Caving in Nelson

Living In Nelson

I shall start off by saying that barbershops are extremely difficult to find in Nelson. I was able to find one after much searching down town. During the interim time I was able to find cave clothes at a thrift store and go shopping at the New World store, which is much like a Food Lion.

Nelson is a very pretty town and is actually slightly reminiscent of Blacksburg. That is, until you find the bay with all the boats, ships, and mussels. The town is built into the hills in a very charming way. Once you get to the bottom of the hills there is a very pretty if not touristy downtown area. Nelson has a host of boutiques and shops. Just past the town is the bay, which has a very cool beach. The tides at Nelson change dramatically. The beach may be 30 feet or a quarter mile wide depending on what time you go.

I finally found the barbershop just in time to get a quick haircut before going to the bus station. I met Jane there because we were supposed to pick up a British caver named Tarn. We didn’t really know what she looked like so I was joking about saying, “we are looking for someone British” into the crowd. Luckily I didn’t have to do this because Jane mentioned her name as she was getting off the bus. She heard us and exclaimed, “Did I just hear my name?”

We did some touristy things that afternoon like going to the geographic center of New Zealand. That was a very pretty walk. The track snakes up a hill at the top of which there is a marker left by the rotary club. From there the entire town of Nelson can be seen along with the bay and the mountains across the bay. The mountains were capped with the last snow of winter. Coming down the hill I realized the communications problems we would have. At times Tarn and Jane would be talking and I’d have no clue what they were saying. All different combinations of that took place throughout the day. At one point Jane said there were Tomos around the cave hut but Tarn misheard and thought there were a lot of homos around the hut. Misunderstandings like this have been pretty common thus far.

After we got down from the center of New Zealand we walked to a shop down town so Tarn could get something for her boyfriend. Jane had to go to paddling practice so Tarn and I went to see the beach. The tide was out at the time so we were able to take a long walk around the tidal flats.

All this time we had been comparing languages. I managed to say fries again and once again I was corrected to chips. The whole thing was quite entertaining. We went to the supermarket to find supplies for caving the next day. I am bad at New Zealand supermarkets but we had fun looking for food for the next day. I educated Tarn about Beg Ben, his stunt utes, his women, and his meat pies. We went home in the Oddity and made calamari for dinner with “chips.” It was nice having someone else in the house. Tarn and I really had fun not understanding each other. At one point she figured out that I would be sleeping on the couch and she would be sleeping on the bed. This was in no way a problem for me since I would often sleep on my own couch in the apartment back in Blacksburg.

Well I’m going to do my first New Zealand cave tomorrow with a Kiwi Caver and a British digging caver. I guess we’ll just have to see how I stack up with the international crowd.

19-9-12

Well two days of caving have been done in NZ now. We went into marble caves in the Takaka Hill region. My caver companions were Jane, Rod, and Tarn. The first cave we did was accessed through “Simply Sumpless,” a little access hole just above a big cave diver entrance that sumped out. The big marble cave was very pretty with lots of walking passage and huge bore hole. The marble is easy to get cut on so gloves were highly recommended which I am not used to.

The entrance to the cave was squeezy passage with lots of down climbing. After it opened up there was a large scree slope with a creek at the bottom. I was informed that if the water was higher than the rocks that the upper part of the cave would be completely flooded.

All in all it was a very fun trip. The caves in NZ are where the caves in the US were 30 years ago in terms of exploration. Most of the really easy stuff has all the trunk passage mapped. This makes for some extremely sporty trips because a person can stroll into a cave and go off the map without crawling very much. We did just this.

Tarn, being from the UK, was very keen to put herself into little holes that I wouldn’t even think of attempting. More often than not she would find something interesting. I was walking and felt some serious airflow going into a little hole near the bottom of the wall. I unsuccessfully pushed it but Tarn went in and said she could hear water as it petered out. We went to the next hole and pushed that too. Rod found another hole on the side of the passage and Tarn was immediately in it like some sort of hungry weasel. I found her light and went down to the passage myself via a different route. We pushed on until we came to a canyon that seemed to run parallel to the main chamber. Tarn and I went down this passage exploring leads and doing down climbs as we came to them with Rod and Jane on our heels. Later Jane mentioned to us that if we had managed to find anything interesting it could have lead to another close cave system. This would have doubled the size of the cave and made international caving news since these were huge cave systems to begin with. As it was, we found about 200 meters of un-surveyed passage and some really cool leads. Not bad for a sport trip.

