Day 58 – Waiau Forks to Blue Lake Hut

There was frost on my sleeping bag this morning. Better frost than dew, of course, because you can brush it off. And I felt plenty warm all night. I woke at first light, though, anxious and excited to go over this challenging pass. I was actually grateful for the initial steep climb through scrub, as it got my heart pumping quickly and I stayed warm even though the sun was not yet risen.

I had been led to believe by others’ accounts of the pass, in particular Eric Martinot’s, that the route on the South side of the ridge was obscure and hard to follow. It wasn’t so in my experience.  Where it was brushy there was a reasonably worn-in track, and where the track faded there was a generous number of cairns.  This may be a recent development, especially since the recent purchase of the St James Station means permission is no longer needed to hike this route.  I’m sure that has boosted its popularity quite a bit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some keen hikers had come through in the last year and put up all these cairns.  Many of them were small or sloppy, adding credibility my “recent cairn-building age” theory.  No complaints though – a small cairn is better than none at all!

The track followed the West fork of the Waiau for a while, then hooked right to follow a spur up towards the pass. The bowl I sat in looked truly formidable at this point, and it was hard to see how I could get up top, but I kept following the cairns, which were now joined by a number of snow poles, almost all of them bent or snapped off by past avalanches. Gradually this brought me closer and closer to my destination, which was still unseen. By gradually I mean to say that my heart was pounding and I had to stop every few minutes and rest.

Not that I minded the rest breaks, of course. The view behind me became more spectacular in direct proportion to my increasing altitude, and the sun was rising on a gorgeous blue day. There were small patches of snow on nearby slopes that were probably a remnant from last winter, but my path was free and clear.

Towards the top I came to the part where serious rock scrambling, almost climbing, was required.  I could easily see now why Eric found this section extremely challenging and even dangerous.  He was coming from the north, and going backwards down these rocks would be much more challenging than forwards. I was glad going north made this particular section easier, though it certainly was no cakewalk.

Finally I crested a small ridge, and could see the pass for the first time, only a hundred meters away!  It hardly seemed a pass at all, since it was not dramatically higher than the adjacent ridge.  It was framed by two tiny peaks that seemed to surpass the pass by only a hundred meters or so.

It was still bright and beautiful, and the views from the top of the pass were truly fantastic.  But I only paused briefly at the top since there was a bit of a cold wind.  Soon I was surfing down a scree field on the North side.  When I had descended a little way I stopped for lunch out of the wind, soaking in the view down the walled-in head of the Sabine River valley.  A semicircle of mountains surrounded Lake Constance, a classic blue alpine tarn below me.

Starting out after lunch, I and a Taiwanese man mutually startled each other.  Neither of us was expecting to see anyone on this challenging, remote traverse.  We exchanged pleasantries and headed on.  As he walked away I looked back up at the pass – it was now socked in with cloud, less than an hour after I had crossed.   I had very good luck to cross when it was still clear.

Lake Constance is a wonderful deep tarn, with a textbook example of a terminal moraine at its North end, a massive earthen dam of which any human engineer would be rightfully proud.  The only thing to distinguish its glacial origin is the rocky scattering of erratics across its top.  That, and the complete lack of any spillway, since Lake Constance’s waters drain out through the ground itself.

Before setting out, I read on Nelson Lakes Shuttle’s excellent Waiau Pass page, which mentioned “don’t try to go around the shore of Lake Constance, you’ll get bluffed out.”  Naturally I managed to do exactly that, by losing track of the markers when they turned uphill.  I rounded one bluff, carefully clinging to the rock to avoid a dunking in the cold water with all my gear.  On the other side I found a waterfall and another bluff.  Foolish stubbornness led me to try this one too, but I soon saw that it was too hard, I had lost the track and would have to backtrack.  The real track was actually at the top of the waterfall, and I had another stubborn attempt at climbing that before I finally admitted I would have to go back to the head of the lake.

I was surprised how steep and challenging this sidling route was, it took almost as much energy out of me as the the actual traverse of the pass.  By the time I descended to the natural dam at the foot of Lake Constance, all thought of making it past Blue Lake Hut had vanished.  I was dead knackered.

A short wooded descent brought me soon to Blue Lake, a sixteen person hut.  Surprisingly large given that it mainly services difficult alpine routes.  The Blue Lake itself was fabulous.  The water was unfathomably transparent and still, giving perfect views all the way to a wide variety of mosses lining the bottom.  It may very well be the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen.

I walked along the lake for a while as the sun set, and sat on the rocks at its foot.  There was a massive rushing and gurgling sound constantly emitted from these rocks as the lake water drained through them.  It sounded like a massive bathtub.