“On a Mish” #312 Sore and Satisfied (Part Two). Peak 1543m. Glade Burn / Dore Pass. Fiordland National Park. 8.12.2021. Being sore or in constant pain is something that took a little getting used to when I first hurt my hip and back. My long days in the mountains instantly went to long days wishing I was in the mountains. Thankfully tons of rehab work has got me much more mobile and I have found that it is much better to be sore and satisfied than couch bound…
Day one was done and now that I was in Fiordland, I was starting to have fun. What wasn’t that fun was that the cool southerly winds didn’t blow the rain clouds away. A short spell of rain had doubt starting to try and force its way into my mind, the little voice was saying “it is much easier to do nothing”.
I always get excited about a night in a tent in the wild, and it was only a matter of time before I got out of the swarm of sandies and retreated to the warmth of my sleeping bag.
Early-ish the next morning I was up with coffee in hand marveling at the stunning environment I had spent the night in. Cloud hung low on the mountains and the lack of a breeze made me question whether I would get a view from the top if I made it that far. I’m not going to know if I just linger around at camp, so I saddled up and began to climb.
I clambered my way over the boulders up the Glade Burn to the start of the Dore Pass Track. A track that can get you through the forest up above the treeline is gold in Fiordland. If there isn’t a track, traveling around Fiordland is super tough, so when you have the option of a track you can just put your head down and grunt your way up the mountain.
As I climbed higher, another face full of cobwebs reminded me that I was the only one on the track. How lucky are we in Aotearoa to be able to achieve total solus in a place of incredible beauty that people come from all over the world to see! International travel is very expensive, and I only had to cover the cost of my food to get world class views.
The forest above the Glade Burn seemed to keep going on forever. I was starting to feel some aching and figured I must be at least a couple of hours into my mish. A quick check of my watch told me I had only been going for just under an hour. It is going to be a long day!
Just under another hour later I got a much needed boost of motivation as I realised I was in the low hanging cloud and would soon be above it. I came across a boggy section of the track that I recognized from when I hiked up to the pass back in 2012, and I knew that I was close to getting above the treeline and into epic views. There was still a long way to go, but at this point I was feeling awesome and being sore was (almost) the last thing on my mind. I was looking up at the mountains above Dore Pass(1390m) thinking ‘can I make it to the top of one of them?’…
