Style: August 05, 2022

Style | Travel 53
bands of honey-coloured silt, capped in turn by a conglomerate of stony
fragments embedded in a mesh of silica-rich cement.
Ahead the track climbs steeper still and the ground is more rutted
and rubbled. Skirting a cluster of pinnacles, I reach a narrow saddle that
serves as a kind of a base camp. Surprised by the height gained, I soak up
imperious views across the Ahuriri Valley. The sunlit flatness of the alluvial
plain contrasts with the shadowed verticality of the canyon.
Surrounded by the canyon walls it feels like another world. More
Martian than moonscape, with echoes of Colorado’s Monument Valley.
These are classic badlands – a geographic term for severely eroded
wastelands rather than the Hollywood construct I always assumed.
Leaving the safety of the saddle I round a rocky spur and gaze up to the
head of the canyon, crowned by streaks of cloud radiating like a romantic
painting of Calvary Hill. The heights are defended by raw geology; screestrewn
slopes, rain-scoured ravines and a graveyard of jagged outcrops.
There is no formed trail in evidence and of the five other visitors, none
has ventured this far. With a weighty camera around my neck, I’ve had
a few near-slips already. I don’t know if it’s the endorphins of the climb,
the pull of the scenery or a sense of challenge that drives me on. My wife
later suggests another explanation: stupidity.
Going up is manageable, leaning into the slope, maintaining three points
of contact, including a death-grip on any small tussocks within reach.
Clambering on, footfall by faltering footfall, I reach the upper canyon’s
stone-studded cliff-face of impossibility. I now share the sky with the
circling hawks and the lofty spires of this roofless cathedral. But it’s time
to turn back.
Looking down, I’m suddenly nervous. Feeling like a cat who has climbed
on to some high roof and needs rescuing by the fire brigade.
The descent is a trial. In retrospect,
I should have lowered myself backwards,
keeping three points of contact. I inch
further down, occasionally disconcerted
by a slip here, a half-stumble there, each
a vague foreshadowing, like a grumbling
appendix or a pre-earthquake tremor.
Still I have this pocket of the canyon to
myself and its enveloping silence seems to
amplify the sound of the trodden gravel
and my quickening pulse.
The first fall was a warning shot – not
too far, camera still intact and nothing
more serious than a bruised backside.
Reversing down would make even more
sense now, but I persevere with the
front-forward technique.
Five metres from base camp, a strange
confidence comes over me. Complacency
perhaps. Then it happens. Loose stones
turn my shoes into sudden roller skates
and I hit the ground as if a rug is pulled
from under me.
Pain stabs from multiple angles. A
wrenched shoulder re-activates a 30-
year dormant cricket injury. A fingernail
snapped at the quick; the finger skin torn,
bloody and accompanied by an intensity
of pain I usually associate with a broken
bone. The camera clatters against a rock.
Gingerly I assess myself and the camera
for permanent damage. Neither seems
serious, though the finger, a strange
combination of numbness and pain, is
hard to assess.
“Still in one piece?” a young man in
a blue shirt asks, as I reach base camp.
“Yep, all good,” I lie.
I pick my way down the lower slopes,
shaken but glad to be on better ground.
On the pathway back I realise the lens
cap is missing from the camera. Not
a big deal, if that is the worst of it.
Through the pain I manage to enjoy
the last stretch of the trail, the sun, the
stillness and the views to the Ahuriri
River plain below.
Soon there comes the sound of heavy,
urgent footsteps behind me. Like the very
hoofbeats I imagined thundering through
the gap into the canyon. I spin around,
and the man in the blue shirt skids to a
halt. “Is this yours?” he asks, holding out
a Canon lens cap. I accept it gratefully.
We stop at Twizel for lunch, heading
first to the chemist.
“He had a fall,” my wife says, explaining
to the pharmacist why we needed so
many dressings.
“I didn’t ‘have a fall’,” I say. “I fell. There’s
a difference. Only old people ‘have falls’.”
“I rest my case,” she says.