Done With the Biking Adventure

We have made it to Brices Aunt's house in Motoeka, at the North end of the South Island!  This means that we are done with the bikes.  All we need to do now is ride them to Nelson to drop them off, which is not very far at all. 
We all made it here in one piece, but I can't say that our bikes really did.  In the last three days of riding I broke two more spokes, broke my front break, used up my entire patch kit on three different tubes and then blew out my back tire entirely.  I think my bike has had enough.  All the tire patching happened between Westport and Murcheson, an 110 km ride.  About half way my tire blew out and I had to walk my bike back to the nearest town.  I then hiched with my bike and all the rest of the way to Murcheson.  I was luck to find a guy in Murcheson who had a bunch of bike gear and gave me a new tire for free which saved me a some hitching because the nearest bike shop at that point was back at Westport.  The next day we rode up to Saint Arnaud to do some a backpacking trip in Nelson Lakes National Park.  This ride was 60 kms of up hill and was gnarly.  On this one I broke the two spokes but made it.  We then went on a three day hike through some beautiful alpine country.  Then came our last day of riding, 110 km ride pretty much all down hill!  I decided to just charge it with the two broken spokes.  I changed my gear around so that all of it was loaded onto the front with basically nothing on the back.  It was pretty sketchy.  About a third of the way my front break whent out but it wasn't that big of a deal.  All in all that was a sweet day of riding being in the highest gear for about half of it!  Another crazy thing about our adventure is that we have all lost 10 pounds.

Now as I said we are at Brice's Aunt's house and she just left to go on a little holiday for her birthday.  So she gave us the keys and we have our own nice house complete with a full vegitable garden.  We are kind of overwelmed at the moment.  And we are actually clean for the first time in about 3 months.  It is pretty sweet.  We have 13 days left here in New Zealand so we have to figure out what to do with that.  Going to explore the North Island some more.

See you all very soon!  There will be much rejoicing and pizza!

Almost up the Coast

So we have made it to Westport on the bikes and all is well.  Our bikes have had some casualties but not too bad.  I broke two spokes and still rode about 80 km on the wheel before getting to a bike shop.  Lucas has broken two spokes and had to get his wheel trued twice.  Brice has had the golden bike until his front tire decided to have an alien baby and needed to be replaced.  It was weird.  We have discovered that we are in fact in a lot better shape than when we started because we get places a lot faster and easier than we expect.  All in all bike touring is pretty sweet.
We have gotten like 3 days of sun in a row which is our longest stretch yet!  It couldn't have come at a better time either, we stopped for a couple days in Punakaiki which was awesome and then the strech of coast between there and Westport was epic.  And here at Westport we spent the day at the beach which was the best beach to hang out at yet and there was good surf too.  Now we are within 3 days of riding from Motoeka and Nelson which is were we drop off our bikes but we have them till the 20th so we can make up some fun stuff to do.  I am trying to go rafting still which is annoying because it requires quite a bit of backtracking to get to the river.  On top of that, if I travel south again there is still a chance that there is not a spot for me on the trip so it is a gamble! We shall see.

Bike Tour Under Way

So we have ridden our bikes from Queestown to Franz Josef with a side trip out to Gillespies Beach.  We have had 7 days of riding with 4 days of rain, with more on the forecast.  It is an awesome way to see the country but is a really gnarly workout and I never knew that sitting on a bike seat could be more painful.  With that said so far it has been pretty sweet!  Especially wearing our sweet spandex.  We are rocking the bib shorts hard!!  We have a month to ride up the whole west coast which really isn't that far so we only have to ride 50 to 80 km per day and we don't even need to ride every day.  So we can take our time and stop a lot which is really nice.  Still we have to eat a ridiculous amount of food which is actually kind of annoying because I am constantly hungry and run out of food very quickly.  The past several days I have been living off of peanut butter and nutella.  Very nutritious!  thank god we just made it to a town and a grocery store!
Right now my mission is to go river rafting and not pay which I am very close to being successful at.  But not yet, not yet.  Very soon though.

