Review: Sea-to-Summit Spark Ultralight Down Bag

 For this year's New Zealand trip, I decided that the 0 degree REI bag was much too warm for the inside of a New Zealand hut, even for Xiaoqin who sleeps cold. Bowen had long outgrown his sleeping bag, and refused to use Boen's sleeping bag ever since Boen peed in it in 2021.

I decided to buy the lightest sleeping bag that I could find, even if it wasn't the warmest, since the inside of a hut with large numbers of humans should keep things at a reasonable temperature. The lightest item that came up was the Sea to Summit Sleeping Bag.

To my surprise, this came in 2 versions. The regular men's and a special women's version that's warmer! The women's version is rated a full 5 degrees F warmer than the men's version, and it is correspondingly larger and heavier, but costs the same. Both pack down really nicely, small enough to fit in an Osprey Daylight Plus daypack (yes, daypack!). The rated weight is for the men's is 493g, and the women's is 584g.

The quality of both bags is good, as well as the loose stuff sack that comes with the bags. The bags are pricey (I got them on sale for $269.40 each) but are well worth the price. Recommended.

2024 New Zealand: December 28th - Manapouri Hut to Queenstown

We woke up at the late hour of 7am, ate a leisurely breakfast, got rid of all our food, and then stuffed the now much fuller garbage bag into my backpack last after packing everything up. I noticed that the electric toothbrush that Boen and I had been using is down to its last bar, which was no problem since we were going to be done hiking today.

We walked down to the lake for one last goodbye and then headed onto the trail. Bowen was determined to get to Rainbow Reach by 10:00am, but I calculated that we’d be there by 9:00am. My secret plan to avoid paying the bus fare was that we’d get to the parking lot, and I’d hike out to the main road and hitch-hike to town to pick up the car and then drive it back to pick up the rest of the family, saving NZ$80 in fees.

The hike along the lake was short and we quickly ran out of sight of the lake, which was a pity. But there was a short side-trip to see the swamp, which we dutifully took, and then the forest resumed its somewhat monotonous character. Knowing that it was only an hour and a half, the kids were motivated to move quickly. We soon got into view of the river, and after that found the divergence between the control gates path and the walk to rainbow reach. Nobody volunteered to walk all the way back to Te Anau, even though it was only another 3.5 hours away.

Crossing that last suspension bridge across the river, we reached the bus stop just as a ranger was there clearing out the toilet. “The bus will be here at 10:00am but if you’re in a hurry you can just hike to the road, 20 minutes that way.” I put down the pack and said goodbye to the rest of the family, meaning to beat the ranger’s time since I didn’t have a pack!

While not having a pack made things light, the gravel road was a pain to walk on, with the rocks on it slipping every time you took a step. It didn’t take me 15 minutes to get to the main road. However, traffic was light, and no cars came for about 10 minutes in the direction I was going. The first car was an RV, which didn’t even slow down, but you don’t expect vacationers to pick up hitchhikers. The second was a small car, which dutifully stopped, and it turned out to be the husband of a park ranger who was stationed on the Milford track. “I make it a point to pick up every hitchhiker I see at Rainbow Reach.”

He not only drove me to Te Anau, but he also dropped me off within 100m of our rental car, which was exactly where I parked it. The car started up with no problems and I drove back to Rainbow Reach, where I’d arrived before the bus. One of the other hikers we’d met asked if he could hitch a ride with us, and I pointed out sadly that I’d rented the smallest possible car and it was full. (I suppose I could have strapped him to the roof)

In any case, the shuttle bus passed us driving the other way as we left the Rainbow Reach parking lot, so he saved a lot of time by not hitching a ride with us. We drove to Manapouri, for a view of the lake from the other side from the hut and then drove back to Te Anau to Miles’ Better Pies again for lunch, buying drinks from the supermarket across the street. When I went to the public bathroom, I noted that they offered showers for people who’d come off the Kepler track (for a fee of course)!

Before driving back to Queenstown, we paid a visit to the Te Anau Lions Lookout Point, with gorgeous views across Te Anau Lake. It was surrounded by sheep farms and was well worth a stop. It also looked like RVs had camped out there overnight as well. I made the drive back to Queenstown slowly, this time, stopping at every viewpoint at Lake Wakatipu. We also stopped for gas before driving into Sherwood Queenstown hotel. I didn’t even remember why we picked the hotel, except that we’d gotten notice that the hotel now had new management and to reconfirm our booking. To our dismay, our rooms weren’t ready when we arrived, so we had to find something else to do.

A look at the internet showed that KiwiPark Queenstown had Kiwis, and so we drove there for a visit. I expected very little from the park, but it turned out to be small but quite well-done, and educational for me! For instance, I’d always thought that I’d seen Kiwis in the wild on my last visit to New Zealand. However, the Kiwi exhibit and the lecturer taught me that what I’d see were Buff Weka, a different species that wasn’t nocturnal. Given that Kiwis were Nocturnal, I wasn’t like to be able to see one!

