverse, and then ascend back onto a different ridge-line and down to Ivory Lake. However, there was a decent avalanche risk in the basin at the end of the valley, which we wanted to avoid. The other option was to bushwack through a valley on the Ivory Lake side of the ridge, but it is usually a 12 hour day... in the summer. We decided that our best bet was to get onto the ridge via a non-snowy route, and then follow the ascending ridge-line into the snowy regions, as there would not be avalanche danger on the top of the ridge.


Sooooo we got a nice and early start in the morning, and valiantly made it about halfway across Dickie Spur Ridge! Eventually, we had to make an executive decision that the knife-edge ridge was too sketchy too continue. There was too much snow to easily traverse the alpine bush, but there was too little snow to cover all the bush, and we kept falling through the thinly crusted top layer. Love innocently traversing along a ridge, and then sinking up to my mid-thigh in powder; my favorite. All in all, it was pretty dodgy.

We had two clear options at that point. Either A) We could turn around and head back to Dickie Spur Hut or B) We could build a Snow Palace! We clearly went with the safer, more reasonable option, and got to work on the Snow Palace immediately. We worked on our new home for about six hours until it was complete. The hope was that it would keep us warm so that we wouldn't freeze to death that night, and also that it would look cool cause Eye Candy is the name of the game when your life is on the line.

After completing our dope igloo that the Eskimos would be proud of, we retraced our steps a bit to a nearby peak, where we ate dinner and watched the sunset. Now, I need to make a short rant about Tuna Fish. Tyler Smallwood introduced me to probably one of the tastiest tramping dinners I have ever consumed. We put an incredible Tuna mix into couscous. That was it; it was amazing! Unfortunately, they do not sell this particular Tuna mix in the states, so naturally, I will be filling my suitcase with it for the return flight.

It was a COLD night despite the igloo. When we were having dinner, I'm pretty sure the moisture in my feet completely froze. Nature was definitely out to get us because we had to stumble our way through a wet jungle before heading up into the snowy alpine regions. Lets just say that our boots turned into great insulators, they were great at keeping the heat out. Praise the Lord for sleeping bag though, because those combined with the powers of the mighty Snow Palace, got us warm enough to fall asleep.

The next morning we woke up (This was the clutch part because weren't sure if that would actually happen), and after a quick victory dance, retraced all our steps from the last two days, and got back to the car by late afternoon. We took a quick drive out of our way on the West Coast to reach our essential ingredient for the post-adventure: three Domino's pizzas for $15. Now that's is NZ dollars mind you, which is $10 US.... for three pizzas!! #AllHailDomino'sPizza #Domino'sforPrez2016.

I would also like to make a shout-out to the goat, whose tracks we followed for most of the ridge. We couldn't believe some of the terrain that he managed to cover; rock on lonely, alpine goat.

Here are more pictures of the tramp. (If its a super-yum photo, creds are probably to Tyler; if its a meh photo, creds are probably to Luke). Honestly tho, this man is a wizard with a camera.

Woohoo river crossing through snow melt! That was a couple degrees from bathwater let me tell ya.

Stumbled upon an awesome homestead. We wanted to get in because we could see toilet paper and honey through the window, but it was locked. *Insert tears of sadness here*

Spiders are crazy yo

This is a good summary of how to navigate a West Coast track.

The goal was to get all the way to the end, in the top-left-hand corner, and then descend down the far side.

Buuuuut, building an igloo sounded way more exciting!

Ain't she a beaut

Sunset: Good. Clouds getting sucked down into a crazy hole: Better. The tuna and couscous I was eating: Best. 

Yeah, the Eye Candy came out all right.

That my friends is what the sky looks like, when you are sleeping.

Well everyone, thanks for reading! That's it for now!

Cheers,
Luke

TWALK!

Helllooooo Ladies and Gentlemen!

Another one of Luke's adventures, coming your way, characteristically on time!
He is (drum-roll please).... STILL ALIVE! Woohooo! Joy, happiness, peace, etc, etc.