Also if you haven't yet check out Brice's Blog because his tends to be more detailed and have more pictures.  Basically his tends to be better.  There is a link on the left side of my blog.  Yes

figured out how to put some photos on

Cascade Saddle

Done with the Tramping

We have survived the final rounds of our tramping adventures.  We just completed the Gillespie Pass rout and the Cascade Saddle, both of which were amazing!!  These were more like normal backpacking than the Dusky track which was a nice change of pace and both were spectacularly beautiful.  Both of these where in Mount Aspiring National park so had much more of an alpine feeling to them.  The Gillespie pass took us three days and the last day we were once again running away from an extreme weather warning with gail force winds and rain.  We ended up taking a jet boat out rather than walking through farmland and dust storms.  Worth the money.
The Casvade Saddle was the more epic of the two and my favorite hike that we have done in New Zealand so far.  The first day we hiked out a valley for a couple hours and then proceded up the saddle which was a climb from 400m to 1800m over about 1km horizontal distance.  Needless to say it was a lot of fun!  But this was alright because we were looking across the valley at Mount Aspiring which is one of the tallest peaks in New Zealand and just amazing.  We ate lunch of salami and crackers at the top of the saddle with an awesome view and felt very accomplished.  For this tram we had absolutely amazing weather so we decided to camp up ontop.  Our site was absolutely amazing and had full views of Mount Aspiring and the Rees glacier as well as some of the other ice covered peaks, including my favorite Mount Barf.  That is its real name.  Ontop of the views our spot had a stream going through it that you could drink right out of and a 20' waterfall that you could shower under if you wanted an extreme instant brain freeze.  That was another thing about both these hikes, you could drink out of all of the streams which was sweet!  After coming down off the saddle we went to the bottom of the Reese glacier which was cool and proceeded to the Rees valley to meet up with the Rees-Dart track.  Here we camped outside a hut which added to the wilderness experience with FLUSH TOILETS!  That was crazy but very nice.  Then we hiked about 20 km out to a car park in the middle of no where with no idea of how we were going to get past the car park but luckfully a guy came out to paint and was able to give us a ride back to Glenarky.  And now we are back in Queenstown and I want to go bungy jumping.
We get on our bikes in three days and start the final leg of our journey up the west coast.  I am stoked and ready to get into some spandex!!  Also I am ready to do some river rafting which I hope to do on the Perth River if Eco Rafting tours has room for me.  I cant find out till the night before.  Or if I have to wait till I get home that will be hard but i think I can do it.  I also need some mexican food in a bad way! 
Till next time

Survived the Dusky

So we made it out of the Dusky alive!  It was totally awesome but also the gnarliest hike that I have ever done.  It entailed seven days of walking through knee deep mud and rock/root climbing with our 50+ pound packs on.  New Zealand has yet to discover the wonder of cut backs to go up hills, instead they just go straight up or down the mountain.  The result is quite litterally having to climb up a vertical face.  Sometimes they give you a chain to use.  So as you can imagine the trail was pretty ridiculous and at times it would be a stretch to call it a trail at all.  This trail really made me appreciate the Hut system that they have here, because it rained pretty much every night and the there was not a dry place to set up a tent for probably a 100km.  Also the huts had fire places so that we could attempt to dry out our socks, but usually just ended up filling the hut with smoke.  You totally get a different feeling staying in huts as well.  You don't get that same feeling of being totally separated from society and the world as you do sleeping out every night.
The highlight of the trip, however would have to be swimming across a flooded river.  On the second night it rained ridiculously hard on us all night and the next day the river we had to cross was flooded.  We didn't know the extent to which it was flooded though.  We were walking through the bush so we couldn't see too far infront of us.  The water started out at our knees and then a couple more steps it was at our waists and then before we knew it, it was at out chests.  At this point we were at the point of no return.  Then from through the bush I hear Lucas yell "I'm swimming!"  So natually I laugh and keep going, then I too was swimming.  The curernt wasnt strong but it was there so it was sketchy and luckfully we had pack liners so our stuff was mostly dry and our packs floated somewhat.  The next thing that I hear is from behind me and it is Brice yelling "a fucking eel!" and I look back to see a probably 3 foot eel playfully harassing Brice, who doesn't  really know what to do with his limited range of movement.  We made it to the crossing wire which at this point crossed about half the river and was about 3 feet above the surface of the water and made it to the hut safely where there were 6 other people who were stuck there.
After all this I would still say that this was one of the prettiest and most epic hikes that I have ever done.  In the same day you would go from walking through rainforest to walking through alpine crossings above the tree line among giant granite boulders.  The scenery and landscape was absolutely unreal.

But I must admit that it really makes me appreciate hiking in the Sierras and realize how special a place they are.  I can't wait to get back out into them.

Since the Dusky didn't take us as long as we thought we have some extra time to do some other hikes before we get on bikes.  We are in Queenstown now figuring out our plan (one that involves less water) and will hopefully be off tomorrow.

Off into the Bush

Tomorrow we are headed off into the wilderness on the Dusky Track for 10 days.  It is going to be pretty sweet, as long as we don't get caught in a flood.  The track is prone to flooding and we can get stuck out there if it does.  We have packed three days extra food and have a mountain radio that we can set up to contact people if we need to be rescued.  So basically it is going to be epic, except for the fact that we are carrying easilt 50 lb packs.