With that visit over, we went back to the hotel and got ourselves checked in, making reservations for dinner as well. The hotel room was small, and didn’t have AC, so I had to go back and beg for a fan. I noticed other guests asking for milk, and upon inquiry discovered that the hotel had a “unlimited free milk policy.” Not being a dummy, I asked for both oat milk and regular milk for the rest of the trip. I bought tokens for the laundry machines, and we got a load started. I also asked for 2 fans. One of them was delivered right away, but the other would take a while as they had to dig them out of storage. The hotel staff looked at me strangely. “Why do you want fans?” “It’ll be too hot to sleep!” “It’s always cold in New Zealand!” “I’m from Singapore. I’ve got enough heat to last a lifetime.” They stopped arguing and gave me the fans.

The food at Sherwood Queenstown was outstanding. We ordered 4 dishes to share and each of them were well done. I finally remembered why I’d made reservations. It turned out that this hotel was famous for its food, and even non-guests would eat here! In fact, it was so busy that getting reservations for dinner was hard even for guests! We would not bother eating anywhere else for dinner for our 3 nights there. Bowen wanted to explore every part of the menu, and we ate pretty well for our entire stay. The food was cheap too, considering the exchange rates and made up for the less-than-ideal rooms. The staff also told me that if you booked the hotel directly from the hotel website, you would get 20% of the price of your stay credited against any dining costs! “Don’t book on booking.com, book from us directly!” chanted the staff.

Occasionally when trying to get service (e.g., more laundry tokens) I’d run into other guests, and we’d all complain about how hard it was to get service. But looking back on the experience, the housekeeping and everything was actually pretty good, and the prices for laundry, etc were reasonable. The hotel even supplied all the detergent you needed. So, it was a pretty decent place to stay. To make things even better, it started raining that night and that cooled things enough that the fans were sufficient to let us sleep well.

Review: Digital Minimalism

 Digital Minimalism was on sale for $2, so I picked it up since even when Cal Newport is being pedantic and paternalistic, he still occasionally has a few good ideas I can use and find interesting.

This book is about detaching yourself from addictive social media use and behaviors. I'm sure by now you're familiar with the claims:

Young people born between 1995 and 2012, a group Twenge calls “iGen,” exhibited remarkable differences as compared to the Millennials that preceded them. One of the biggest and most troubling changes was iGen’s psychological health. “Rates of teen depression and suicide have skyrocketed,” Twenge writes, with much of this seemingly due to a massive increase in anxiety disorders. “It’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental-health crisis in decades.” What instigated these changes? Twenge agrees with the intuition of the university mental health administrator when she notes that these shifts in mental health correspond “exactly” to the moment when American smartphone ownership became ubiquitous. The defining trait of iGen, she explains, is that they grew up with iPhones and social media, and don’t remember a time before constant access to the internet. They’re paying a price for this distinction with their mental health. “Much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones,” Twenge concludes. (kindle loc 1297)

To some extent I've always been skeptical of these claims. For instance, I'll give Bowen a hard time about being addicted to video games. But when we started on the 4 day Kepler Track hike and I told both him and his brother that (1) no internet (2) no possibility of recharge, without reminding or angst they put their phones on airplane mode and didn't use the phones for anything other than photos or to look up maps, etc. They returned back to the car with their phones well above 60%! By contrast, I remember various adults returning from camping trips with social media posts to the tune of "I never want to be without internet again." To my mind, kids are far more adaptable and less addicted to digital devices than their parents are.

Nevertheless, if you find yourself in the midst of anxiety or poor mental state because of your addiction to social media or doomscrolling, Newport suggests the following procedure:

1.  Do without all your social media apps. Delete them. That doesn't mean you have to close your accounts. Just set it up so that you have to use the web-browser. That added bit of inconvenience mean you'll find yourself using it less.
2. Put your phone on do not disturb mode. Tell people to call you if they need you urgently.
3. Change your habits so you do your social media work mindfully (e.g., scheduling time to actively do it so it doesn't become your default behavior)
4. Adopt active leisure habits. Pick a hobby. Do more bike riding (this is not in the book --- Newport touts CrossFit and advocates for long walks) Join a club. Read more books. Meet people face to face. These activities are so engaging you'll wonder why you ever thought social media was a good substitute for real life.
5. Set up office hours. Advertise them. Tell your friends and family that they should feel free to call you during those times. When people text you, reply to them and tell them that you'd love to do a phone call at that specific time.

These hacks are worth considering, though again, I somehow think that the big ballyhoo over digital addiction is just not as big a deal as the press loves to make it. Even Newport admits that the symptoms of digital withdrawal are nowhere close to being as severe that of alcohol, nicotine, or even caffeine. My suspicion is that kids that exhibit addiction probably are living in a condition of stress or lack of control over their lives. It's much more an indictment of American society than that of technology and the social media apps they enable. I myself have bounced off twitter, bluesky, and instagram, only being forced to use them by various schools and other organizations rather than voluntarily spend time on such mediums.

New Zealand 2024: December 27th - Iris Burn Hut to Manapouri Hut

We woke up late enough that several other parties had already left the hut and gotten going. One exception was a party that had an injured hiker from the day before. We would learn later that they had to leave him at the hut for a helicopter evacuation. We ate our breakfast, packed, and started walking on the forest path. While not completely flat, day 3 was supposed to be much easier, and we got going at a good clip.

