Gillespie Pass Circuit
30/12/2024 to 2/1/2025
Circuit plus Crucible Lake day trip:
50 km, 4 days, 2650m gain
The Gillespie Pass circuit is one of my favourite multiday tracks in Aotearoa New Zealand, and showcases why Mt Aspiring National Park is arguably the best park in the country.
I’ve wanted to show Hannah one of my favourite tramping experiences for quite some time. The stars aligned when an old friend of hers visited the South Island and coincidentally proposed this trip. Our CTC buddies Mary and Josh joined us enthusiastically, as well as another of Hannah’s engineering buddies, Reuben.
After a fantastic breakfast in Wanaka at the Big Fig, we set out at a leisurely pace to Makarora to catch our 12:30pm jetboat up the Wilkin river to the Kerin Forks junction. This saved us about five hours or the better part of a day’s worth of walking, which most trampers do. There was a small pod of packrafters heading downriver as we went up - an inspiring idea for a future trip, perhaps.
A leisurely 2 hr 45 min walk in the heat took us from Kerin Forks to the Siberia Valley via a 500m switchback track ascent up and over a spur. Mt Dreadful and Mt Doris in the distance inspire awe as they tower over the head of the valley. The track led us directly to Siberia Hut, where we pitched tents for the night and promptly took a delightful dip in a waterfall, located about 3 minutes north of the hut.
Although the valley was breathtaking, the irritating sandflies hampered our enjoyment only a little bit. Sitting around the tables on the deck at dinner time didn’t last long, and we moved to our tents for the evening. However, no matter how quickly we’d get into the tents and zip up the inner, sandflies would find a way to invade in those split seconds.
The next morning we packed up our tents and migrated our campsite about 3 km up the valley into the forest near the start of the track up and over Gillespie Pass. Having ditched our heavier camping gear, we were left with lighter day packs for our excursion to Crucible Lake. It was about 30 minutes from where we camped to the start of the ascent to Crucible Lake, where we passed a sign indicating 2-3 hours to get there. The first 300m of ascent are certainly steep, but the track is fantastic - the usual beech forest ascent with tangled roots to pull on as we climbed.
After the first 300m of steep ascent, we crossed through the outlet from Crucible Lake from its true left to the true right in order to continue following the track into an open basin. The basin was its own little alpine valley, hot and serene. The moraine wall that holds back the lake is in sight at the head of this basin, under Mt Alba. The wall doesn’t look very high from a distance, but it’s another 200m of elevation gain to scale it.
We spent an hour at Lake Crucible, taking lots of photos, eating lunch, and Hannah even went for a swim in its frigid waters, smiling among the icebergs.
Our descent from Crucible Lake back to the Siberia Valley took us by a cluster of delightful ferns, all in the process of unfurling new fern fronds in that beautiful koru shape. We celebrated New Years’ Eve at our new campsite near the ascent to Gillespie Pass with some quick dips in the cold stream and a short-lived dinner outside our tents with lots of uninvited guests - more sandflies. We were all in our tents and sleeping shortly after 9pm.
The next morning, we packed everything up and made our way up the Gillespie Pass track, anticipating a long but epic day…and that it was!
The ascent was steep but I enjoyed it so much, taking in superb views of Mt Awful (which is an awful name for a majestic mountain, but maybe those who named it had a bad time climbing it). Near the midway point to the Pass, we started encountering fast people coming over from the Young Valley side. At the top of the pass, it was an absolute circus, with about 20 people up there, all coming from the Young side. We must’ve encountered between 30 and 40 trampers coming over that day from the opposite side. We were one of the few to cross the Pass from the Siberia Valley that day. After an hour of lunch and sunning ourselves (again, in lots of heat - we lucked out with weather), we descended.
The 500m descent to the Young Valley is certainly steeper than the ascent from the Siberia side. It was a bit knee-jarring at times, and exhausting in the heat. Upon reaching the valley after an hour, I took delight in the patch of shade I could find and snapped photos of the surrounds. The upper reaches of the Young Valley was stunning.
Reuben and I made our way to Young Hut, followed by Mary and Josh who had stopped for a swim in the river - much-needed after our day in the sun over the Pass.
The next day, we finished the circuit by walking from Young Hut out to the Makarora River. Thanks to the previous three days of great weather, this was a benign crossing, reaching only knee-deep. The walk out was quite long and not the most scenic, and again, quite hot, so we delighted in a long swim in the blue waters of the Makarora River. This New Years’ trip worked out perfectly. We couldn’t have hoped for better weather. The route we planned suited everyone’s fitness in our party. My packing - both of gear and food - seemed perfect. (Thanks to my checklists, I rarely forget to pack something these days!) A tramp for the ages, in my books.