Last weekend, I participated in easily one of the most insane events I have ever been blessed to be a part of. It goes by the name of "Twalk," and it is a 24 hour orienteering/scavenger hunt race. My team consisted of myself, Tyler, and Phill, and we were one of 80 teams that entered the race, comprising of over 400 people. The goal was to find as many "controls" as possible within a 24 hour period. Now, a control was a white paper plate (which is super fun to try to find in the snow by the way), with a particular word or phrase written on it that you had to copy down once you found it. These controls were scattered over hundreds of square kilometers, and in order to find them, you had to navigate via a compass and topo map. There was a short clue associated with each control, so once you arrived at the right location, you had an idea of what to look for.

Early last Saturday morning, all the teams met at the University of Canterbury, all dressed up because you do the first leg of the race in costume (obviously). We were herded onto several large buses, and driven to the starting line, the location of which nobody knew. Once the race began, all the teams began the first leg of race, which contained fifteen controls, and ended at the "Hash House." The Hash House was the central headquarters for the race. There was food being served around the clock, a running scoreboard, and people passed out in corners getting some sleep in-between legs. As soon as a team reached the Hash House, they turned in their scores for that particular leg, got some food, copied down where the controls where hidden on the next leg from a master map, and half an hour later, departed for the next section. There were five possible legs to complete in total, with a little over 80 controls to be found. Only the top teams were able to finish all five of the legs; our team made it out on four of them.

It was absolutely crazy how insane some of the teams were. My team covered about 50 miles in the 24 hours, but some of the higher ranked teams covered about 75 miles. It is an event that I would definitely do again, and probably train for next time.

Check out of the pictures! (None of these pictures are mine; I was too busy running around like a maniac).

Buses dropping everyone off

Team: "We're Lumberjacks and We're Okay"

Panorama of the starting line

The Porta-Potty Team won best costume.

All the teams, searching for the first control.

The lights you see are teams searching for controls out on "Leg 2"

Tents outside of the Hash House.

The lights are teams out on "Leg 3" over on the other side of the lake.

1st Student and 1st Overall Trophies.

Absolutely insane weekend. 10/10 would destroy my knees again.

Cheers,
Luke

Into the Fires of Mount Doom

Hey Everyone!
Sorry it's been so long since I've posted; I know you all have been dying of anticipation. Well, the short story is that I am still alive. As for the long story.... Keep reading and find out!

Today, I am actually going to jump back a couple weeks. Waaaay back to the last week of term break, and right after I finished my adventures in and around the Kepler Track (Yeah this post is a bit late). However, one needs time to recount one's adventures, especially if they involve travelling to Mount Doom and valiantly destroying the One Ring!

We are going to check back in on Luke's adventures right off Doug the Drag Racer (remember him) dropped him and Kyle off in Christchurch. We gave ourselves about a day to recover, eat, pretend to do homework, eat some more, and get a bit of shuteye, before heading in the opposite direction of our previous journey. Luke, Kyle, and Rachel woke up bright and early the next day to catch our Northward flight to Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. Upon arriving in Wellington, we met up with some other peeps, Savannah and Jailene, and explored the city for a couple days. We visited a few museums, saw the Weta Workshop (A special effects and prop company that worked on Lord of the Rings), and dined on some local food. The definite highlight of our time in Wellington was sitting in a local square, munching on an apple from a nearby farmers market, and listening to street musician Andy Gartrell serenade us for about three hours. Seriously though, he was an awesome guy, and played even more awesome music; check him out on Facebook and Soundcloud!
Now for a few pictures.

Look who greeted us when we got off the plane!

Why are museums always so tiring? 

Weta Workshop!

All kinds of cool props.

Aaaanddd, that's about when my phone (and only camera) died... Some genius left my phone charger in Christchurch.