We met up again with Udi, and had a nice chat with him. He told us about the injured hiker from the day before, and told us he was on a 6 week trip in New Zealand with a rented RV. He’d not managed to get the Milford Track or the Routeburn track, but told us about another Great Walk which allowed mountain bikes, enabling him to do the track in 2 days. Given how easy today’s walk was, he’d decided to hike all the way to his RV today and skip the last hut.

While walking with Udi, we saw an injured goose. It had an injured wing. We wondered if it would survive through the next winter, but it was clearly ground bound and quite distressed that we were apparently chasing it down the trail. It eventually got off the trail, and we walked past it after taking a few photos.

A runner came past us, and as he passed us, he looked like he wanted to talk to me, and then said: “Are you Piaw?” “Yes, but I don’t remember you!” “It’s Nick Su, from Aurora! I’m on my honeymoon!” It turned out that he had planned to do the Kepler Track with his wife, but she got pregnant, and so he had to scrap the 4 day hike and run the entire track in a single day (he did it in less than 8 hours!) instead. If we’d had any pretensions at being strong tough hikers, Nick definitely put an end to that!

We eventually made it to Lake Manapouri, after which it was only a short walk to the hut. In fact, we arrived at the hut at 3:00pm, which was plenty of time to keep going to Rainbow Reach, but the hut looked gorgeous and there was a breeze which would keep away sandflies. The water looked inviting, and Xiaoqin declared that she had had enough hiking for the day, and so we stopped. Udi wrote his name down on the huts list of people who’d had a reservation but elected to walk on.

We once again ended up upper bunks, parked our gear, got changed, and went for a swim. While at first the water felt cold, once you got immersed in the water it was quite peasant and I swam for a good 10 minutes, much more than I’m capable of staying in the water in any Sierra lake. The views were beautiful. The boys were willing to play in the water, but we could not persuade them to swim.

Once we were done swimming, we hung up our laundry, and made dinner. People were arriving in earnest, and we finished dinner just in time to hear the hut warden talk. The hut’s tap water had a strange brownish orange color, and the ranger explained that it was caused by leaves dropping into the water source. As with the other huts on the Kepler, she said she drank the water from the tap without any treatment and had no adverse consequences, but also said: “If I get a bit sick, it’s no big deal. But if you’ve only got another week in New Zealand being sick would kinda ruin it.” Using the water filter got rid of the strange color in the water so we just did it anyway.

After the talk, the colors around the lake looked gorgeous, so we went down to the water for photos, but the wind had died down and the sandflies were out in earnest. We snapped a couple of selfies and retreated back to the hut for some quiet time before bed. I noticed that my CPAP battery was down to one light, and was unlikely to last the night. Fortunately, everyone else in the bunk room were either confident of their ability to sleep through it or already had their own ear plugs, so my efforts to give everyone ear plugs were rebuffed. I used up the rest of my small powerbank charging my phone up, and went to sleep. I’d awake at 1:00am with the dead CPAP, but all in all decided that it was a reasonable trade-off to avoid carrying another pound of weight.

2024 New Zealand: December 26th - Luxmore Hut to Iris Burn Hut

 I woke up in the morning discovering that I’d slept 10 hours! I guess the jet lag had finally caught up with me! By all accounts the second day on the Kepler track is the most beautiful, and hence the most desirous of good weather. The kids got up as well, and we ate our breakfast quickly before packing up and departing around 8:00am. To my relief when we stepped outside, the sun had came out and the Luxmore hut looked gorgeous bathed in the morning sun. 

We took several pictures, started our GPS units, and stared hiking up to Mt. Luxmore. We went up to a ridge and around a lake and to our dismay, discovered a layer of fog rolling in. We pressed on, having no choice, hoping for better weather at the summit. At the turnoff for the summit, Boen chose to eat his freeze-dried ice cream sandwich, so we waited for him, there being no point hurrying to get to the top in the fog. 

Once Boen was done we hiked up the summit with our backpacks, having been warned by the ranger the night before that to abandon your packs meant that the Kea would unzip any zippers and get at your food. (Those birds have the intelligence of a 4 year old, which is sufficient to know how to use zippers) We met Udi, a traveler from Israel, and arrived with him at the top in the fog. Within 3 minutes the weather cleared up and we had brief, momentary glimpses of the surrounding countryside, though not of far off peaks. We rapidly took pictures before descending. For the rest of the day, the clouds and fog would play peek-a-boo with us, usually giving us a square frame with which to view Te Anau Lake, but occasionally granting us other views. Boen discovered that his Fenix 5X had slipped off his wrist. We looked around but realized that he’d probably dropped it much earlier in the day. “Maybe some other hiker will find it. We can ask at the next hut,” said Udi. 

We walked the ridge in wonder, enjoying the scenery as it came, and taking pictures frequently, knowing that this was the most spectacular day and it was ok for us to run out of battery for the other days. 