Jane and I Surfing Simply Sumpless

The even better aspect of the trip came when we were all together in the car. We had noticed that we had different words for EVERYTHING. The Kiwis and Brits have a similar lexicon but American English can be a different language. Instead of rappelling the Kiwis and Brits abseiled. Instead of pits they had pitches. We went through these words as we heard them in speech. I was especially fond of the way Tarn said the word party. She described it as a very posh way of saying it, which I can only assume means she says it fancy-like. I told her that Americans actually loved British accents. It is sort of a secret American pleasure to hear British people talk. Every now and then Jane and Tarn would say something that sounded like it was a foreign language to me. At one point she said “upper class” and I responded with “Apricots?!?” These little language snafus caused the whole feel of the trip to be very whimsical.

On Wednesday we went into Summit Tomo and did a bit of vertical (SRT) caving. Tarn did not usually do SRT work because in the UK they don’t have many large pitches. Most understandably, Tarn was a little uncomfortable with the pitch at hand. “Why not?” I thought. It was a rather large pitch (over 100 meters) with a re-direct and a re-belay. She didn’t feel comfortable going down so I bounced it with Jane and we came back up. Tarn was apologizing the rest of the day but I actually thought more of her for the whole thing. After all, every caver that is worth anything has had those moments. She called it a white whale in reference to Moby Dick. I suppose we all have our white whales. Mine is a certain cave in Scott County VA called Wonderland. Anyway, for all of those non-cavers out there, I say it takes much more guts to say you’re not comfortable with something than to get in over your head and that is the life lesson for the day.

After summit Tomo we went and did another cave (summit cave I think). This was one that we entered by following a stream through one hill, out the other side then into the next hill. We went about 200 meters until it sumped out. I was in the back when I was told to shut off my light. I did so and looked on the roof to see hundreds of “stars.” These were glowworms. They were very helpful for figuring out the outline of the cave even with all the lights out.  I have to admit I did get a bit sentimental at that moment. Sitting there looking at the glowworms my mind started to drift back across the ocean to Virginia. I missed my fiancé Ellen, my family (Sasquatch included), those two knuckleheads Peppy and Rapunzel along with all the other tubas, and of course all my VPI cavers. My kiwi friends were wonderful but there is no substitute for looking to your left and seeing El Cabron while being flanked on your right by Awesome Bill from Dawsonville.

Of course then the lights came back on and Rod’s smiling face was there (remember Rod? This is a song about Rod. [10 points for getting the reference].) We caved out and walked back to the car. All in all it was a very enjoyable day of caving. Riding home in the back of the van Tarn apologized again for not wanting to do the pit. I thought, “if only you knew how many holes you went down that I wouldn’t dare touch.”

After a short time in Summit Cave we left and cleaned up the hut we had been staying at. The Nelson Speleological Group (NSG) has a hut on top of Takaka hill. Takaka is near Abel Tasman National Park on the South Island. We had been staying at the hut while we were in the area. After we moved out we went to look around the park. Most of the area seemed to be a mixture of dry bush and tropical rainforest. Climate changes don’t happen that often in the US so the whole thing was very novel. We wanted to go to a tourist attraction called the split apple rock. When we got there Tarn exclaimed that it looked like a pair of breasts in that way that only a British person could. Apparently you have to go around the beach to make it look like a split apple. 

The beach at split apple was totally deserted. Jane, Tarn and I took full advantage of this fact and went traipsing all over. The sand was a black and tan color and on the north side of the beach there were little sea caves. We wondered around the area a little while and took some pictures. We were being tourists after all!

