EPIC BEGINNINGS
For a long time, New Zealand has been on my radar as somewhere I have wanted to bike pack. This particular trip, oddly, involved very little planning. Originally having booked the trip with a friend in July with nothing but a very brief conversation, I was soon left to embark on this adventure on my own.
Having already completed a solo bikepacking trip and being pretty comfortable with my own company, I figured the reasons I was going had not changed, so (after a bit of a panic) continued my planning.
I had all the gear and basically all the knowledge I needed to ride around New Zealand, what could possibly go wrong?
Prior to departing I considered whether I should change the pretty ambitious route I had set our two man team to complete, involving multiple 150+km days.
Ultimately I figured there were things I wanted to see, I had all day to complete each ride and isn’t completing something you thought you would do with support, without it, just that much more exciting?
This trip probably started in the most epic way possible.
Leading into this trip, I knew day one had the potential to present a number of difficulties.
The first of which being that I didn’t land into Christchurch until 12am.
Because of this, I made the decision to sleep at the airport instead of paying for accommodation for the night. I told my father this prior to departing and he said to me
You can reason spending $200 for accommodation in Queenstown, but can’t reason spending $30 for one night in Christchurch?
I’m pretty stingy at the best of times, but yep, that basically sums it up. Who wants to pay for half a night’s sleep when you have a perfectly comfortable floor to sleep on?
that basically sums up questionable decision number one
After landing in Christchurch and collecting my bike, I found myself an inviting corner that looked nice and comfy for a night on the floor.
I then continued to build my bike.
At this point I appeared to have dragged a bit of attention to myself. I guess sleeping on the floor isn’t a common occurrence in New Zealand.
I’ve slept in a number of airports in my (not particularly well travelled) life and I knew that some airports can be funny about you sleeping on their floor. I did in fact do some research into Christchurch’s policies regarding this prior to making the decision to sleep there. What I discovered were some very vague rules and personal accounts, most of which stating that you can’t sleep in the airport unless you have a connecting flight within the hours of 4am - 6am.
I evidently did not have a connecting flight however decided I would try my chances sleeping on the floor and if I were kicked out I could simply relocate to these fancy looking ‘pods’ they have close by.
As I’m writing this I really don’t know why I chose that option instead of simply paying to sleep in the pods in the first place… Regardless that was the decision I made.
I had no issues physically being able to sleep in the airport, however every time a flight landed (approximately every hour), the security guard would walk around ensuring the 6 of us, some German backpackers, who did in fact have a connecting flight and myself, were awake and in a ‘presentable fashion’. My interpretation of that was that we had to be awake, sitting up and not have our luggage dragged all over the floor.
As I said though, that was my interpretation.
I have a feeling the security guard was just being nice and should have kicked me out.
This is one of those times I think being a young female has its advantages.
After a few hours of restless sleep, the security guard woke me for the 3rd time that ‘night’ at 5am, at which point I decided to get up, get dressed and pack up my bag.
Because I was departing so early and I had the whole day ahead of me, I decided to take a detour into Christchurch so I could have a bit of an exploration and a proper breakfast before the day really began.
I really did enjoy this detour, however it did result in me having to ride an extra 25km and ultimately may have substantiated my undoing later that day.
That makes Questionable decision number two
The third issue I had was the weather forecast.
While there’s never anything you can do about the weather, the forecast was looking pretty grim for my first day.
In the week leading into this trip I knew the chances of getting stuck in multiple hours of rain and the potential of snow were a high probability.
On a positive note, the wind wasn’t too bad and really, there’s nothing worse than wind. However, the rain was forecast to worsen later in the day, reinforcing my decision to detour into Christchurch as a poor one.
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After riding out of Christchurch and on to the open road, I had another 20mins of dry road before the rain started to hit. At this point I was pretty content.
Rain in New Zealand is pretty similar to Tasmania, just a gentle drizzle.
Nothing too worrying.
With the rain also came a substantial temperature drop so I pulled off to the side of the road to put on a rain jacket and a pair of leg warmers. At this point I figured while I was pulled over I would have a toilet stop.
I’m not too sure how, whether it was the toilet stop or pulling on my leg warmers on some wet grass;
I somehow managed to get a chunk of grass stuck in my knicks.
This may not sound too bad, however I didn’t realise this had happened until the end of the day, at which point my skin was not very happy with me. I only mention this because this mistake came to haunt me as the days go on
…you will hear about that later.
BUT BACK TO RIDING
I continued my ride toward Arthur’s Pass and made my first refuel stop around the 4hr mark. I had enough food with me, however
I was starting to feel pretty cold and drained by the consistent 3hrs of rain I had just endured.
Due to the substantial temperature difference between the cafe and outside, I didn’t want to get too comfortable or warm as that would just make setting off again that much more difficult. I quickly drank my coffee, drank as much of the powerade as I could and filled my drink bottles up with the rest.
Again, I continued on my journey.
Within about an hour of departing I had two people slow down next to me and ask where I was going and whether I wanted a lift.
Even though the rain was relentless, the views were pretty amazing and honestly, I was just enjoying myself, so I declined these offers no matter how well intentioned.
I think that makes questionable decision number three.
Soon after the second car had slowed down for me, I hit Porter’s Pass.
Porter’s Pass is well known for being steep… and it was (2.5km at an average of 12%). Unfortunately this was not the worst of my issues.
It was at this point that it started to snow.
Getting snowed on while riding is pretty exciting… for the first couple of minutes, however it didn’t take long before I could no longer see through my glasses, the road was becoming increasingly wet, and in parts, the snow was settling.
Things were looking increasingly grim.
The last picture I took that day as I turned my attention to not dying from hypothermia…
It took me another 3hrs to ride the 65km to my accommodation for the night.
It’s hard to describe or even recall what went through my head at this point. I remember going through some amazing scenery (all of which I wanted to take photos of) and a few moments of screaming into the abyss to remind myself to keep pedalling.
You might ask why I didn’t try to hitchhike at this point but to be honest, I was genuinely worried that if I stopped pedalling I was going to pass out from the cold and who knows how long it would take for someone to realise I was there. Visibility was not exactly at its prime.
After 165km and 7.5hrs of riding, I finally made my way to Arthurs Pass.
Arthurs Pass is a small town. There really isn’t much there. One cafe, one restaurant, a youth hostel and a couple of private cabins.
I was standing outside the hostel (where I had my accommodation for the night), looking around perplexed as to why I couldn’t for the life of me find where I was supposed to be.
I had to ask someone to direct me to the hostel by simply pointing behind me.
Looking back on this day, I don’t think I fully comprehended the extent of my hypothermia. It took me 3 hours before I gained function in my hands and some point that night before I gained feeling in my feet
It was my mental capacity and the extent to which it was clearly affected that I truly took for granted.
I’ll leave day one by saying I was by no means disheartened by this day, in fact I was pretty stoked to have simply made it to my accommodation… that may also be reflective of my mental state at that point. I went into the day knowing the possible challenges I could face. Unfortunately for me, the worst of my considered possibilities all came to fruition.