At the Forest Burn shelter, we stopped for lunch. There, another hiker came up to us and told us that he’d heard from Udi that we’d lost a GPS watch! “Now I don’t have to carry it all the way to the hut,” he said. Boen tied it to the hiking stick so he wouldn’t lose it in the future. In exchange, we gave him a couple of slices of cheese. The story told of the Forest Burn Shelter was that the toilet door had blown off in a storm. “Now that we have a national party government there’s no chance it’ll be fixed any time soon.” He continued to tell us that as a result, this was a toilet with a fantastic panoramic view, but in exchange, you had to ensure that there was a heavy rock on the toilet lid. “Without the rock,” he elaborated, “there’s a pair of Keas that have learned to enjoy the leftover corn and other indigestible in the stools of various hikers. That’s kinda disgusting by itself, but if the bird gets in and the lid falls over it, the bird has no way to get out! Then the next time some poor hiker tries to use the toilet the Kea will fly out and flap his wings and he or she will get some pretty disgusting stuff all over her. So do everyone a favor and keep the rock on the toilet lid when you’re done!” With that kind of setup, Bowen and Boen were enthusiastic about checking out the toilet and the famous rock on it. 

Past Forest Burn shelter, the walk took you up and down various ridges, all with beautiful views of Te Anau lake (which we saw) and surrounding mountains (which we only occasionally glimpsed). The day was beautiful and we were in no hurry. Once we got to the Hanging Valley Shelter, it was deeply overcast and we started to walk down a series of steps before the corner which would lead back down into the treeline. From there, we could see Lake Manapouri. 

The ranger had warned us the night before that this last descent to the Iris Burn hut takes longer than you would expect. And indeed it did. By the time we got there, my GPS had registered 10.88 miles. We were amongst the last folks to show up at the hut, so ended up having to sleep in the top bunk of the smallest bunkhouse. We made dinner and ate it, but decided to skip the hut briefing for a chance to swim at the Iris Burn waterfall, which was a 20 minute walk from the hut. 

We arrived at the waterfall—not having a pack made the walk much easier compared to the rest of the day, but it was quite full of sandflies. I got into the water, but it was so cold I immediately got back out. Neither of the kids wanted to bother. I guess it’s a bit of a waste of time. We were exhausted, and pretty much went to bed right after returning to the hut and asking the ranger what we’d missed. She told us it was mostly a safety briefing, and that the latest shuttle from the exit tomorrow if we decided we wanted to just finish the hike instead of staying at the last hut was at 4:30pm. I charged Boen’s watch with my battery bank and went to sleep. 

Review: Keep Sharp

 My wife checked out Keep Sharp from the library and it showed up on my Kindle, so I ended up reading it as a palate cleanser.  I remember being impressed with Sanjay Gupta from World War C, so I kept reading despite already knowing many of the topics he discussed from other books. My biggest problem with the book is that it spends a good 20% of the time telling you what he's going to talk about instead of just telling you what he wants to say.

Anyway, there aren't any magic tricks to improved brain health:

• Exercise, especially aerobic exercise
• Good diet (lots of fruits and vegetables, less red meat, and no highly processed foods)
• Sleep well.
• Having a good social life (the best job is that of a concert conductor where you get to lord it over everyone else and everyone has to pay attention to anything you say, my guess is that being a brain surgeon is the next best thing)

At the very least from the above you can tell that Sanjay Gupta isn't a crackpot and isn't selling fancy supplements (in fact, he cautions against them). There's a 10 week program to get people who aren't already exercising and eating well to do so, and there's a section on how Alzheimers might one day be cured, but you need to get diagnosed early if you want a chance to prevent the disease while there's time to do so. (Or, maybe you want to just live healthily anyway)

I enjoyed the book. I did question how someone with 2 jobs and 3 kids manages to get in his hour of exercise every day plus some time to meditate, but hey, it's quite likely he's a much more organized person than I am!

2024 New Zealand: December 25th - Te Anau to Luxmore Hut

 We got up early and by putting my carryon in the big luggage we managed to get everything into the car after breakfast. We drove out to the parking spot we planned to leave the car by the Kepler water taxi (scouted out the previous day), and walked over to  the Kepler water taxi where the staff member appeared to be fueling up the boat. A light drizzle started from the cloudy skies above us, making us feel as though the rain forecasted for 1:00pm was going to hit us early.

We were the only folks who were booked for the water taxi. However, since the taxi was willing to take walkups, we still could not leave before the designated time of 9:30am. The ride, such as it was, only took 15 minutes, but it being the day with the heaviest backpack I was sure it was the correct choice.

The water taxi dropped us off at the beach with no formal pier, slip, or dock, with the driver basically beaching the bow of the boat and then deploying a step-ladder to enable us to get off. We jumped off the beach and after the water-taxi told us how to join the Kepler track, she picked up a couple of passengers who were waiting for her and then left.

From Brod Bay, where the taxi dropped us off the Kepler track immediately starts climbing. It’s not a challenging climb by any means, but with a pack, the very same folks who talked about how light their backpack was the night before started complaining about weight. Everyone got warm enough that we got out of our rain gear and put it away, trusting the tree cover to protect us from all but the occasional raindrops.  Bowen kept asking to check the map about where we were, but at the Limestone Bridge he dropped the map into the crevasse, resolving the need to ever ask me how far it was to the Luxmore Hut from then on.

