Snares Islands - New Zealand

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Spirit of Enderby

After our trip to Stewart Island we embarked on an eight day trip to the sub-Antarctic islands. These islands lie between New Zealand and Antarctica and are home to unique birds and plants.  First up was the North East Island in the Snares Islands group (The Snares). At the port south of Invercargill we joined the Heritage Expeditions "Spirit of Enderby" expedition ship. 

After cruising overnight, we awoke on the sheltered east side of North East Island, home to the endemic Snares Penguin, a uniquely colored form of Tomtit (this one is all black), and a unique form of the Fernbird, plus breeding Buller’s Albatross, Sooty Shearwaters, Common Diving Petrels, Antarctic Tern, Giant Petrels, New Zealand Fur Seals, and forests of the large tree daisy. 

There are no visitor landings allowed on The Snares (they are riddled with breeding seabird burrows) to protect the birds and seals. The seals are in trouble and experienced a steep population decline due to introduced diseases back in the 1990s. We were lucky the weather was calm enough for us to do a zodiac cruise. This isn’t always possible as these islands are in the roaring fourties, where the wind is a constant and storms roar around the globe north of Antarctica. 

The birds didn't disappoint though, and we saw all our target birds while we cruised along the shore in zodiacs. We especially enjoyed watching the penguins scrambling onto the shore and scaling what looked like cliffs to us.  They do this as they can nest far from the shore and need to get back to feed their chicks. It was a special morning in a fantastic place. Then back to the ship for the long cruise to the Auckland Islands. 

Our home for 8 days

Lifeboat drills. It's amazing how many humans you can jam in one of these things. I hope never to try one for real.

Zodiac cruising

The zodiacs were able to get very close to shore

Adult Antarctic Tern

Immature Antarctic Tern

Buller's Albatross on nest

Common Diving Petrel

Fernbird

Fernbird

Snares Penguin

Snares Penguin

Snares Penguin

Snares Penguin

Snares Penguins climbing the cliffs to nest sites

Snares Penguins climbing the cliffs to nest sites

White-fronted Tern

Stewart Island - New Zealand

[This isn't exactly backcountry, but is a way for us to share our adventures with friends. Text by Susan, photos by Bob]

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Stewart Island. January 2-3, 2017

The beach at Stewart Island

We spent a couple days on Stewart Island, well at least we slept there. We spent an afternoon and morning on Ulva Island, a small island off Stewart Island reachable by water taxis. Ulva Island’s attraction is native New Zealand land birds and it didn't disappoint. New Zealand's land bird are in trouble due to introduced predators-- stoats, cats, rats, and dogs. Ulva Island has been cleared of these predators and it is possible to see saddlebags, robins, tomtits, bellbirds, yellowheads and riflebirds. We ticked all the land bird natives on the island and had lovely views of them. 

Hotel at the tiny town of Ovan, Stewart Island

Cruising to Kiwi location

We also did a night trip and tried for kiwi on a remote part of Stewart Island.  We didn't see them. So disappointed. Our kiwi guide worked so hard, but the conditions were awful with very high wind. Got back at 2 am. 

Introduced Eurasian Blackbird

At 5:06am the next morning the introduced song thrush started singing. Three hours sleep - awesome. But up and at 'em. We went back to Ulva Island and it was great. The birds were very active. We added a couple new species and had very nice looks of 2/3 of the species at Boulder Beach.

Birding around Town. Kiwi Xing.

In the afternoon we did a walk about town, Ovan on Stewart Island, and turned up a couple more introduced species. New Zealand is full of birds brought in from other counties, mainly Britain, and in places with predators that is about all you will see.

We had another chance to try for kiwis this evening. This time it was magical. It started with two kiwis when we very barely off the boat. One jumped down onto the trail and foraged right in front of us. Then another one popped out of the bush, again feeding at our feet. Later we heard another two, this time a male and female calling back and forth to each other. The males and females have different calls, so it is easy to tell them apart. Later we saw a third bird, feeding less than two feet away. This bird was so close we could hear it snort sand out of its nose. They do this to clear their nostrils as they use their highly developed sense of smell to find food. Magical, and totally worth another night of minimal sleep. White lights and flash photography are strictly prohibited, so no photos.

A dozing Southern Boobook (or Morepork)

New Zealand Fantail

New Zealand (South Island) Robin

Tomtit

Pipipi (Brown Creeper)

Red-crowned Parakeet

Tui

Variable Oystercatcher

Weka

Weka can be really tame

Weka can be really, really tame

Beech at Ulva Island

Everything is White

We discovered a new winter loop route in one of our summer hiking spots, one which gave us uninterrupted and incredible views of the Sierra front range from Mt. Emerson to Mt. Tom, and down into the valley below. Along the way we found a Sooty Grouse, extremely difficult to find on the east side in winter. A little while later a snowshoe hare bounded by as if he had no care. It was a bluebird day between the series of monster storms that just keep coming.

