While Chris goes to Australia and Jay goes home, I planned to ride from Alexandra, south of Queenstown, to Christchurch before flying back to Brisbane for Easter with Katherine, Andrew and Chris.
And so, I planned to ride the Sound to Sound route, planned by the same people who planned and mapped the TA which we had just ridden.
I left on a grey day, having spent our last night together in a motel in Alexandra. The forecast was for a steady tailwind, with conditions improving as the day progressed. Full sun was forecast starting about 2PM, and the following 2 days had forecasts of clear and sunny all day! Woohoo…what a great start.
Chris and Jay waved me good cheer as I pedaled away. The first 35 miles or so were uneventful, riding the Central Otago Rail Trail with a steady tailwind as predicted. Intermittent sunshine poked through the sky, and it seemed that the day was going to go well. I saw very few people as I rode, talking to 2 groups of cyclists, one going the same way as me and one coming from where I was going. The ones who had been where I was going reported fine conditions ahead the previous day, as they had missed the rain. All good.
The track led along gravel roads that were quite empty. This is a remote area. I was planning on cycling about 65 miles or so to a hut, and then riding over the saddle the next day.
As I made my turn up a 4WD track towards Omarama Saddle, I encountered some water on the road, and made my way around it. Then I encountered a small creek to ford, exchanging my shoes with sandals, and walked across. And again, and again. We had forded many small streams before, but most we were able to ride through.
The streams got a little bigger, yet manageable. I had never ridden this area, so I was not sure if it was normal or not. Previously on the TA route, there had been many signs about alternate routes to use to avoid high water but there had been no warnings or advisories on signs or in the book I was following.
And then the streams swelled significantly, and quickly. I decided to turn back, which was not really what I wanted since a campground was 4-5 miles back and I didn’t want to camp in the river valley since I was concerned about flooding. But, light rain was falling mixed with sleet and it seemed like time to get out.
But, it was too late. The stream I had previously crossed seemed to have risen further, so I was not able to go back. I waded in about 15% of the stream, in an eddy to test and quickly was up above my knee in strong current. No way. Then, I went to replace my sandals with my shoes and found that I had lost a shoe. With all the changes from sandals to shoes along the way, I had resorted to strapping my shoes/sandals to the top of my dry bag so I didn’t have to put the wet articles in with my dry clothes. But one of my shoes had slipped out somewhere. Too late now…I knew that I was in a serious spot.
Later, I found out that the stream flow was about 5-6 times what it had been the previous day when the 2 riders I had talked to had ridden the track. I only knew this a couple days later when someone posted the flow stats from the stream I was following. The rain storm the night before I left Alexandra had caused a 7-fold increase to the stream flow, a significant increase.
I spotted a higher road/trail that I could climb to get above the river and made my way up to the top. I looked carefully at my map, and noticed that the river crossed the road 5 more times before the hut.
I pushed my bike up to the higher road and navigated down the other side. That got me past 2 crossings. But I was again on the stream level and needed to get up again. There was a path, but it was too steep to get my bike up. So I took my dry bag, all my food, stove, bedding and clothes and abandoned the bike.
I navigated up and along a narrow path and held my breath while carefully crossing a narrow ledge 30 feet above the water. I was less than a mile from the hut. Then there were high bushes with many thorns on them that I crawled under, following the warrens of sheep. My precious new rain jacket was getting torn. Boohoo!
And finally, I got to an open flat area at river level that I could actually walk over, the knee high grass inundated with about 8 inches of water building under it. But it was flat and so I sloshed through it until I got to a fence, climbed it, got on the road and got to the hut. It was almost 9PM and I could barely see the hut, but I had marked it on my GPS the days before. I was relieved to say the least.
I was carrying my Garmin InReach the entire day, and it was sending location information every 10 minutes to Chris all day. Back in Queenstown, Chris was watching the track move slower and slower, and it was getting late so she was concerned.