Once we cleared out of the treeline we found that the earlier clouds had dissipated and we started getting some sunshine!  The views were great, letting us see to the limits of Te Anau lake, with enough low cloud to make everything look mysterious. We walked along the track and a Kea came by looking for food. It was clearly inured to people, though when we finally started to shoot a video of it it flew away.

Arriving at the hut, we were amongst the first to arrive, and we discovered that checking in was failry straightforward --- there was a paper form where you would write down your name, your reservation number, and which bed # you’d chosen, and the ranger would mark attendance (like in grade school) and potentially send out search parties for folks who didn’t arrive like they should. Since we were first, we had a great choice of beds and got picked the smaller bunk room.

We had already eaten lunch on the road, but we made a hot drink and then decided to go explore the caves. I dug out the headlamps but for some dumb reason couldn’t find the flashlight, which later resurfaced. We took the 15 minute walk to the cave, found the entrance stairwell, and walked in. It was indeed very dark, but what kept us from going deeper wasn’t the darkness or the limitation of Xiaoqin and my phone’s flashlight function, but that the ceiling got low enough that we’d have to start crawling and getting our shirts dirty. Even the kids couldn’t get past that last low ceiling so we turned around and walked back out.

With that, we spent the rest of the day playing Hearts and other card games until dinner time. People kept arriving through all that time, and the cooking and the stoves created so much humidity that the windows got fogged up. The clouds were getting denser, however, so it wasn’t as though there was a lot to see.

At 6:30pm the hut ranger gave his talk, with a very nice weather forecast. “It’ll be cloudy but when you can see the visibility will be quite good. And actually, it’s much nicer to hike in the clouds --- you do not want full sun as it will be quite hot without any kind of tree cover between here and Iris Burn hut.” It was a very generous hut ranger, telling us not to clean up tomorrow, as he would do the cleaning, and also that the tap had perfect drinking water and you didn’t really need to treat it before drinking. (We did it anyway, and both the other huts on the Kepler track also had their hut wardens declare that they drank from the tap all the time with no health issues)

After that, we got the kids to brush their teeth. It looked like the forecasted rain was finally going to arrive, so we hustled to bed and went to sleep before anyone else in our room could start snoring.

Review: The Chaos Balance

 The Chaos Balance is the 7th book in the Recluce series, and a direct sequel to Fall of Angels, which I loved. The main character is the same, Nylan, who is forced out of Westwind by the behavior of the Marshal, his former lover. This is honestly the worst and least characteristic part of the book. We're supposed to believe that the "win at all costs" leader of Westwind would be willing to let her only combat engineer and builder leave with his new beloved without a fight or a promise to change her own behavior.

The rest of the book is mostly exposition about the new (to us) empire of Cyador and their desire to take over copper minds. As usual, the leader of this new empire is an idiot, and despite another looming threat, decides to send most of his army to fight a much weaker enemy, which draws Nylan into the fight.

We discover that Nylan and his consort become the founders of the druids. The magic isn't well explained, and I guess I'm still disappointed that the Recluce magic isn't revealed to be some sort of science. It is still interesting to see Nylan view his new adopted planet with some technical terms which aren't explained.

Definitely not as good as Fall of Angels. There's scant engineering involved, and too much magic, which probably is an unfair criticism of a fantasy series.

2024 New Zealand: December 24th - Twizel to Te Anau

 We woke up to dry weather and clear skies, and to my relief most of the laundry we’d hung up to dry had dried overnight.  Leaving Twizel, we started on a long drive towards Queenstown, passing through landscape that was beautiful and new but familiar at the same time since we’d seen snippets of it from various Peter Jackson movies. I realized that this was the first time I’d seen most of this as my 2000 trip on the Flying Kiwi bus went a different route.

In Queenstown, we stopped at the supermarket to buy a picnic lunch and headed on the Glenorchy road to Bob’s Cove for a picnic. We were running out of time so I made the call to just park at a playground for lunch. The playground had a parallel zipline so the two kids could have a zipline race after lunch.

From Queenstown to Te Anau was another 2 hour drive, the first of which was along the twisty road that fronted Lake Wakatipu. We stopped at Athos for a bathroom break and then drove all the way to the DOC office in Te Anau where we parked and got a ranger briefing. I’d read that you had to get tickets for the various DOC huts from a ranger, but that turned out to be false for the great walks. On those, your names were already provided to the hut rangers, and all you needed was your control/reservation number. The check-in system was there to ensure that you got a briefing from the ranger before departure. The ranger answered questions about the weather, the hut system, as well as giving us a weather forecast and the water taxi that would have about 4 miles of flat hiking along the lake from the control gates. We were also told that we could park anywhere in town as long as there wasn’t a sign indicating limited parking.

We drove to our motel and checked in. I booked the water taxi for 9:00am tomorrow based on the weather forecast stating that it would rain at 1:00pm. We then walked to Miles’ Better Pies for a lunch and bought lunches for 3 days at the supermarket for the backpacking trip.