Luke, Kyle and Rachel's plan was to pick up a rental car in Wellington around noon, and then drive to Tongariro National Park, to start the first leg of our tramp. However, we didn't end up hitting the road until about 6pm, and consequently, we actually started hiking at around 9pm. Luckily, it was a short leg to the first campsite, and we were all asleep by a bit after midnight.

Alright, time for a quick game of trivia. Guess who didn't bring a sleeping pad to Tongairo? If you guessed Chuck Norris, you're wrong, but close; he didn't have to deal with carry-on bag sizes when he jumped from the South to the North island. However, his close friend, Luke Jensen, did not bring one. Yeah, it was a pretty cold night. I was wearing all my layers, and my sleeping bag was wrapped in an emergency blanket to conserve heat. The sun and I woke up at about the same, and he watched gleefully as I shook the ice off of my rain-fly. He had every right to be gleeful though because he didn't have to ascend Mount Doom that day; he got to fly over it.

A couple hours of hiking brought us up onto the Tongariro ridge, from which we could climb up the steep side of Mount Doom. It was a grueling, hand-over-hand climb up a giant skree field. For those of you who don't know, skree is just a lot of loose rocks that really want to kill you. We managed to make it to the top, and it was definitely one of the best views I have ever seen in my entire life. We did some awesome skreeing on the way down, and made it to the bottom in about a sixth of the time it took to climb it. Now, skreeing is a lot like skiing. You are moving down a slope at high speeds; the only difference is if that if you fall, instead of hitting snow, you slam your face off a bunch of fast moving rocks. So gold.

Here's how I imagine the term was born:
Dude 1: Brooo, this is almost exactly like skiing...
Dude 2: Except there are rocks.
Dude 3: Brooo....so its like skreeing....

Don't have any idea how the i's became e's, but that conversation is probably close to word for word. But anywho, we finished off our ten hour day by arriving at campsite number two, and sleeping under the shadow of the now-conquered Mount Doom.

We awoke to our second full day, eagerly anticipating our journey across New Zealand's only desert. It was another long ten hour day, of nothing particularly eventful, just gaining a lot of ground. That night, we met a Kiwi named Philip, and the next morning I decided to hike with him since we were all going in the same direction. We absolutely smashed day number three; it was supposed to take us eleven hours, but we arrived at the next campsite in seven. We talked about all sorts of topics during our hike: books, movies, hiking, barefoot running, religion, politics, family, jobs, world peace, the cure for cancer, etc etc. It was kind of crazy how much we had in common, and we got along swimmingly. Since we weren't sick of each other yet, we figured we would finish off the last day together as well. At the end, I met up with Kyle and Rachel back at our rental car, after 50 miles of circumnavigating Mount Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom) and Mount Ruapehu.

A quick flight the next morning back to Christchurch concluded our adventures on the North Island.
Photo credits to Rachel Cope on these pictures because she was smart enough to bring a phone charger. Check them out!

So majestic. Oh look, and Mount Doom. 

Yeah it's only a wee bit steep.

Looking into the crater!

When on Mount Doom...

Some of the view from the top. 

A bit later in the day, after descending from Mount Doom.

Looking back on Mount Doom.

Next day, crossing through the desert. Mount Doom is getting further away!

Dope Hut shot

Thanks for reading guys!

PS. You may have seen some lumberjack photos hitting up Facebook. That was my most recent adventure, and I promise I will be quicker about posting about that one! Check back in next weekendish.

Cheers!
Luke

Journey Into the Southland!

Hey everyone!
It is safe to say that Luke has defied all odds and is still alive.
"Wow, that's boring. Why do I even bother checking anymore?" You may ask.
Well let me tell you a story; a story of how Luke approached death, and after a brief moment of formalities proceeded to beat the living daylights out of it.

Pop some popcorn and find a comfy seat ladies and gentleman because this is gonna to be a long one.

It's early in the morning on April 15th. Much of Christchurch is asleep, except for two fearless adventurers, myself and my Brother-Man, Kyle Alpert. We stand just outside the city, awaiting our fate, the tools of our trade majestically reflecting the early sunlight that can only be found on a Friday morning.
Destination: Queenstown.