Tarn and I at Split Apple

We finished up in Abel Tasman and got some Chinese take out. To keep the food warm we put it on the dashboard and turned up the defroster to keep it warm. The Oddity has a defroster that would boil water given the chance. This is one of it’s many redeeming qualities. We got back to Jane’s house and watched “The Men Who Stare at Goats.” During the movie Tarn told me about her boyfriend back in Britain and how she missed him. I thought about Ellen. I’m having fun but I’ll be having more fun when she shows up.

On Wednesday it was time to clean gear. Jane showed Tarn and I the hose and we washed it all off. We were as careful as you would expect young college aged people to be. As a result we were pretty wet by the time we got done. Tarn was supposed to leave that day so I had agreed the day before that it was madness to catch a bus to Blenheim early and then wait around for two hours at the train station. Instead we took the Oddity so we could have adventures. We were driving along up route six when we saw a sign for Hori Bay. It was 14 km and it said you needed a four-wheel drive. Luckily for us I happen to know that the Oddity is the pinnacle of off-road technology. Nothing the Japanese made in 1995 can compare with it’s awesome Minivan power. It has a brush guard for God’s sake! It really is the honey badger Narwhal vehicle of the east.

Tarn said, “Hori Bay! Do you think there are whores there?” I replied, “Only one way to find out!” and off we went. We wound up through the hills to a mountaintop on a road that was not much different than the forest service roads of my childhood. It was much like going up to Sarver’s Cabin in the Jefferson National Forest. We got to the top of the mountain and found what appeared to be a skid pad. Being a young male I decided a handbrake turn was necessary. (As a side note to Ellen, I know how you’ll react to this but I assure you that I know you think handbrake turns are the coolest things boys can do. Your denial of this fact just proves my point further.) It has been proven by top scientists at “Top Gear” that females love the handbrake turn. Tarn did the obligatory eye roll and we continued on down the mountain

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The view was stunning. There was the Tasman Bay to the left and Cook Strait in front of us going out to the Tasman Sea. There were mountains sprinkled on the scenery of deep blue water. As we drove down the mountain we could see Hori Bay, the anticipation was growing. “Why would they choose to put a 14 km road through the wilderness if not for something grandiose” I thought? We got down to the bay and discovered a little pebble beach with a creek running through it. Tarn and I both broke out laughing. It was the most mundane beach we had ever seen. Still, we had a rock skipping contest which I won with a total of one skip (we both suck at skipping rocks apparently). We hopped back in the Oddity and went on to Blenheim stopping at another park on the Pelorus river. Here Tarn showed me a sliver fern. I realized that I had been looking for actual silver ferns this entire time but actually the silver bits were on the bottoms of the leaves. Not my most intelligent feeling moment. We saw a woman meditating next to the river and decided to slink away so as not to disturb her. We got to Blenheim bitter cold rainy afternoon. To kill time we got baked goods at the shop near the bus station. I tried a custard square for the first time and we had our last argument about what custard was supposed to be. We had been having little arguments about pronunciations and word meanings since we had met. As the bus came I helped her load her humongous rucksack and gave her a quick hug.

I have to admit I felt pretty low. Tarn had been a fun companion the past few days. She was very friendly and always up for a random adventure. It was easy to hang out with her too because she had a very committed boyfriend back in the UK who she was obviously very excited about seeing. We found comfort in each other’s missing of a significant other. I had mentioned to her, for instance, that every time I saw a plane touch down at Nelson airport I thought, “I wish Ellen was on that plane.” But alas, NZ is a land much like Gatlinburg. To the law of fast friendships we all must abide. I exchanged email addresses with her and we made plans to visit each other (I told her to bring her boyfriend to the VPI Cave Club float trip, he and I could bro out while her and Ellen rolled eyes, standard procedure). It was nice having someone gracing the passenger seat of the Oddity. But it was now empty and the next new friend could have their chance to ride the mighty AWD Oddity. In a few months it would be Ellen but until that, who knows?

Tarn, Rod, Jane, Me, at the entrance of Summit Cave.