Back at the motel, we repacked everything we needed for the Kepler track’s 3 nights into the backpacks we had in the big luggage. We had a sleeping bag each, freeze dried dinners, oatmeal for breakfast for the kids and granola for the adults, and then various deli meats for lunch as well as a loaf of bread. Of course, Boen’s precious freeze-dried ice-cream sandwiches were not forgotten. I debated whether to bring one or two CPAP batteries, and decided to just bring one, with a smaller battery to recharge the phone. We had 2 headlamps and 1 flashlight for the cave exploration on the first day, a partial roll of toilet paper (which it turned out we didn’t need), a water filter, a pot, and water bottles. We had 2 hiking sticks. Everyone commented that their backpack felt light, which made me feel relief. That’s why we spent money on the lightest possible equipment I could find. My Crown X60 backpack was 2 pounds empty, my wife’s Salomon 28+5 was even lighter, and Bowen would use my Deuter Speedlite came in at 1.5 pounds. Boen would use the Osprey Daylite backpack. We also had clothing and rain gear, as well as insect repellent. We packed sunscreen as well as toothbrushes, toothpaste and floss. Since the Kepler was pack-in/pack-out with no garbage service we also packed extra garbage bags, both to serve as rain covers if needed and to carry our garbage out. I made sure that we didn’t buy canned food or anything packaging which would have been onerous to carry. I had my portable CPAP machine as well, of course. We would fully charge all our phones and hope the charge would last the 4 days we would take to do the trip.

I decided at the last minute that we should bring a pack of cards so we’d have something to do indoors if it rained a lot. I walked over to the supermarket and bought a pack for $5. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t bother as the huts were well equipped with board games and cards.

2024 New Zealand: Sealy Tarn and Tasman Glacier Viewpoint

It didn’t rain very much but it was windy by the time we got up. The last time I was in Mt Cook National Park, I’d hike to Red Tarn Lakes in the limited time I had. It was rainy then and there were no views to be had. This time, we decided to try the Mueller Hut route, which was challenging, but being an out-and-back, meant that we could say, hike as far as the Sealy Tarns and then turn around if it was difficult. We would discover that most hikes in New Zealand seemed to be the “out and back” variety, rather than being loops.

Despite our starting early, the day warmed up pretty quickly. By the time we had gotten up 300 meters in elevation Bowen had used up most of his water. The views were fantastic, though, and we got a good look at the Mueller Lake, and later as we gained more elevation, Hooker Lake which we had hiked to the day before. We also got a great view of the Tasman River valley once we got out of the treeline, though once we were out of the trees the day warmed up even faster!

The steps cut into the trail were quite good, but by the time we got to the Sealy Tarns the kids were tired and refused to go any further. We made a deal with them, which was that we would turn around but they were obliged to visit Kea Point (a 15 minute sidetrip from the Mueller Hut trail), and after lunch we would visit the Tasman Glacier Overlook (also promised to be a short hike).

With that, we hiked back down and visited Kea Point, which overlooked the Mueller Lake. The day was beautiful, but when we tried to find a place to eat we discovered that the only place available was the Hermitage Hotel’s Café. Parking around the hotel was horrendous, so I let everyone off and parked the car separately in a parking lot that was much less obvious and didn’t take too much time to walk. Upon entering the hotel’s café, I noted that the Hermitage was a full service hotel, running not just dining and lodging, but also guided walks, night sky viewings, and many other services. No wonder it was so expensive and popular—it wasn’t even available for the nights we were in the area.

After lunch, we walked back to the car but I noticed that the DOC office was right there in the parking lot. I walked in and asked if we could check-in at the Queenstown DOC for the Kepler hike. The answer required them calling the Te Anau DOC office for an answer and it turned out that we had to go all the way to Te Anau to checkin, and but if we were running late we could make a phone call before the office closed. They noted that the office was closed on Christmas day so we had to check in the day before.

We drove to the Tasman Glacier View trailhead. As anticipated it was a short walk but it was quite windy though given how warm it was we were very comfortable. On the way up to the viewpoint, we spotted the Hermitage bus running a glacier tour by boat. There were also other services running helicopter or airplane sight-seeing tours, but we decided not to do any of those.

Just before we got to the viewpoint, we looked down and saw the Blue Lakes, which were now brown. An explanatory sign said that once upon the time, those lakes had been blue with glacier melt runoff, but the glacier had retreated so much now that the lakes were no longer glacier fed, and were now rain-fed, leading to algae bloom that now gave the lakes their brown color. Indeed, at the Tasman Glacier viewpoint we got a good look at how far the glacier had retreated over the years.

Sobered by this we returned to the car and drove back to Twizel where we filled up the gas tank and then had an early dinner at another Indian restaurant. We wouldn’t eat at another Indian restaurant for the rest of the trip—Indian restaurants in New Zealand appeared to be like Chinese restaurants in the USA—cheap quick fare but conforming to an expected taste that meant that you were getting a relatively bland experience.

After dinner, we went back to the Lodge to hang up our laundry, after which I saw a note on the table about not missing out and visiting Lake Ruataniwha. The rain stopped for a bit and we drove back out to see it. We visited the lake but it was a bit disappointing but on the way out we saw crepuscular beams in the area and shot a few photos.