"Tools of the Trade"

As if anyone would pick him up

After a short thirty minutes of standing on the roadside, a car finally pulled over, and thus began our first hitchhike. The driver was a cool dude, and I cannot remember his name for the life of me, so I will affectionately refer to him as "The Electrician." Coincidentally, that is also his job. Now, The Electrician just happened to be going all the way to Queenstown, which about 300 miles away, and it is safe to say, we got extremely lucky. He even stopped at a famous Mount Cook lookout, and for food several times, so we did not get too hangry.

Mount Cook

The sexy beast you see in the picture, way off in the distance, is the legendary Mount Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand. And the guy, well... that's Kyle.

After a long six hour drive, we finally arrived in Queenstown, the Adventure Capital of the World. This is the cute little backpackers (hostel) we stayed in for the night.

YHA Queenstown

After finding our room and dropping our backpacks, we set off into the great wilderness of Queenstown, dense with Asians in down jackets. Our first decision in this town was, obviously, to find as many statues as possible, and sit on them. There are far too many pictures to include here, so check them out on Facebook; we are thinking of opening our own art gallery. The second order of operations was to find food, and boy did we find it. For those of you that have never been to the legendary Fergburger, I encourage you to rethink your life, and find a way to get to Queenstown, New Zealand. It was honestly the best burger I have ever had. Kyle and I did not say a word to each other for a solid ten minutes while we ate, and the only sounds produced were grunts of pleasure and squeals of utter delight. We returned to the backpackers, quite fat and happy. 

The next morning was full of more adventures in Queenstown. First, we found this little store called the "OK Gift Shop." Heads up to all humans everywhere, not a good marketing technique. As intrigued as we were about buying simply "OK," souvenirs, we passed the shop by without a second thought. 

Next, we took a gondola up the slope behind Queenstown, where we had an amazing view of the city. I decided to pay someone to let me front-flip off a cliff, which was pretty rad, and there will definitely be a video hitting up Facebook soon. Highest adrenaline rush of my life thus far and checked off the bucket list. Skydiving, here I come (But probably not in New Zealand). While we were up over the city, we drove around a cool little luge track. I'm pretty much halfway to the Olympics at this point. 

View of Queenstown from the gondola 

The Luge track

Thus ended our adventures in Queenstown. After collecting our backpacks and walking a short distance outside the city, we began to look for another ride to hitch. Just 107 miles to go.

Destination: Te Anau

Our second attempt at hitchhiking was not as easy as the first. We stood on the roadside for a long two hours before a local kid offered to take us five minutes further up the road. It was a disappointingly short distance, but it turned out to be just what we needed. He brought us to an intersection where there was more traffic that was definitely heading in the direction of Te Anau. Within five minutes, we were picked up again. 

Apples!

This time by a guy named John, who was super awesome. He offered to take us as far as Kingstown, where he and his wife operated a B&B. Along the way, he showed us his favorite apple tree, and we stopped to collect a bagful. 

Kingstown Pit Stop

We only waited at the lonely little Kingstown pit stop for about twenty minutes, until we were picked up by a sheep farmer, his wife, and their daughter. They totally pulled over because we bribed them with apples. They were on their way back from Arrowtown, where they had been looking to invest in some land. We learned all about sheep farming and how the rise in the demand of dairy has effected his business. They took us for awhile and then dropped us in the middle of nowhere, but that was fine with us because it was closer to Te Anau!

Our final hitch of the day came from Jamie, who picked us up minutes later. He was a Canadian on vacation in Australia, but had decided to spend a couple days in New Zealand. He was able to take us all the way to Te Anau, where he was staying as well. 

The sleepy town of Te Anau

While we were in Te Anau, we met up with Kyle's girlfriend, Rachel, and her family who was visiting New Zealand. We ended up going on a Glowworm tour with them, and then crashing at their accommodations for the night. Unfortunately, I do not have any good pictures of the glowworms because we could not take pictures, but I have included a picture from the Internets that we can just pretend that I took. 

