Retreat... Battle! ... Hunker down

Yesterday the elements were not working in my favor and I can only hope that things improve in the next few days... but given the forecast, I'm not entirely sure that will happen.

I awoke at first light (~7:00 a.m.) yesterday to see that it was pouring down rain. Optimistic that things would change in the next hour before I headed down to the D0C (Department of Conservation) office to finalize my hiking plans, I had my breakfast, bought some extra snacks at the only store in Arthurs Pass, and got packed up.

But alas, the rain did not abate. At all.

The problem with rain in the Arthurs Pass area is that it raises the levels of the rivers, and all of the multi-day hikes in the area involve multiple river crossings. In fact, the two-day trip I chose involved over 20 of them.

And kiwis don't believe in bridges.

I haven't done any multi-day hikes in Alaska, but it sounds like the topography there is more similar to New Zealand than, say, Washington or Switzerland. There are so many wide braided rivers that change course that hikers are left to their own devices instead of building bridges for them. And the rivers are too wide for a simple log-crossing like we so often use in Washington state.

So I decided to retreat: I hopped the next bus back down to Greymouth, where my bike was waiting for me. It ended up being a great ride; I met two sweet and inspiring young women from Durango and a nice hard-core hiker/canoe guide from Toronto. One of the Durangans, Leah, had been helping an old man off the bus when I first saw her, so I assumed that she was with travelling him, or at least a Kiwi (based on her accent). But no! Just a friendly Coloradan traveller.

We all had a bit of lunch together at a cafe in Greymouth when we arrived, and then I showed Andrew the way to the hostel (he was looking forward to a hot shower and a bed after 5 nights in the bush) while the Coloradans picked up some wine before their next bus trip. They were going to stay with some Kiwi friends they had met along the way. They certainly had racked up an amazing collection of friends during their two months' stay!

The rain was only intermittent in Greymouth, so I decided to hop back on the bike and continue on my way down the coast.

Rewind back to March 1, around 9 p.m. in the San Francisco airport. I had been meaning to talk to my friends Liz and Glenn, my cyclist "parents". I hadn't had a chance to tell them yet that I was heading to New Zealand for a month.

It turns out that Glenn had biked in New Zealand for two months about 15 years ago. (How had I not known this?!) I told him my approximate plans, and he had some pretty dire warnings about cycling down the West Coast.

"Raindrops the size of watermelons."

"We rode 60 miles that day but it felt like 200."

This coming from a man who really has biked 200 miles in a day; Glenn is probably the toughest man I know. When Liz competes in Ironman Canada, Glenn usually bikes up there to watch. When he wanted to go to the Co-Motion facility in Eugene, OR, he biked there. In about 3 days. In short, if this man says something is tough, only an idiot like me wouldn't take his advice and run away from it.

But I kept to my original plan. "I'm not in a hurry," I reasoned. "If it takes a long time, I'll just take the bus south to make up for lost time."

Well, if yesterday's progress is any indication, I'll be bussing about half of this crazy coastline.

The prevailing winds here are out of the SSW. Which is almost exactly the direction I'm heading. And they showed no mercy yesterday. For a stretch of about 20 km I was probably averaging 5-10 mph on the flats, in my smallest chain ring (front gear) and at times in my biggest gear in the back.

If it wasn't the headwinds slowing me down, the crosswinds were trying to trick me into biking off the road. There was no shoulder to speak of, so I did indeed roll into the grass a few times. There's something about severe crosswinds and large trucks that seems to make my bike do that.

The crazy part about it is that I kind of enjoyed it. I kept laughing at myself and kept trying to convince myself that it was just a crosswind and that I wasn't crazy for heading south. At least it wasn't too cold, I thought.

The one part where I wasn't laughing was when the rain joined forces with the winds to create thousands of tiny daggers that pelted my arms, face, and hands. I could feel their sting even through my GoreTex jacket!

It was with some relief that I finally arrived at Hokitika (after only 48km of cycling, at around 4 p.m.). As I sat down to collect myself and look at some maps, the skies cleared and I decided to head 30 km down the road to Ross after I took a quick stroll around Hokitika. But no sooner had I rounded the next corner than the winds started howling and the rain started pelting down again.

So I made an about-face and headed to the nearest backpackers accomodation. No need to let a little pride get in the way of a reasonable decision...