We slept well that night, knowing that we had a long drive the next day to Te Anau.

2024-2025 Fiji and New Zealand Index Page

 For the winter break in 2024-2025 we decided to get a second summer by visiting Fiji and New Zealand. We got in many days of hiking (tramping in New Zealand lingo), an overnight cruise in Milford Sound, and an overnight layover in Fiji for some tropical sun. This is the day by day trip report and collection of links to various equipment reviews.

• Photo Album

Trip Report

• December 18-20: Prologue (Fiji)
• December 21: Nadi to Christchurch to Geraldine
• December 22: Geraldine to Twizel
• December 23: Sealy Tarn
• December 24: Twizel to Te Anau
• December 25: Te Anau to Luxmore Hut
• December 26: Luxmore Hut to Iris Burn Hut
• December 27: Iris Burn Hut to Montarau Hut
• December 28: Montarau Hut to Queenstown
• December 29: Glenorchy/Routeburn
• December 30: Ben Lomond
• December 31st: Queenstown to Milford Sound
• January 1: Milford Sound to Wanaka
• January 2: Rocky Point Loop
• January 3: Wanaka to Hokitika
• January 4: Hokitika to Christchurch
• January 5: Epilogue: Christchurch to Auckland to Nadi to SFO

Equipment Reviews:

• Osprey Daylite Daypack
• Sea-to-Summit Spark Ultralight Down Bag
• Covacure Collapsible Hiking Poles
• Hydrapak Flux Collapsible Water Bottles
• Platypus Quickdraw Filter
• EOS EF-M 55-200 lens
• GTYOPR Collapsible Cups & Bowls
• Navaris Long Handle Ti Spork

New Zealand 2024: December 22nd - Geraldine to Twizel

We woke up early enough to have a decent breakfast before driving off to the supermarket for some last minute purchases before we drove to our next place to stay. Our first interim stop was Lake Tekapo, featuring Mount Cook in the background.  There was a famous church there as well, which is the centerpiece of many a landscape photographer in winter seasons, but it was so crowded with tourists that we couldn’t get a photo in without having people in the background.

We attempted to visit Mt John Observatory, another recommended landmark in the area, but were turned away at the gate by an employee telling us that the place was full and would remain full for 2 hours before they took on more visitors. That was more time than we wanted to spend, so we drove on to Lake Pukaki, the gateway to Mount Cook National Park. We ate lunch at a picnic area next to the visitor center. The visitor center sold farmed sashimi from Salmon in nearby Salmon farms, but we ate the food we bought earlier from the supermarket. We diverted to our lodging for the night in Twizel and dropped off our luggage and started a load of laundry. It turned out that our hosts were unhappy with us because we weren’t supposed to check in or leave luggage there until after 3:00pm. Of course, with our only partly functional network in New Zealand (T-mobile in New Zealand definitely granted us the best wilderness experience), we wouldn’t know about it until we came back. Fortunately our hosts worked around our inability to follow instructions and by the time we got back the house was clean and ready for us.

We drove into Mount Cook National Park and parked at the White Horse Hill parking lot to start the Hooker Valley Track, an easy walk to views of glaciers at the end of the track and a lake where you could actually touch the glacier. Parking was quite difficult to find but fortunately I had a tiny rental car that fit in any parking spot.

The hike itself was gorgeous, though crowded with tourists. The swinging bridges (a feature of many New Zealand hikes but hardly ever seen in the USA) were a novelty to the kids and they loved it. There were bathrooms as well as picnic areas along the hikes as well as many places to stop, but those were necessary as even if you were a man the hike was so crowded that it was hard to find a place to pee if you didn’t use an official toilet!

There was a flyer we were using to figure out what to do, and it mentioned a hike named “Bowen Bush Walk.” After we were done with Hooker Valley, we had to visit the Bowen Bush Walk so that Bowen could walk it. Bowen being a teenager resisted this, but we finally talked him into doing it and even had a few pictures to prove it. It was only a 10 minute walk, so it was no big deal.

Returning to the town of Twizel we visited the supermarket and Xiaoqin had the great idea to buy pre-marinated steak and salad. We figured out how to use the antique oven in the house and paired with the cast iron frying pan made the steaks and they turned out to be delicious. We ran a second load of laundry and then went to sleep hoping for another great day of hiking.

Review: Fall of Angels

 Fall of Angels might very well be my favorite book of the Recluce series so far. The explanation lies in a quote from the protagonist 63% through the book:

If this were a novel or trideo thrillers, the editors would cut out all the partts about building. That's boring. You know, heroes are supposed to slay the enemy, but no one has to worry about shelter or heat or coins or stables or whether the roads need to be paved or whether you need bridges or culverts to keep them from being impassible. Bathhouses are supposed to build themselves, didn't you know? Ryba orders sanitation, and it just happens.No matter that the snow is deep enough to sink a horse without a sign. No matter that most guards would rather stink than use cold water. No matter that poor sanitation kills more people in low-tech cultures than battles. (kindle loc 6019)

In other words, L.E. Modesitt wrote a fantasy novel where the protagonist hero is an engineer! He worries about all the mundane stuff, and builds sawmills, better weapons, etc. Of course, this being a fantasy universe, he's a wizard and fantastic combat engineer. It's also kinda strange that no one else in his group of stranded spacers show an interest or contribute to the engineering of the built environment that everybody's lives depend on.