Let you know when we make it out!

On Our Way South

We have rented a car and are charging south to Queenstown.  Checked out some rafting companies in Merchesen and talked to them about possibly working or just getting on a trip and it sounds like it might work out.  We also saw a sweet water fall that is totally runable right next to the road.

It is also very cold in New Zealand which we didn't really account for.  On the way south we are climbing to the Mueller Hut by mount Cook and going to Lake Tecapo as well as stopping in Christchurch.  Then once we get to Queenstown we are embarking on the Dusky track in Fiordland, which is one of the longest and hardest tramps in New Zealand.  Should be sweet.

Soth Island New Zealand

We have made it to the south island!  We are staying with Brice's aunt right outside Abel Tasman National Park near Nelson at yet again a beautiful house with an awesome vegitable garden. 

On the north island we went to Raglan hoping to score some surf, but of course it was totally flat.   But you could see the potential for the points to be absolutely firing lefts.  Which tortured me even more!  Then we went to lake Taupo, which is essentially the Lake Tahoe of New Zealand.  Here we did a 19 km hike, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing and climbed mount Doom, or Mt Ngauruhoe as it is rightfully called.  This added another 700 meters of climbing to the 19 km hike but was totally worth it.  We can say that we climbed the real mount Doom in the heart of Mordor!  But the most epic part was that it took us about an hour to climb it and literally about 10 to 15 minutes to get down.  This is because it was like climbing a 700 m sand dune and we ran down the whole thing, taking hill running to a whole new level!

We then made our way to Wellington and across the straight on the ferry and now we are here and about to set out on the real adventure.  We have to go to the DOC office to narrow down the treks that we are going to do but we are getting ready to take off into the wilderness.  I hope to run the Perth river down here too, which really does exist even though most locals I talk to dont believe me.

Running away from floods

Queensland Australia is under water right now so naturally we have been trying to go north to Byron Bay and surprisingly all the roads are closed and we can go nowhere and this was our plan for the remainder of our time in Australia.  So we are running away to the safety of New Zealand!  We now are going to have another month of time over there which should be pretty sweet but if we follow our plan that we have formulated it is going to be really intense.  We are going to be there for about 3 months and in that time we are essentially doing nothing but bike touring, backpacking and river rafting.  We will all be jacked by the time it is done!  We are doing multiple 5 to 10 day backpacking trips and many shorter ones, running rivers in Rotorua and hopefully the Perth River on the South Island, and riding tour bikes from Queenstown to Nelson.  Also taking a surfing break in Raglan. 

I would like to say that I am totally healthy before embarking on this but I attempted a mighty feet of jumping over a saggy volleyball net on Manly beach the other day and failed.  I now have a volleyball size bruise on my thigh as a result of the gnarliest dead leg of all time.  But it is ok because I looked really cool doing it.

We are all stoked on this change and we are leaving this Friday the 15th to fly over and leave civilization for a while.  Hope everybody is well!!

Back In Manly

We have returned to Manly Beach from our road trip down the coast to Melbourn!  The trip was a lot of driving but was totally awesome.  On the way down we drove every scenic tourorist rout we could which was pretty but took super long.  We camped at a randome campground the first night which was good because it had a covered kitchen area and it was pouring rain.  The next day it cleared up somewhat and we went to the town of Eden which was pretty cool.  From there we drove out some dirt road for into a National Park and camped next to some river out in the middle of nowhere, which was super nice and pretty.  The next day we charged all the way to Melbourn and went to a Hostel in the Saint Kilda district, which was a nice place that kind of reminded me of San Fransisco in a way.  We ate at this cool Indian food co-op which had really good food and where you pay what you think the meal was worth , or simply what you can aford to pay.  Back at the Hostel it was a a raging party, and we came to the conclusion that we were the only ones there that were not from Australia and many people seemed to be living there.  This was kind of weird but fun.

The next day we left Melbourn and started back north.  We ended up driving out another dirt road for around 40 km to a remote section of coastline which had a packed camp ground but still hardly any people.  This was also the first part ofthe trip that I seriously regretednot having a surfboard.  We saw some guy catch a huge ray surf fishing and that was cool.  Finally the next day we climbed Pigeon House Mountain which was a pretty gnarly hike straight up this peak (Australians haven't discovered cutbacks yet) but had a sweet 360 view from the top.

Now we are back and no longer living off bread, nutella, and cheese and we area soon going to leave to head North this time. 

Oh yeah and Lucas and Brice played in a vollyball tournament yesterday and Brice hit an European International player in the face, which was awesome, but they still lost.