Four Seasons, Five Passes.

Sam Harrison
Nov 8 · 19 min read

As the cliche goes, my exams were coming to an end and I needed to blow off some steam tramping before jumping headlong into the world of summer work. This was meant to be a trip to George Sound, but the giant wet puddle that is Lake Te Anau posed too many problems, so instead I opted for the logistically easier, and classic, Five Passes. I think the tag ‘classic’ lulled me into a bit of a false sense of security, little did I know what the days to come would bear.

The forecast was good for the first two days, then devolving into overcast before bringing rain towards the end. The initial plan was to do the classic five pass circuit but include Lake Nerine and North Col because otherwise it might be too easy (?). To accompany me was Jakob, who had come with me on various other missions to Mt Titiroa and Lake Wilson, and Julian, who was an unknown quantity. This wasn’t for lack of trying, every trip he tried to come on just didn’t quite eventuate for him. I awoke at around 4am on our scheduled date of departure, the 2nd of November. I’d like to say this was due to a planned alarm and early departure. The truth was I was feeling the effects of a BYO the day before and my hangover was starting to kick in. Not to let the situation defeat me, I decided that a little research into our route would be handy, and so screenshotted a couple of blog posts and a marked map on my phone, just in case.

I arranged to pick the boys up from OUSA at half-past 8. While we were there I decided to grab ice axes and crampons for everyone just in case we needed them. We stopped in Alexandra to stock up on supplies and to grab a bit to eat. The drive across the rest of the island was uneventful, other than the usual car-jams, road-rage and hate on the touristy nature of Queenstown. The sun was scorching when we pulled up at the Lake Sylvan carpark. Everything was loaded into packs, food, ice axes, tents etc etc. We only just managed to convince Julian to leave his UP&GO’s behind. Then we were off down the track in the direction of Lake Sylvan on a well formed trail. Soon we were sweating our arses off climbing around the folds of the lake. It was here that I learnt that my water bottle had the water holding capacity of a sieve, so from there on out, I drank straight from the streams. After a march through the wetlands we arrived at a sign marking the juncture between the track to the Beansburn Shelter and the bridge over the Beansburn Chasm. We decided to down packs and go for a walk to investigate the shelter. It was only a few minutes down the track, down by the confluence of the Rockburn and the Dart. On such an exceedingly hot day it would have been rude not to have a dip, but this had to be kept short as we had to get up the Beansburn before the creeping darkness overtook us.

Any effort of cleaning off sweat was in vain, as we were soon sweating once again back up to the packs and then across the chasm. Here the track officially ended, according to the sign. This did little to stop us, we crashed our way through the undergrowth back down to the Dart River flats. It did occur to me with the benefit of hindsight that this 15 minutes of bushbashing could have been avoided by simply crossing at the shelter, but where would the fun be? The river flats were well… flat. This made for easy going as the sun set below the valley walls. We cut intermittently into the bush, where there was a well defined track used for setting traps.