The plot of the story is that the Angels are a faction in a space battle with Demons, and due to a mishap during a battle they get shunted into the Recluce universe. Landing on the planet they establish a settlement on a high plateau (which becomes Westwind in the earlier Recluce novels). The commander of the ship, Ryba immediately grasps the situation and realizes that they're going to be repeatedly attacked by the locals which do not want to cope with a settlement run by women for women in a male dominant culture.

This is a very explicitly feminist book, but since the protagonist is male, we get his view of the situation as well. I enjoyed the bootstrapping of technology, as well as Modesitt's run through of what happens in a heavily male dominated culture when an outlet is provided for women to escape to. It's well done and worth reading.

2024 New Zealand: December 21st - Nadi to Christchurch to Geraldine

We got up at 4:45am for a 5:00am for the 8:00am flight for Christchurch, but while waiting for the the pickup I checked my phone and there was a message at 5:00am telling us that the flight was delayed. We opted to go to the airport early anyway, which turned out to be a good thing. When we attempted to check in, we were told that you now needed to apply for a visa to enter New Zealand, even if you were a US citizen! I later found out that this was a new requirement that was only implemented in 2019. A quick search on the internet took me to what quickly became identified as a scam site purporting to offer you an application package. The official New Zealand NZeTA website revealed that the easiest way to apply was via a downloaded Android app. We downloaded the app, went through the application process (including a fee), and then waited. Within 10 minutes Bowen and Boen were approved, but Xiaoqin and my application still read as “Pending.”

A search on the internet revealed several reddit authors stating that

as long as you had an application in “Pending” state the airline should let you board. So we went back to the check-in counter and sure enough, once they saw our application as pending they let us through. Our relief was palpable. Indeed, nobody ever asked to see our NZeTA application ever again, and we got our notification that we were approved 3 days after arriving in New Zealand. Clearly my previous trip in 2000 shouldn’t have led me to be overconfident to the point where I’d neglected to see if entry requirements had changed.

Our flight was so delayed that by the time we touched down in Christchurch it was already 4:00pm, nixing any plans to do a hike that day or even take the scenic route to our first motel in Geraldine. All our luggage arrived and we cleared customs with a check for our backpacking gear to make sure it complied with New Zealand standards. The customs agents were impressed by the freeze-dried ice cream that Boen had packed.

At the rental car counter, the lady giving us our car declared that they were giving us their smallest car, “A tiny Hyundai i30! That’s not big enough for your family and all your luggage! Your kids will be uncomfortable!” She was selling an upgrade pretty hard, and that upgrade was $30-50/day! I did a quick Google which noted that the i30 had more luggage space than a Toyota Corolla, which would fit all our luggage in my pre-trip calculations. “The mountain roads aren’t going to be good for a small car!” That was when my BS detector tripped. On narrow mountain roads, you want as small a car as possible for better acceleration, easier passing, and more room when that inevitable American-driven RV drifts into your lane! We went with the i30, which true enough had plenty of luggage space in its boot and we had space between the kids to stow more luggage.

She gave me the keys and then passed me on to her colleague for a pre-drive briefing, which was just as hyperbolic. The guy spent a lot of time telling us that New Zealand was a dangerous place to drive, with challenging mountain roads, and devastating weather conditions. For a typical San Francisco Bay Area cyclist/driver who regularly visited the Alps or the Sierras, however, I remembered that New Zealand was pretty tame. There were no

deer or other large animals that would dart out onto the road randomly, and there was usually enough traffic to remind you to stay on the left side of the road. Much like Japan, your biggest danger was dying of frustration being stuck behind a line of RVs doing 20kph below the speed limit. “You’ll never see a speed limit sign higher than 80kph,” declared the briefing agent, “so slow down!”

Once we loaded the luggage and drove off, I discovered that in addition to driving on the left side of the road, the control stalks next to the steering wheel were also reversed, so for the first day I would be turning on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signals first before remembering to use the correct control stalk.

Once we left the airport we immediately saw a speed limit sign for 100kph! “Hey, that guy lied to us.” said Bowen. “They both lied to us, but fortunately we ignored them.” came Xiaoqin’s reply. We drove for an hour and a half to get to Geraldine, where we checked into our motel, which was furnished with enough kitchen supplies to make dinner but we were quite tired and so went out to dinner at the local Indian take-out place, which charged us an extra $5 to eat in! Next to the Indian place was a supermarket, so we bought sunburn lotion, breakfast, and various snacks, the snacks in the packed baggage being meant for the 4 day hiking trip.

It rained on and off for the rest of the evening, but our early start time this morning meant that we all went to bed super early. The forecast for the next few days looked decent, but rain was predicted on the days when we were going to be on the Kepler track, which worried me.