I’m on an Adventure

While reading about the trails around Franz Josef yesterday, I stumbled on a picture of a staircase cantilevered off the side of a cliff. Reading more about the trail, a woman afraid of heights mentioned a bridge that was so long and shaky that she didn’t think she could cross it. Further reading indicated that the trail was the Roberts Point Trail, and it has four swing bridges, a cantilevered stairway, and ends with the best view you can get (without a helicopter ride) of the Franz Josef glacier. Obviously this was a trail that I wanted to attempt.

There was no rain in the forecast this morning, so I took off before sunrise on the five hour trek. This trail was my first attempt on one of New Zealand’s “advanced” tracks, but for the first two-thirds of the trail I was thinking I may have given them too much credit. There were some small streams to cross, a few tiny stretches that I had to Spiderman up, and it was clearly a trail that would be an ankle-breaker in wet or wintry weather, but beyond that it didn’t seem that difficult. The last third, however, totally earned the advanced rating, with scrambling up slick rock and an uphill slog to the glacier lookout followed by a knee-breaking descent. Well played, New Zealand Department of Conservation.

The bridges on this trail were my favorite thus far. New Zealand seems to like “swing” bridges on its trails, which are normally suspension bridges, but on today’s trail it was a mix of suspension bridges and wire bridges. The best of the four bridges was the 100+ meter long Roberts Point Swing Bridge. This bridge is by far the longest I’ve encountered in New Zealand, and was moving a couple of feet in any direction as I crossed. I’m not an adrenaline junkie by any means, but it was exhilarating to be high in the air, swaying in different directions, with a massive glacier-carved valley to one side and a river below. The other bridges were a lot of fun as well – one had a “max load: 1 person” sign on it and moved around like it was on rollers, while another went over a waterfall in a gorge that was several hundred feet deep – but the Roberts Point Bridge was a special beast.

The cantilever section of the trail was fun as well. The stairs weren’t particularly high up, probably less than 100 feet above the ground, but they were anchored with iron rods drilled into the rock and made for a unique descent down the cliff face. The view at the trail’s end was somewhat anticlimactic after the tough hike up, but I sort of expected it to be; the glacier has receded so far that you still get an impressive view of the face, but can only imagine how incredible it must have been even ten years ago when it filled more of the valley floor.

I returned from the hike sore but on an endorphin high, grabbed a quick lunch, then drove the three hours north to Cape Foulwind, stopping at the striated limestone cliffs of Pancake Rocks along the way. Tomorrow I’m off again to Abel Tasman National Park for a couple of days of hiking along the north coast, but hoping to make a few stops en route if the weather isn’t bad.