Our main obstacle on this leg of the trip was crossing the unbridged Beansburn to join the track on the other side. The easiest spot to do this is the confluence with the Dart. The others were reluctant as to which path to take. This being so, I took one for the team and waded out into the subdued river to assess our options. I mused that there would be no way of getting across with dry boots anyway, that was until I spotted the jetboat moored around the corner. Thankfully(?) there was no life on the other side of the river, so the others were forced to join me. Linking up we crossed, choosing carefully to avoid the balls deep section of swirling water downstream. From here a marked track cut up the Beansburn and we made good progress. Despite this we were losing a battle with the fading light, partly attributable to weary limbs that had been roasted under the hot sun. The track bridges the Beansburn about a kilometre up before traveling through forested boulder fields depositing us into a grassy river clearing (why did we cross earlier? read Five Passes in Antics 2018). Jakob was a bit slower so had dropped off the back at the end, so I waited for him whilst sending Julian further up the clearing to scope out camping in the seriously faded light. After what felt like an eternity Jakob emerged from the bush and we walked in Julian’s footsteps. He was standing by a patch of tall grass, confidently asserting that this ‘sea of grass’ could stretch all the way to the forest on the other side. I was skeptical and marched onward, and within 10 metres I spotted a tent nested between two grooves of trees. So much for a sea of grass. Giving our neighbours some space we set up our tents before grabbing out our torches to make dinner. Julian really struggled to get the three legged cooker to stand upright, this confused me as it was the sturdiest cooker you can imagine. Looking at what he was doing, I put forward the proposition that it might be helpful if he folded the legs out. You may be familiar with the concept of a blond moment. Tramping with Julian was like one, prolonged blond moment that never seemed to end. To this day I am still not sure if he was being sarcastic and messing with me or if he just… required special help. Anyway, after this blond moment I took over the cooker duties and we soon had water boiling up for couscous with feta and tons of cucumber. While we ate our resident neighbours came over for a chat, a father and a young son. They were relieved to hear their jetboat was still where they left it! Once our food was devoured it was unanimously announced that it was bedtime, so we hit the hay, ready for another big day the next day.


We started getting up around 7am. Porridge was set cooking as we got our sleeping areas packed up. Breakfast was duly inhaled and with porridge covered pots (courtesy of Julian’s cleaning effort) we set off. I was surprised to find the track continued further up the Beansburn, contrary to what was marked on the topomap, formed as part of a trapping line. Just into the bush from our campsite we encountered a rather friendly kea who was disgruntled at our interference in his wood gnawing business.

Leaving him alone, we trundled up the valley in the warm weather, sweat pouring out of us. The track crosses several slips and creeks as it winds its way up the valley. The plan for the day was to get up to the Fohn Saddle so I cracked the whip, much to the ire of my companions. I did have to relent on the odd occasion, for fear of mutiny. A few of these snack/breathing breaks later we came down to the Beansburn, which we continued to do a couple of times as the track cut around huge river boulders and up into the scrub. Eventually we found ourselves on the grassy plain, with a large pile of giant boulders perched far in the distance, this was to be our lunch stop. In the process of reaching this spot we had to climb through patches of dry creekbed and hop across the river but in time the rocks loomed large in front of me. I was rather confused as this was meant to be a rock bivvy but I couldn’t find the damned bivvy bit.

In my erratic exhausted state I stomped around like an angry toddler. Meanwhile Jakob sailed past and after a little river wade announced the entrance was around the corner. We collapsed here for lunch, or at least me and Jakob did whilst we waited for Julian. In his own sweet time Julian arrived and proudly announced he had dropped his ice axe in the creek and couldn’t reach it because it was ‘too dangerous’. I was already hot and bothered and this only escalated the situation to DEFCON 5. As Jakob put it “It is kind a dick move to lose your iceaxe right before we need it”. Anyway so I follow Julian in a miff to go retrieve the irretrievable ice axe whilst Jakob enjoyed the sun. I crouched by the creek, firmly gripping my ice axe while Julian held the other end splashing around in a knee deep pool. The axe was easily retrieved, and so it was back to the biv.

The hot day had us all buggered. Jakob made the good point that the snow was probably buggered. Given all that buggery, I decided to call it a day here. I also decided that Lake Nerine was probably out of the question giving the snow and delay in our schedule. This was welcome news to the other two, and soon we were all stretched out in the sun eating our well deserved lunch. The afternoon was spent like this, reading books, sleeping and eating. Even managed a quick dip. As the sun sank below the mountains Jakob and I retreated to the rock bivvy (I have since learnt it is actually called Split Rock Bivvy). Here we cleared away the animal shit from our desired sleeping area and settled down for the night. Except we didn’t as we had to battle sandflies for at least another hour, until they finally pissed off and let us sleep.


