Muse Concert, Mt. Sommers, and Pam Problems

I’m back now from our latest trip. On Saturday our friend Andrew came back in town after traveling around and so we all BBQed and watched a few movies. Then on Sunday Xander and I drove up to Christchurch. We checked into a hostel and walked around the city a while, and then went to the Muse concert at the Westpac Arena (apparently the big concert venue in Christchurch). It was an amazing show- they were epically good live. They had a pretty good kiwi band open for them too, which was cool. After the walk back to the hostel we got to bed, ears still ringing. Then on Monday we checked out and on our way out of town saw a Denny’s and stopped there for breakfast. We’d always talk about how we wanted to eat at a classic American dinner type place and at this juncture, Denny’s satisfied our craving perfectly. After our glorious meal, we headed into central Canterbury.

We drove out on this sketchy dirt road to the Lord of the Rings filming site of Edoras (the main city of Rohan in LOTR). In real world language the area is called Mt. Potts. But yeah, we walked out to Edoras and took some pictures but didn’t get all the way up to climb it since there was a rather dubious looking river crossing and cows looking at us like we were invading their land. After our LOTR fun, we headed back down the road a little way and came to the carpark for the Mt. Sommers trail. We hiked for 3 days around the Mt. Sommers area. The first day was pretty short and we stayed at a brand new hut called Woolshed Creek Hut. We talked to a Canadian couple for a while that evening. Then the next day Xander and I headed to Pinnacle Hut, which was another short walk. We had planned to drop our packs there and try and summit Mt. Sommers that day, but for most of our hike into the Hut, we were inside a cloud. We got to Pinnacle Hut around 10:30 am and it almost immediately started snowing. It snowed until dark, which is around 9pm. So we basically sat in the hut for 22 hours, most of the time in sleeping bags sleeping, talking, or reading. Wednesday morning was clear, however, and most of the snow was melted except on the high peaks. That day we walked about 10-11 book hours on the south face trail, leading back to the carpark. It took us about 7 hours to walk the trail, which had two huge ascents and two equal descents. By the end our backs and knees were in questionable shape. Also we ran out of water about an hour or so before the end of the hike. We drove thirstily towards Timaru (on the east coast about half way between Christchurch and Dunedin) stopping once in some tiny town to get water and fill up our left rear tire, which had been deflating on and off throughout the semester. This is foreshadowing for a later part in the tale. We got into Timaru a little before 5pm and stopped by the visitors center there to check on conditions of another possible hike we were planning on doing. Then we ate at Burger King (the 3 restaurants we dinned at this trip were Subway, Denny’s, and Burger King- yay America). Say what you will about Burger King, but it was the perfect meal after 3 long days of hiking. Anyway, we decided not to head to Mt. Cook to do another hike and started the drive back to Dunedin.

It was a smooth ride back and everything seemed to be going well, until we heard the sound. At first we thought the left rear window was falling down. This seemed probable since the motor had broken over the weekend and we had to take of the door panel, remove the system holding it up, and jam some stuff in the door frame to keep the window up. Unfortunately the noise we heard was not coming from the window, but rather from the aforementioned left rear tire. We pulled over off the road and inspected the tire; luckily at this time we were within the Dunedin city limit about 10-15 minutes drive from our flat. As we expected from the sounds it was making, the tire had shredded and was indeed flat. We tried to put on the spare, but to our dismay the spare we’d been carrying was actually the wrong size. It did not fit on the car. Blast. So we packed up most of our stuff into our packs and tried to hail down cars. After only about 4 cars had gone by, a guy stopped (who happened to be a mechanic) and we told him the situation. We hitched a ride with him into Dunedin, taking the messed up tire with us, and leaving Pam on the side of the road. So the plan for today is to find a second-hand tire of equal size for as cheap as possible and get back out to Pam to put the new tire on and drive back. Always something exciting with the car.

So that’s the latest from what’s been happening. I’m not sure when we’re leaving for our next trip- need to get the car sorted out before such things can be contemplated. Good times.