With the InReach, you can text people from anywhere in the world without having a cellphone signal. It uses satellite communication. And I knew that I was going to need help to get out, with no bike, one shoe, flooding and being far from a town. So I was going to trigger an SOS to the INTERNATIONAL EMERGENCY RESPONSE COORDINATION CENTER (IERCC) for help. From the Garmin, there’s an SOS button that you push and it connects you to them and then they can communicate with you via text message and connect you to local Search and Rescue.
But first, I texted Chris, to let her know I was OK, what was going on and that I was going to trigger an SOS shortly. She was very cool about it all.
Within a few minutes, IERCC was in touch and connected me to RCCNZ, the Rescue Coordination Center for NZ. And they started organizing a rescue for the morning, knowing that I was safe, uninjured and had supplies to live on. The InReach sends the location data to them automatically, but I also gave them more info. They called Chris 2-3 times as well to get information. The communication was fantastic.
I cooked myself dinner and made a fire in the wood stove. There was a bit of firewood and it was amazing to have heat. I was a bit in shock.
It took until about midnight for all the texts to settle down and I went to sleep in one of the bunks with my sleeping bags and mat. Rats scurried noisily on the floor and counters but I had hung my food in a plastic bag from the rafters, so eventually I got to sleep and woke to daylight. When I woke, I made myself coffee and settled myself in for what I thought might be a day long wait. There was no super urgency to this and I figured they would organize something in the next day or two. So I was surprised to get a text at 8:45AM that a helicopter was going to pick me up at 9:30AM and to get my stuff packed and ready.
WOW! A HELICOPTER IS COMING TO PICK ME UP!?!?!?! MAN…THAT’S AMAZING. And so I started packing quickly. Just then, the door of the hut opened and a grizzled man looked in and tossed my missing shoe on the bench. I looked at him in amazement, and he said that he was pretty sure that was mine since it was on the track as he came up. In what, I thought? I told him that a helicopter was coming per a message, and he said “I’m the next best thing to a helicopter, so get your stuff and let’s go.” OK!
I got the last bits packed and walked outside. His truck (an older Land Cruiser with an air scoop for crossing rivers, I think) was at the end of the entry road to the hut. But, as I was striding towards him, a helicopter came out of the sky and landed close to the hut. The pilot, Andrew, strode out and we all exchanged some greetings. The driver enthusiastically described the water level coming mid-way up his car doors this morning as he crossed streams, and seemed completely unfazed and maybe even happy with the adventure of being there, and not at all put out by the fact that I was going into the helicopter. Kiwis are amazing people, really.
I was now even more in shock. Andrew got me into the chopper and we took off. “Let’s go find that bike”, he said. OMG!!! I was so happy since I had thought it was a goner and also that I would need to get a new passport. I guided him and we found it quickly.
He gracefully dropped the helicopter a few feet from the bike, hopped out and grabbed the bike, took the wheel off and shoved the bike into the back seat, and put the wheel in the cargo bay. And we took off.
It was 15 minutes of wonder on the way back, seeing the snow capped peaks and then the valley of Wanaka appearing. Chris and Jay were already on their way to pick me up, having rented a car in Queenstown and knowing before me where they were taking me. Andrew landed the chopper just in front of their offices and unloaded my stuff, before disappearing to go pick up and place some backcountry toilets somewhere obviously inaccessible. And then came back to pick up a young couple who were getting their wedding pictures on a glacier, and then a number of other parties. My rescue was just one of the many tasks for the day.
Chris and Jay appeared and we went into Wanaka, me babbling along about the last 24 hours like a madman. A couple beers and lunch helped settle me, but even now I’m really just relaxing.
I posted to the Facebook group for the Sound to Sound about my experience and it sparked some good discussion about how to get reliable weather reports and what one might do in similar circumstances. I just wanted people to not repeat what I had just experienced.
Many thanks to the IERCC and the RCCNZ and Andrew and Michelle at Aspiring Helicopters. You really saved me. And to Chris and Jay who were there for me every step of the way. I owe you both.
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