Our Hiking NZ team end-of-season weekend is a chance to coalesce, get some exercise, make some mischief, and enjoy plenty of good food and wine (and whatever that whisky liquor that Dan brought was). It’s part reunion, part reset, part exploration.
Director Malcolm offers his reflections from a mountaintop, pondering winter light and dolphin behaviour between bites of what may have been one wrap too many (yet again...).
This year, with another hiking season wrapped up, we headed north of Christchurch to the Kaikōura Coastline, the ribbon of lowland sandwiched between the Seaward Kaikōura Range and the mirrored expanse of the Pacific Ocean.
Many of our crew have been with us for more than fifteen years. But every year we welcome new faces, fresh energy, and stories to the mix. The weekend is a sweet exhale after a whirlwind summer and always delivers that rare kind of magic: the ease of old friendships and the spark of new connections. It’s a team brought together by a shared love of wild places, and this is the kaupapa (principle) that underpins Hiking New Zealand.
We all met up on Saturday in the township of Kaikōura. But beforehand, I joined a handful of guides for a short, sharp burst of a winter tramp, wet-booting it up the Kowhai River before an 800m clamber up the Spaniard Spur to overnight at Mt Fyffe Hut. A gut-busting trip we used to offer in the 1990s.
Mt Fyffe Hut is an 8-bunker that gets a ton of use, and is in nice condition. I’m not sure if the remarkable grass-roots Backcountry Trust has been involved in its upkeep, but check these guys out – this is a great chance for me to crow about the work they do helping to save New Zealand’s backcountry huts from dilapidation and bureaucratic indifference. My old mate Rob Brown is their (very able) ringmaster. It’s a remarkable NZ institution in my view.
The rest of the mob rolled in at Saturday noon to the township, leaving plenty of time for us hikers to rise early and summit Mt Fyffe, but we didn’t. We drank cowboy coffee instead and mused over the changing lightscape before us.
I never tire of what the winter sun does to colours. In our colder months, the sun sits lower in the sky and the light must slice through more of the earth’s atmosphere, scattering rays and softening the light (colour temperature). This warmer, gentler light drapes itself over the land rather than blasting it.
In summer, you would rarely see subtleties through the haze, but winter visibility is better. Cool and dry winter air holds less absolute moisture and fewer dust particles than summer air. This clarity makes distant mountains sharper, skies deeper, and colours appear more saturated. Blues feel bluer. Greens pop. And the usually silent majority of brown, ochres and greys, in tussock or rock, find their voice.
Post-musing, we descended 900m on a painfully even-gradient 4WD track of ‘buttock-burning-fame’ (true) and finally hobbled our way to the relaxed seaside lodge where we based ourselves for the weekend.
That afternoon, we headed out on the water for a dolphin encounter, either swimming or sea kayaking alongside Kaikōura’s resident dusky dolphins. They stayed with us for the better part of 40 minutes, playful and unhurried, circling back again and again as if just as curious about us as we were about them. In 30 years of sea kayaking, I’ve only experienced that kind of lingering connection once before, guiding a Hiking New Zealand trip in the Bay of Islands years ago. Invigorated from our time on the water, we descended on our lodgings for a night of good food, great yarns, and a solid dose of laughter.
A Sunday morning visit to the Kaikōura Sauna Project, complete with cold plunges that left us buzzing (and very awake), put a fitting full stop on what was a terrific weekend. No work talk. Just gratitude, connection, and a heap of fun in one of Aotearoa, New Zealand’s most magic spots.
Grateful as ever for this crew.
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