Our Routeburn Experience: Water, floods and everything else that could go wrong
way on higher ground back on to the track. We then crossed a footbridge which the water was flowing over the top of, and kept going then crossing the emergency footbridge by Slip Flat. On passing through Slip Flat I looked downhill into the very flooded Greenstone River.
No way could we get past that, so the option was to turn back and go out the Lake Rere Track. We headed away crossing anoth- er bridge over a flooded stream, and then had to cautiously cross a stream which was moving fast, and then back on the track we met three other trampers who had turned back trying to do the same as us.
They said they couldn’t cross a river further on, as it was waist deep and fast flowing, so we were trapped.
The only option was to turn back to the little green biv, as we wouldn’t have got back to the hut we had left that morning as the flooding we had come through would have been worse.
Off we went, it was still pouring with rain, and some of the older members in our group getting a bit tired.
On arriving back at the biv we looked inside and it only slept three, and there were 10 of us. Well at least it was a roof over our head. We all put on dry clothes and had a hot drink to warm up, by this time all the mice had vacated the biv.
About 3pm it tried to clear up even a small glimpse of sun tried to peep through. The rivers both sides of us were roaring. There was quite a bit of snow on the mountains beside us.
At least it had stopped raining and we could go outside and cook our tea. We knew that if it stopped raining for long enough that the waterfall would drop and we could get out the next day.
Now it was time to work out how we would all sleep in the little biv. Eight of us topped and tailed, one slept on a bucket by the fire, and another on the wood box. Oh what a night.
Quite a few jokes were told during the evening. At 1am it was change places and a cup of tea. No one hardly slept, except there was the occasional snore now and then.
After a terrible night’s sleep, but a fine day, we packed up and headed away, hoping to get the 10am boat, little known to us that there were major road slips and we couldn’t get the bus to meet the boat anyway.
All was going well and the flooding had receded, but the track was a mess and the river full of debris.
About an hour on the journey a helicopter kept hovering over us. We kept walking and finally a man hung out of the helicopter and yelled out go back, we wondered why, but turned around and headed back.
The DOC officer and policeman came along the track to meet us, and asked if we were the 10 middle aged people having trouble getting out, as we were meant to be out the day before.
They said a big slip had washed out the end of the track and we wouldn’t get out, so it was in the helicopter, luckily at that stage it wasn’t an Iroquois.
He took five at a time. Seven minutes later we were back in Glenorchy. The flooding was really amazing from the air. On arriving back at DOC we were each allowed to make a call home to let people know that we were safe. An Iroquois got trampers out from other tracks in the area.
So it was back to the hotel to clean up and dry out.
The next story was that we couldn’t get out of Glenorchy by road, as the road was closed. Quite an eventful few days, but a trip that won’t be forgotten.
Luckily we were all experienced trampers and would havehad enough food for two more days.