No Picnic in Fiordland

by Ivan Viehoff

 

Manapouri

It was raining at Manapouri. Half an hour on the catamaran took us to the West Arm of Lake Manapouri, where the annual rainfall is three times higher and the sandflies three times worse. It was raining hard.

Doubtful Sound

At Deep Cove, 20 km away by gravel road, over the Wilmot Pass, things are three times worse again. This is Doubtful Sound, the narrowest fjord you have ever seen. Captain Cook was doubtful he could turn his ships and get them out again, so he named it without ever coming in. With 300" of rain a year, how long do you need to stay to take a picture like the stunning postcard in the shops?

"Raining?" said the hostel warden. "It's not raining," she said, in direct contradiction of the facts. "It hasn't rained here for a week," she said, though it looked as though it had been raining since the beginning of time. "Leastwise, not properly."

We didn't want to know about "properly", as it was bad enough already. We only had food for two days and that was heavy enough too. The track is 90 km from here to tarmac, and then some more back to a kind of civilisation, that limited kind of civilisation where everything comes with chips.

 

Wilmot Pass

We climbed steeply back up the Wilmot Pass, with the keas screaming at us. They look friendly enough, but these birds will rip up your saddle, your tyres, your panniers, your shoes and your tent if you're not watching. We kept watching. One day it might be fun to say you lost your kit to a bicycle-eating parrot, but today wasn't the day.

 

West Arm

Back down at West Arm, we found the little unsigned turn-off behind the hydro workers' hostel that climbs to Percy Saddle. You don't hang about on a track like this. If you stop for more than a couple of minutes the sandflies find you, and the insect repellent doesn't work so well when you're dripping with sweat in the steamy air. But at least it had stopped raining.

 

Percy Saddle

We climbed high enough to get out of the bush, and a new kind of landscape came into view, bare rocky peaks, grassy plateaus and highland tarns. The mountains are so steep and the valleys so narrow round here it's like a child's drawing.

The hydro workers get a sandfly allowance, but the sandflies don't get an altitude allowance, so we could take it easy for a bit. We were now standing on the rim of Percy Saddle, and could see why few people come this way. The thing about this 90km track is that they only ever built 89km of it, and the missing kilometre fell away at our feet. There was a loose, steep slope of tussocks and rock-chutes, and then a band of thick bush.

 

The Missing Kilometre

We'd heard it was bad, but from up here it didn't look that bad. There was a note half buried in the dirt, about a week old.

To biker at Deep Cove
This are not fun!
Went to Percy's Saddle but returned.

Rasmus (Denmark)

He thought it was bad, and he must have been strong to get this far. Undeterred, we set off, following the marked route. To call it a path would be a compliment it did not deserve. After ten minutes I'd covered less than 50 yards and I was sweating like an Otago fruit-picker. It was that bad.

I removed my pedals and panniers, and the portage began. There were loose stones, loose plants, ensnaring bushes, slippery grasses, the works, and almost as steep as the leaning tower of Pisa. A pannier would roll down and have to be fetched. It was too rough to wheel the bike, and too steep and loose to carry it on my shoulder. I had to drag it along, lifting it over the tussocks and rocks, all the time making sure that I and my possessions didn't slip down. It wasn't long before I stopped worrying about the paintwork.

And then we got into the bush. There were fallen trees, great boulders, banks to climb up as well as down, and all slippery now it was raining again. Sometimes I'd get just ten yards, and think, I'm tired, time to go get the panniers. They say bikes have been abandoned in these woods.

It was getting late. We were tired and wet, out of water and snacks, and we couldn't see how far it was. From the top I had seen a flat area where the track restarted, and I thought we could camp there if we had to. So I set off with just the panniers. But it wasn't so far, and within half an hour I had the bike there too.

Four and a half hours for one goddam kilometre. Simon kissed the track and said, "Well that makes the Lairig Ghru seem like a Sunday picnic."