Wow, only two days in! Congratulations if you are still reading!

The next part of our adventure was the Kepler Track, which I am going to create a separate post about. Either finish up here first, or hop over there and come back after. I'll be waiting right here.  

For those of you that are going to stay, let's continue with the post-Kepler Track Journey. 

Upon completing the Kepler Track, we had to hitchhike our way back to Te Anau. After only a few minutes of trying, we were picked up by Joan, a sweet old lady, who wins the award for being the oldest person to give us a ride. She was nice enough to drop us right outside our hostel, where we collapsed in a smelly heap on the floor, and didn't move for a couple decades. 

Later that afternoon, I consumed the second best burger I have ever had at the Fat Duck. It had beef, American bacon (Finally), and pulled pork on it, and it was amazing. Moral of the story, New Zealand really knows how to make a good burger. 

Check this sucker out.

The next morning it was back to hitchhiking. I know you all are extremely bored at this point, so I am going to make the ride back short, sweet and to the point. We had to travel 400 miles in one day. 

Destination: Christchurch.

We arose from our slumber early to make it out on the road just outside of town by 7am. We wanted to make sure that we had every opportunity to be picked up. Turns out, we totally could have slept in longer because we did not get our first ride until 9am. We were picked up by Duncan and Natashia, who were Aussies taking a small break from life and their two young boys. They were on their way back to the Queenstown Airport, so we covered a large distance in one go, which was quite helpful. Three hours later, we arrived at the airport. 

Our next rides were two short lifts that helped get us out of the busy Queenstown area. First was from an Indian guy named Raoul, who on Luke's official Creeper Scale from 1-10, was definitely pushing an 11. The second ride was from two nice ladies, who brought us from the terrible location where Raoul had dropped us to Arrowtown. 

We did not have to wait in Arrowtown long before we were picked up by a weird man named Lockey. His family runs an off-road ATV Lord of the Rings tour business, which some absolutely AWESOME. He told us about the time that he met Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, and Sean Bean in person. However, he has never read the books.... or even seen the movies. Apparently, they are not interesting enough to keep him awake. Ok Guy. He was gracious enough to leave us in the middle of nowhere, and probably most desert-like area in New Zealand.

We were rescued from certain skin cancer doom by a older gentleman named Graham. He owns a lodge in Otago, right in the middle of a popular multi-day bike route. This is an example of a good business to own; as long as it is not called the "OK Bike Lodge." 

Whew! Hanging in there? You should go congratulate yourself with more popcorn. 

Two more rides to go! We were next picked up by a Spanish couple named Habbie and Ilana, who were in New Zealand on their honeymoon. It first, it was really weird because they offered to take us quite far, all the way to Tekapo, and we did not want to intrude on their time. We showed them were to get a sweet picture of Mount Cook, and they insisted on taking a picture with us. At that point, we knew that we were not intruding, and we enjoyed hanging out with them for a couple hours. 

Habbie and Ilana

When they dropped us off in Tekapo, it was 5:40pm, and the sun was beginning to set. We had a couple minutes to snag a ride, or we would be spending the night on the side of the road. As twilight slowly rolled in, our hopes slowly disappeared....until... a car slowed down and stopped beside us. Enter Doug, with the most clutch ride we had gotten all day, and he drove us the rest of the way to Christchurch. Now, this ride should have taken us about three hours, but it turns out, Doug is a drag racer, and he got us home in two hours, easy. Apparently, he is also a DJ, and has set up staging for Lady Gaga's shows before. In short, it was by far the funnest ride we had received, hurling along the highway at high speeds, jamming to Eminem, with some random half Maori, half Scottish guy we had just met. Humans are awesome. 

Well guys, thats all for now! 

Thanks for reading, and if you haven't read the Kepler Track post yet, feel free to head over there!

Cheers,

Luke out.