Sooty Grouse poop below a large Jeffery Pine. These grouse can
survive by eating nothing but pine needles in the winter.

Snowshoe Hare prints

Two recent snowshoe hikes into the Sierra also turned up a large group of wintering White-tailed Ptarmigan. This alpine species prefers to winter as high in elevation as possible, but when deep snow covers their food of emergent willow or aspen buds they move to lower elevation. It is always a treat to find them in their winter white feathers. We also enjoy watching their antics as they burrow down in the soft snow to stay out of the open and away from potential predators. Often the only way to spot one is to see it's head poking our of the snow!

Ten Million Steps

Ten million steps in 2016. The phone was purchased
late October 2014 and only recorded a couple months
of data that year.

I knew at the beginning of the year that I would walk a lot of steps, especially with the 2650 mile PCT on the horizon, but would never have guessed I could make it to ten million for a single calendar year.  Today I passed that magic number. I'm not sure why I cared so much and pushed myself quite hard this month, especially after running a 50K ultra marathon on December 4. But with "only" about 400,000 steps remaining after the race I knew it could be done - and I was unlikely to have another chance in this lifetime.

My iPhone has a built-in step counter (with sensors including the accelerometer on the motherboard) that is very accurate and uses virtually no battery power. It is the same technology used in fitness devices like the Fitbit for step counting. All iPhones since the 5 and many Android phones include this technology. The great thing is that you don't have to turn anything on to count steps, it just does it automatically as long as you are carrying the phone. The Apple Health app will display the steps but is limited in summary statistics. I like the app "Stepz" to look at the data but there are many other apps that work well.

With all the training leading up to the PCT I was sitting at about 1.4 million steps for the year. The months on the PCT added another 7.4 million steps. After some post-trail rest, and once I committed to running the ultra marathon, my running and hiking miles ramped back up. December rolled around and half a million steps remained. 175+ miles of running and hiking this month got me over the mark today.

Sand Canyon

We headed out yesterday for a post Christmas dinner exercise hike in Sand Canyon. The snow level from the big storm last Friday night was low and left the Sierra crest blanketed with beautiful white. Eight miles of hiking yesterday got me within 11 thousand steps heading in to today.

Spanish Needle Peak from upper Sand Canyon

This morning we set our sights on Short Canyon, always beautiful year round. Shortly after lunch on the way back I passed the ten million mark. That equates to roughly four thousand miles of running and hiking. Yippee!

Balancing rock in Short Canyon

Sierra Crest from Short Canyon

Mt. Jenkins from upper Short Canyon

Golden Trout Lake and Dragon Peak

Map Track

Bird List

Golden Trout Lake headwall out of Onion Valley

Driving west from the little town of Independence will bring you to the popular trailhead at Onion Valley. From here the vast majority of hikers will continue west on the trail to Kearsarge Pass and points beyond. Not us. Today we took the little used trail northwest to Golden Trout Lake and then added the additional out and back to the lakes below Dragon Peak. In all it was only a little over 6 miles of hiking but the extreme grade and marginal trail made for a good workout.

The trail to Golden Trout Lake coincides with the Kearsarge Pass trail for a short distance, then continues north up a steep headwall that has flood eroded many times since the trail was built years ago. The use trail is easy enough to follow most of the way and getting lost isn't likely to happen if you can read a map or follow a gps track. The grade is steep to the lakes - 1000 feet per mile virtually all the way up. A variety of conifers greeted us in the canyon including firs, foxtail, limber, lodgepole, and whitebark pine. We had great weather all day in advance of the storm coming tomorrow. 

View south from headwall climb

Ancient Foxtail Pine

Approaching top of climb

Golden Trout Lake with Mt. Gould in back slightly left of center

Our two destinations were separated by distinct glacial cirques and required backtracking from Golden Trout Lake about a half mile with a 400 foot descent before we could climb an equivalent amount to the small lakes at the base of Dragon Peak. This spectacular setting was worthy of another long break as we sat and admired the view. The nice thing about hiking so few miles is the opportunity to sit and relax, and soak in the scenery!

Meadow at intersection of two trails. View toward Dragon Peak cirque

Rocky crag on way to Dragon Peak

Dragon Peak

Dragon Peak and upper lake

Our birding day didn't stir up a lot of species but we did find a coot and Golden-crowned Sparrow at 11,440 feet elevation!

View to Owens Valley and Inyo Mountains beyond