South Arm

Even now we could only wheel the bikes on a steep, rough track until we were nearly at the bottom. I heard kiwis whistling in the bush. We finally rode in to the clearing at South Arm at 10 o'clock with the last of the light. Even the sandflies had gone to sleep. In the dark, we cooked up some sludge to eat, but your stomach's not fussy when your eyes can't see it and your hand can barely lift it.

But those sandflies get up early, and there were enough on the tent mesh that morning to feed an army of anteaters. We opened the zip an inch and they were in and biting. They reminded us we weren't out of the woods yet. There were still trees all around.

The Wash-Out

We put on long sleeves, long tights and head nets, and fled the place. Soon a great pile of mud and boulders blocked the track. This wasn't on the schedule at all. The wash-out was so long, we couldn't see the end of it. We couldn't even see where the track used to be. We found it 400 sludgy yards away, behind a bank of boulders.

 

Borland Saddle

The sun came out and we had a view. So it wasn't Doubtful Sound, but Grebe River would do me. It was a hard climb up Borland Saddle. We were tired and the track kept on going down when it should have been going up, only to punish us again further on. We ate the last of the food well before the top. But did we race down the other side.

A few sandwiches short of a picnic...

A large sign on a gate warns on-coming motorists "Caution cyclists." You need a warning about cyclists who'd done what we'd done. They're a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

Book Reference

Classic New Zealand Mountain Bike Rides, Kennett Bro's, Rides 17.1 (Percy Saddle) and 17.9 (Doubtful Sound).

Maps

DOSLI 1:250,000 No 14 (Te Anau) and No 16 (Invercargill). DOSLI 1:50,000 NZMS1 149 (Manapouri) helps, but this article or the Kennetts' description is sufficient. Sketch Map below.

Route Notes

With the likely closure of the Heaphy Track to cyclists in 1996, this is a contender to be the classic New Zealand rough-stuff route. It is the only cycling route crossing Fiordland apart from the busy Milford Sound tarmac road. The Wilmot Pass is 670m, Percy Saddle 1050m and Borland Saddle 980m, dropping to Lake Manapouri at 160m between each pass.

From Percy Saddle, don't go down the rock-chute straight in front of you, but head left along the rim of the saddle, under a pylon, and you'll soon find the first marker (NZ "waratah"), a black metal stake with a red wooden top. The route heads obliquely across the slope to your left, across the top of a narrow scree run, down to the bush-line, and then follows the bush-line for some way, passing through a few narrow tree bands before entering the bush proper. There are several plausible dry streams and avalanche cuts heading down into the bush but the route crosses these. On the bush-line and in the bush proper, there are frequent orange plastic tags tied to trees and bushes, but you have to search for them because trees have this disconcerting habit of growing. The track restarts near the next pylon on the left-hand pylon run (as you look down) and the marked route is to the left of both pylon runs. It is essential to keep to the marked route. Free-styling it through the bush would be beyond me, and you wouldn't be able to see where you are going. If you can't see the next marker, don't guess but go and look for it, it might be hidden behind a tree. If you prefer uphill, then route-finding is probably easier that way. Go to Dr Bike at Queenstown in the evening and Erin will tell you what it's like going uphill.

The hostel at Deep Cove sleeps about 50, and is comfortable and well-equipped. You must bring all your own food with you. You would do well to phone ahead as the hostel is used by school parties, especially in term time; the phone number is at the ferry terminal. You could stay a few days and go back on the ferry if you are not inclined to epics. There are companies who organise sea-kayaking and sailing from Deep Cove, but you must arrange it in advance. The hydro station at West Arm is one of the engineering wonders of the world, and worth a visit if you have time. The catamaran to West Arm goes about every 2 to 3 hours, but the first one out and the last one back are likely to be booked up long in advance for coach tours. You could probably find somewhere to camp (unofficially) at West Arm. The South Arm DOC camp site comprises a clearing with a bus-shelter-like structure where you can sit out of the rain and some toilets. There are other wild camping possibilities, but none I could see in the immediate area of Deep Cove. At the end of the track, the nearest food is back at Manapouri.

First published in the Rough-Stuff Journal Vol 42 (1997)