My alarm blared to life at 5:15am and I duly snoozed it till 5:20 till I finally roused from my slumber. Hitting my head multiple times on the roof of the bivvy I eventually had my stuff packed up and went down to wake up Julian. Light was just beginning to curl around the edges of the horizon as I got the water on the boil for our porridge. Ominously cloud began to roll over the Fohn Saddle and I worried that this would make the nav shit, I would just have to wait and see. We were out of there in good time, making our way up the TR of the river following a loosely trodden trapping line. Stumbling upon some cairns crossing a dry river bed further up we pondered whether this was a sign to start climbing. After a quick consultation with the map our suspicion was confirmed and so we began pulling ourselves up towards the Fohn Saddle, making maximum use of the tussock. The navigation was more or less straight forward, we just followed one spur onto another, crossing a creek before stopping short of the plateau at 1320m to have a well deserved breather.

Once on the plateau we met our first taste of snow, so crampons were put on and those ice axes finally came in handy. The climb up to saddle was a straightforward northbound plod, nevertheless it was a sweaty affair. We regrouped on the saddle, happy at the lack of low cloud, although dark black clouds loomed over the other side of the pass.

From the saddle we chose to continue the upward slog, following the ridge to the NW before dropping down a bit of a gut to Fohn Lake. Whilst Julian was happy to walk straight out onto the ice I was a little more cautious, following the edge around. According to the blog I had been reading we could follow a spur down beside the outlet, taking us safely onto the Olivine Ledge. The problem was this blog kept mentioning bloody cairned routes, but cairns are quite hard to follow if they are covered in snow. Opting not to cross the lake ice we gingerly crossed the outlet and climbed up onto the spur.

This spur took us to the ledge as planned, and we were greeted by a cairn and some loose tracks at the bottom. We followed these traipsing through some boggy sections, avoiding the deep canyon cut by the river before swinging around to the left and crossing to the TL. Before crossing we had our lunch, enjoying the sunshine that was peeping through the clouds, this was around 1:30pm. Crossing the river was not difficult, and the going across the ledge was easy enough. This being said, it is a miracle that no one rolled an ankle, as the tall grass hid many a hole. The ledge makes a gradual climb up to the 1200m countour, from there it wound its way through a boulder field. The route through was well cairned so we had little difficulty.

Our route then took us down to cross one of the branches of Fiery Creek, right above where it descended into a roaring canyon of foaming water. Our feet trod the well worn path up towards the Col, slowly but steadily. At the snowline we once again brought out the snow gear and made tracks upward. What had looked like a gentle climb from the bottom was causing a significant amount of sweat. I could see some evidence of past avalanches to our left, so I was in no mood to stop. The others enjoyed my steps but still struggled to keep up. At one point a Kea came down to investigate the strange visitors to its territory, before getting preoccupied by something tasty in the snow.

It was a real push to get to the top of the Col. However what ever dreams I had of a flat sanctuary were quickly shattered by strong winds, the discovery of a cornice and a rather steep drop down the other side. Bugger. I perched myself on a rock waiting for the others, holding on for dear life, not that I let the others know that.

We regrouped at the top and I told the others the news:

“I have some good news and some bad news, good news, this is the top! Bad news, there is a cornice and a LOT of snow on the other side.”

I was pretty keen to have a break from leading however this desire came up against an unforeseen problem. The others were practically snow-blind as they hadn’t brought sunglasses like I had. Even I was having serious trouble with my depth perception. We walked to the right side of the Col to cross the cornice, over some worrying cracks before hurriedly front pointing down the other side. It was here that Julian really proved his worth, he overtook me and with his long legs plowed a path down the slope which Jakob and I could follow.

Photos don’t really do justice to the steepness and snowiness of the slope. 100 metres down we stopped for a break and it became apparent the others were pretty zonked, feeling the pain, it was around 6pm. We went down the TL of the large gut which was obvious both in person and on the map. After leaving the majority of the snow behind and a little bit of rock climbing we picked up some cairns that took us all the way down to Cow Saddle. There was still a fair amount of light, but progress had really slowed with the others feeling the effects of the long day.

