NZ: Day 11
Hike from hell day. We got up early and drove down to Arakoa to do some hiking on the peninsula south of Christchurch. The hike I had chosen was Mount Herbert, which was supposed to give amazing views out of the valley. So we get to the hike and start hiking and immediately find ourselves hiking through a cow pasture. Which is filled with cows who are not amused to see us. We make our way through it gently, eventually finding the end. There were a couple dicey moments, but for the most part the cows were content to ignore us provided we didn’t get anywhere near their calves. However the cow fields went on and on and there were always more cows. Thankfully the trail passed outside most of their pens, so we walked by but not among the cows. The trail got to the end of the park and then loops up private land. During the first half-mile of the private land, the trail is overrun with a variety of sticker bushes and vines, making it a painful process to proceed. My sister grabbed a handful of some vine that ended up making her entire hand tingle and raising welts where it pricked her. She was not amused. Once the hike got through this section, it opened up into a tall grassy scrubland which was . . . covered in cows. And the cows like to congregate around the path. So we spent a good amount of time dodging cows and their babies, which forced us off the path at times.
As we kept hiking up the long rambling switchbacks, we kept thinking we had to be close to the top only to find as we gained ground that there was still more to go that we hadn’t been able to see. We got to the point where we figured the hike never ended when we finally found a sign that said it was ten minutes to the shelter that was at the foot of summit. Fifteen minutes later I made it to the shelter. Now mind that I’m an incredibly fast hiker and there is no way that an average hiker could have made it to the shelter in less than twenty minutes. So I was angry the sign lied to me. My sister had had enough at this point, so she stayed at the shelter while I went up to the summit. That forces me to dodge an even larger number of cows, as they apparently liked to congregate along the trail to the peak. The view from the summit wasn’t even better than the view from an hour earlier on the trail. On the way back down, my sister got fed up with walking around the cows and started walking straight towards them, which caused them to scatter and flee in terror. She was very pleased with herself. Going back took forever as well, especially making our way back through all the sticker bushes. All in all, we made incredibly good time, doing a hike listed as seven to eight hours in only five-and-a-half. But it wasn’t a hike I’d ever do again. Too painful and long with very little return on the investment. We finished the day by driving up to Kaikoura and getting dinner at The Crayfish Pot, where I had an excellent half lobster.