Winter camping - all snowed up

One morning Toby(redacted) and I were looking at the weather forecast - winter was officially here in the weekend, and there's a tramping itch to scratch. Toby came up with the idea of bringing tents and putting a night somewhere near the Coach Stream Route to welcome winter in the morning. A quick drive out after work on a Friday, walk into the snow level, until we run out of light, pitch up, sleep, enjoy the snow, go home.

After work on Friday we zipped off towards the Canterbrian alps, where the ominous clouds loomed. The plains made the mountains in the distance even more foreboding - on the horizon they were titans shadowed in dark shrouds of cloud, great gates holding back the melancholy gloom from Christchurch.

We stopped by Springfield at the last cafe, and the cheery waitress began to look concerned as we relayed our grand plan to her. We assured her that we are prepared, and will see her in the morning for a hot pie and coffee.

The carpark was empty, and the light was just beginning to fade. It did not look quite as bad now that we've arrived at the track, the clouds did not look quite evil, but still rather dark. We walked up the damp incline, edging around mud and cowpat as well as we can. Darkness fell after about an hour of walking, and we must have been only a kilometre or two from the carpark before we decided we were high enough, and the ground was flat enough, and it was dark enough to start setting up our tents. Before you could read this post twice round we were prepared to have a good long sleep, excited to see the next morning.

Not long after I fell asleep, Toby called out from his tent, "It's snowing!". I lay still, and heard the faintest suggestion of flakes hitting my tent amidst the rustles of the grass in the wind. I poked my head out the tent and voila! A gentle but thick falling of flakes in the darkness, as quiet as a downpour of goose down. It was only just after 9pm, and we admired this for a little while before going back to sleep. How beautiful and wonderful it is, this place that God has made!

I awoke in the middle of the night, somewhat startled by the cold. I immediately realised, as I turned in my sleeping bag, that the walls of the tent were a bit closer to my head - I reached out with my hand to feel in the dark, and punched into the tent wall earlier than I expected, pushing a pile of snow off outside. In the dark I could make out that the walls were caving in from the weight of the snow. I smiled to myself and fell back asleep.

The next time I woke up was to Toby exclaiming at the dump of snow. I was quite groggy and tried to sit up, but realised I could but turn my head as all walls have crept in. I turned my lights on and was amazed that the tent rods were squeezed together under the weight of snow. I heard Toby laugh at my buried tent as I heaved my weight against each side to push the snow back. It was midnight, and Toby's tent was quite laden as well, although I did not bother to witness this.

The rest of the night was intermittent sleep, pushing the tent walls out, with less and less success as the hours went on. The snowflakes continue to alight gently with a subtle yet pleasing sound. It was annoying to have my breath condense on walls that are barely away from my face though.

At around 7:30 we began to wake up, talking about the snow and the first day of winter, what a great idea this was, and how we absolutely dreaded packing up now. I think Toby might have considered a coffee but decided against it, in favour of packing up sooner, and getting a nice pie and coffee back in Springfield.

We emerged from the tents into a winter wonderland - absolute snowiness all around. The contrast from the grassy terrain yesterday was astounding! Nothing was not whitened by a layer of snow.

We also moved as quickly as we can to unearth the pegs and pack up the tents; this proved pretty difficult with frozen fingers and half-meter deep snow.

It snowed some more still, and we could barely see the markers on the trail. We certainly could not make out the track at all - we trudged through snow which was at points up to our waist! I was mostly trying to leap from a hint of tussock poking through the white to another. We came to a point on the saddle where we could not make out the next marker. It has begun to snow harder again, with the wind picking up. As we waded and squinted for a glimpse of bright orange I began to feel fear for the first time because we could not tell floor from sky - I realised we were actually experiencing a whiteout! The horizon disappeared as the features of the nearer white land blended with that further away. The wind tossed up the dusty white, scattering any perception of depth away. We sidled down the incline, and was relieved to see a marker not too long after. The path brought us off the saddle and soon conditions were all nice again.

We began to notice there were quite a few caterpillars on the pristine snow, as stark as words on a blank sheet. The poor creatures looked pretty frozen, but they were remarkably...on top of the snow. I mean, they didn't look on top of things, but they weren't buried. Where did they come from??

We speculated that some trees must have had loads of them, and a strong gust blew them off. We kind of settled with that for a little while but after some time Toby had an aha moment - the caterpillars had to climb to higher ground! They simply climbed up the most feasible escape route, grass, which height eventually ran out. They probably then struggled to make it to the surface, only to be stranded in a sea of snow. Any lucky ones that didn't get picked up as birds' breakfast would probably thaw and get on with life.

It didn't take long to arrive at the cafe again - we were greeted heartily by the same person and we told her how the night went. We then had our hot pie and drinks to finish off our adventure :)