I tried my best to keep everyone motivated and together, with promises of a nice campsite and a hot meal. The blog that I had read had talked about Hidden Falls Creek running underground till the 750m contour or thereabouts. This was certainly not the case for us, with plenty of water filling the creekbed. We followed down the TR of the creek, climbing up and crossing a number of scree slopes before negotiating a rocky descent back to the creek. We pushed on in the failing light across some grassy flats to what I thought would be a nicer campground on the TR, on the creek between ‘Falls’ and ‘Creek’ on the map. However this turned out to be a hillside of shitty rock and scrub. We continued down the TR somewhat confused. Jakob was seriously buggered at this point, so I took a moment to reread the blog post and discovered they had camped 500m back up the hill on the grassy flats. It was about 8:30pm by this point and I realized the situation was less than ideal. I also realized it was my fault. The forecast was for rain overnight, so ideally I wanted to camp on the TL to avoid being stuck on the wrong side of the river. Everything I had read suggested that there was a well defined track down the TL through the bush, however we had seen no trace of it. After some indecision I chose that we should push on to the nice campground 1km further down. Going off the marked map I had on my phone we went back up to the scrubby creek before climbing into the bush. It was dark by this point so any navigation relied solely on torches and my phone GPS. This should ring warning bells for you and looking back it did for me, but my brain was foggy with tiredness. The buzzing adrenaline didn’t help either. Giving up on finding the track we cut through the bush roughly where it was marked on the map. What followed was a purely reckless determined bushbash through the dark. At points I would push through some scrub and be faced by a black void, a bank dropping down to god knows what. We all clung onto what ever we could get our hands on to get through these sections. I was about 50m every 10 minutes. I couldn’t let Jakob sit down as everytime he did his body almost capitulated. At one point he suggested we just bivvy on a the slope and continue in the light. I was not keen with the rain forecast and a campsite oh so close. My GPS jumped at one point scaring the shit out of me by putting us perilously close to an even more serious cliff. As a result I took a more diagonal tack down toward the river. We gave up all pretenses of civility as we slid down the hillside cutting ourselves to pieces on the greenery. And then, all at once, there was a swamp, and then, flat land. Thank FUCK. It was 11pm. My relief was overflowing. We found a nice grassy spot under the trees and set up our tents. Dinner was a weird combination of food that could loosely be described as mexican, but really was salsa mixed with beans and dehydrated peas with a bit of tortilla to accompany. We were in no mood to complain.


During the night the rain came and we were happy to be in our tents. Everyone had a bit of a sleep in, so we weren’t out of camp until 10ish in the morning. We laughed as we crossed a large grass clearing some 50m away with established camping spots. We rejoiced as we followed a well defined track down the river. What a change this was from the night before. It still took some care in the open sections to find the next cairn but overall it wasn’t hard to follow. The route was dotted with numerous little campsites, to add insult to injury. It didn’t take long before we were climbing steeply on our hands and feet up root ladders towards Park Pass. Our route (pun intended) took us up the ridge and we were feeling rooted (pun intended) by the time we broke out of the bushline. We were faced with a conundrum, cairns seemed to lead to our right, but according to where I thought we were we should go straight. We couldn’t debate for long as Jakob was frozen to the bone so we opted to cut through the bush to our right for a bit and see where it led us. Nowhere really as it turned out. Some of the cloud had cleared which presented us with a better view of the situation, or so we thought. Given that to our SW (straight) was a sharp incline we couldn’t see the pass, but to our S we could see another saddle, which we nearly mistook for Park Pass. Thankfully we choose to cut up to the ridge and from there the route became clear with cairns. Narrowly avoided another fuck up there. Soon we were descending down the otherside into the magnificent Rockburn Valley, framed by cascading waterfalls sourced from the Park Pass Glacier.

