There’s something special about being able to watch the sun for an entire day, from sunrise to sunset. I experienced this yesterday when I, along with a friend from work, decided to tackle a 25 km loop in the Silverpeaks, a range just north of Dunedin. What was supposed to be an introduction to trekking in New Zealand turned out to be a 15 hour epic, including night time scrub bashing, and seat-of-the-pants navigation in heavy fog. Thinking about that, perhaps this /was/ a good introduction to NZ trekking.

With the weather forecast on our side (fine and 14, with light northeasterlies developing), the day started at 07:30, just before sunrise. The first leg of the walk took us along the Silverpeaks Route, south of Green Hill and on to Pulpit Rock. The views along the way were good, although sunrise was somewhat obscured by a seemingly never-ending wall of head high scrub. We reached Pulpit Rock around 09:40, had a snack, and then continued to our next planned stop at Jubilee Cabin. This leg involved descending the Devil’s Staircase, an aptly named ridge line which runs North from Pulpit Rock and drops into the valley where the hut is located.

While descending, we passed a stream of trekkers who had stayed in the hut the previous night - we were happy to be heading down, rather than up. We reached the hut around 11:20; I figured we were doing well, as the generally quoted time to Jubilee Hut was around 4.5 hours. The weather at this point couldn’t have been better; the sun was out, the sky was blue, and there wasn’t a breath of wind. Jubilee Hut is quite modern, and is in the perfect position to capture the glory of the mountains surrounding the valley. It’d be a great place to stay on an overnight trip.

We continued on to the remains of the old Jubilee hut, and encountered the first real difficulty of the day. The guide book I was following (‘Dunedin Tracks and Trails’ by Anthony Hamel) mentioned a short cut which started behind the hut remains. We bashed around for a while to no avail, so, with a reasonable idea of where we needed to get (to the top of the hill on which we were standing), simply decided to scrub bash our way to the top. An alternate route would have been to descend back to the valley, and follow a fire trail which slowly winds its way up the hill. The direct route probably took just as long, but in my opinion was more fun.

Upon reaching the top, we rejoined the trail and made our way along the ridge line with the aim of finding ABC cave, a local landmark. It was about this time that, thanks to me, we made our second mistake. I hadn’t looked at the map closely enough, so failed to notice that we should have gone through a gate to the right of the trail. As it happened, we followed the main trail, descending all the way down into a very steep valley. The climb back up was tiring, but thankfully short, so we made our way back to the gate we had passed and discovered an overgrown track which took us to the cave. Along the way we met a group of three who had been camping at the cave, hunting pigs. They were quite friendly, helping us to confirm that we were headed the right way.

After poking around the cave, we climbed back up to the ridge line and rejoined the fire trail. A very inconspicuous cairn signaled the start of the unmarked walking trail which would take us back to Pulpit Rock via Rocky Ridge and around Silverpeak no. 3. It was at this stage that I began to feel we would be ending our walk in the dark, as the time had crept forward to 14:30, giving us only 3.5 hours left until sunset. The track along Rocky Ridge was hard to follow and, in some parts, nonexistent. The dense vegetation slowed our progress to the point that we would definitely have a couple of hours of night walking. Despite this, I was confident that we would make it over Rocky Ridge, and back onto the main trail before sunset.

Around 16:00 the northeasterly winds picked up, and some dense clouds began making their way towards us. I became particularly concerned around 17:00 when I saw the ridge line to the east become shrouded in these clouds, as we were only half way along Rocky Ridge. The clouds hit us about 18:00, and the sun left us 15 minutes later. We had been following what we thought was a track, down into the valley around the second to last hill, where the ridgeline makes a 90 degree right hand turn to the west. The track dead ended, and we found ourselves in the midst of dense scrub about 50 metres down the side of the valley, with night fast approaching and visibility reduced to about 100 metres. I am the type of person who worries easily, so I insisted that we immediately push our way all the way back up to the top of the ridgeline. I estimated we had about 10 more minutes of sight navigation before complete darkness, and I really did not want to be stranded off track in the dark and fog.

The push back up to the ridgeline took about 15 minutes; from the top we could just make out the shape of Silverpeak no. 3 in the fog, so we started pushing our way west. After a few minutes, and just in time, my partner miraculously stumbled across a track, so we excitedly kitted up our headlights (it was nighttime by now), and started following the track. It was a big relief when we rounded a corner and found the ‘Pinnacle’, a vertical rock column which told us we were only a few minutes from rejoining the main trail. We happily trekked along in the dark, retracing our steps from the morning, and completely disregarding the track we were following - we were just happy to be on the final leg of the journey.

This probably contributed to the third major mistake of the day (night?); we reached Pulpit Rock, and mistakely walked down a track leading south west for about 30 minutes. We only discovered our mistake by spotting a significant divergence on the GPS (which I had fortunately started logging in the morning, and had put in my pocket when the fog rolled over earlier). Discussing it afterwards, we realised that we had both had our suspicions, as there were a number of features of the track which we didn’t recognise. I guess it’s the kind of mistake you make when fatigue and lack of concentration are playing their part.

We turned around and plodded back up for what seemed like an eternity. It was dark and late, and we both just wanted to get back to the car. We made it back to Pulpit Rock around 20:30, and got back on to the correct trail. There was more relief at this stage, but I found myself checking the GPS every few minutes, as another mistake would have really taken its toll on our morale. Finally, and without further incident, at 10:00 we reached the car, a total of 14.5 hours walking, and a distance of 31 km. What a day. I’m really glad of two things - the first that we’d both had the foresight to pack headtorches; they were invaluable - without them we would have spent the night outside. Secondly, that I have a habit of recording my walks/rides on GPS - this saved us from going too far down the wrong trail at the end of the night; this was actually the first time that I’ve ever used the GPS for navigation purposes. I suppose you can never be too prepared. If I were to do this route again, it would be in the middle of summer, when the days are long, or it would be an overnight trip.