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New Zealand: South Island Tramping

An overdue return to photography.
Nikon D200: f/?, 1/?th sec, ISO ?

The frigid, rushing waters of this river - high up in the hills towards John Tait hut in the Nelson Lakes National Park - would lead you to believe that the day is cool and water plentiful when, in actuality, New Zealand is experiencing a scorching hot summer with air temperatures, even here in the mountains, pushing past 30 degrees.

It is late November 2016 and I am traversing the hills that rise up above Lake Rotoiti, itself located at the Northern tip of the country’s South Island. This trip is the third and final of my stay in New Zealand; it’s the last multi-day hike I have time for before starting the long journey back to the UK and I intend to make it the most remote and self-supported so far.

Nikon D200: f/?, 1/?th sec, ISO ?
And here you see my destination and stop for the night: Upper Travers Hut, nestled between mountains and looking out across a wide patch of open grassland that separates two segments of climbing; a welcome rest stop before continuing up and then over the next peaks and beginning the hike back to the lower lakes.

Of course, what they don’t include on the tourist brochures is that this is, in fact, the second Upper Travers Hut, having been reconstructed in a slightly different location in 2004 after avalanche damage did the first one in. I would have slept worse had it not been the height of the summer months!

Key Summit, off the Routeburn Track. Nikon D200: f/?, 1/?th sec, ISO ?

Strapped to the waist belt of my hiking rucksack is a bulky camera bag holding a Nikon D200 - the Nikon is a fine piece of kit, the bag is not and it awkwardly bashes my thigh with each step. I’ve already made an unenviably-long list of photographic errors on this trip and the bag isn’t the worst of them either. Through not knowing what I’m doing, I’ve been shooting most of my landscape shots between f/18 and f/22 because “that must have the largest depth of field, right?”. Well, I was half correct at least but some of the images from this trip turn out rather soft during editing.