The rain was on and off by this point, but the ground was still soaked, making dropping into the valley a risky business. About a kilometre from the pass, just above where two streams meet is a substantial rock bivvy. Rather than soldier on I decided we could all do with a lunch stop. Sitting under the rock we watched the rain come down around us, accompanied by a friendly rock wren.

Julian really wanted to stay there in the dry but I pulled rank and forced him down the valley with the rest of us. Crossing the Rockburn took some care as there was plenty of water in it. In the end we crossed individually for mobility whilst using ice axes and poles for stability. There was a loosely cairned track across the grassland. One had to be careful not fall waist deep in clear blue pools and streams that ran across the grassy bog land. At one point Jakob went off to take a shit and we had the amusement of watching him fall multiple times into some such holes. At the end of the clearing we joined a trapping line and entered the bush. Despite the existence of a track, the going was still tough. There were plenty of obstacles to navigate and limbs were cold and weary. Julian was like a small child waiting for Christmas, asking if every clearing we entered was Theatre Flat. The track crossed multiple unbridged streams but most of these were easily negotiated despite the rain. The one exception was a creek that was running thigh high through one of the clearings. Crossing entailed linking together and carefully maneuvering the rocky creek bed whilst battling the frigid water.

Just before Theatre Flats we had to climb over a short but not unsubstantial saddle beneath pt 908. Then, after a sharp descent we were finally at Theatre flats. Halfway across Jakob spotted a large rock bivvy and we decided to make for it. It provided a semi-dry and sheltered camping spot so it was an obvious choice. Tents were erected and the Julian got stuck into his second favourite thing other than pissing me off, making fire. Soon we were all huddled around this fire trying to dry various articles of clothing in the vain hope of having something dry to put on tomorrow. The sandflies were certainly enjoying the company. Dinner was pasta and veges with a tomato sauce, we had to reject Julian’s idea of adding satay to the mix multiple times. After dinner everyone was pretty tired, so soon the fire was left to die down and we hit our pits.


The next day we rose at 7am with the motivation of getting out to the car and getting dry. We packed up camp, scoffed down our porridge and then set off down the Rockburn. The pace was surprisingly fast, I think it was Jakob digging into his last reserves of energy to get out to civilization. As he said “When your legs feel good, you just have to go for it”. Along our way down the river track we saw an entire spectrum of native bird life, from flocks of Kea, to kaka, robins, tui and even a Whio. We made surprisingly good time for the first 5km until the track started to climb towards Sugarloaf Pass. Things were looking up, motivation was high and the sun was almost thinking of shining (contrary to the last forecast I had seen). We stopped for a break under a rock a 100m into our vertical climb. I realized that I had been too efficient at rationing my chocolate. Given the packaging was disintegrating I decided to rectify the situation by eating a third of the block. This powered me up the hill and soon we were at the junction with the track down to the Rockburn Shelter. We left this behind and grinded our way up the hill. At one point we almost convinced Julian to cross what was probably a head deep swamp, turns our he must have something up there afterall. After the previous four passes, Sugarloaf was easily achieved with a bit of sweat.

On the saddle the sun was shining and we enjoyed a quick stop to rest the legs before carrying on. The descent seemed to go on forever. Everyone’s legs were hurting and I was seriously concerned for safety of one of my toenails. I demolished the rest of the block of chocolate when we stopped at Sugarloaf Stream. From there the descent becomes easier on the knees, with the gradient gradually lessening before the track spits you out onto the Routeburn highway. It was strange seeing other people beyond Jakob and Julian. People kept there distance, perhaps the combined effect of our stench and Jakob exclaiming things like “My legs don’t hurt, it is my balls that are burning!”.

I left the boys at the Routeburn shelter to slowly come to terms with the damage to their bodies whilst I continued down the road towards the Sylvan carpark. No one picked me up, so I walked the entire 5km back to my car. This wasn’t so bad, the sun was shining after all. The whole experience did leave me wondering, what would the circuit be like in the summer?

Sam Harrison

Written by

Tramper with something to say about tramps (of the walking variety).

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