Walking up Gondola Hill

• Sahs's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Queenstown

Trip Start Mar 10, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Jan 08, 2008 Next
Entry

  Queenstown, New Zealand
Tuesday, October 16, 2007

I rather foolishly agreed to go along as moral support to a bungee jump with one of the guys at my hostel today.  Unfortunately , the bungy was at the top of the Gondola hill, above Queenstown, the hill of the scary metal tub ride.  His ticket included transportation up the hill - I would have to pay, and pay for something that I had not enjoyed as an experience the first time around.  Like I said, foolish.  I refused to pay.  Instead I had the very intelligent idea of walking up this monsterously steep hill.  It seemed like a good idea at the bottom.  The gradient on the first part of the track however, is very steep, and the path constantly switches back over itself to prevent the track from becoming a scramble, which has the effect of basically doubling your walk time.  I suppose that if you are fit (ie if I had kept up the routine that Gav worked out for me) it would not be much of a challenge, but I haven't and I'm not, so it was.

Anyway, I could feel it start to burn aftrer about fifteen minutes.  Beyond that though, and my mental self-remonstrations, it was actually apleasant walk, as once again it is a track rather than a path cutting a gash through the forest.  We followed the path for about twenty minutes, me, getting progressively out of breath and overheated as we climbed, which was of course, the point at which I realised I had forgotten my water. Luckily, Ken had some with him, so I didn't have to put up with a parched mouth.  Twenty minutes in, we came out of the woods and continued out walk along the service road up to the top.  This was an easier walk, certainly, but the switchbacks were much longer, which meant that the time started to pass very quickly and we were beginning to run the risk of Ken missing his appointment with a large piece of elastic.  When we realised this we were tempted to climb up using the downhill bike tracks that scatter the hillside, but decided that missing a bungy was more prefereable than death by mountainbike.  We continued up the road. We made it to the top just in time for the jump, and Ken, bless him, was starting to feel jittery, but, as I pointed out, he was a braver man than me just for doing it.  I have heard too many storis of detached retinas to want to jump, though I neglected to tell him that until after he had been to the ledge.  He jumped with very little hesitation, despite his nerves, and was not pleased when I told him about the detached retinas.

I told him that frightening him after the event was my fee for moral support - he scowled at me.  I still was not keen to get in the gondola, they were not plesant, so I walked down the hill while Ken took the short and easy way in the cable car, which he had earned.  Down should not have been as difficult as up, but the gradient, ever keen to play its part, meant that each step was braked by my muscles.  I made it down within 35 minutes, but I felt as though I had been out riding all day again at the end of it.

Ken was still hyped about his jump at the bottom, so on the way back into town we had a go on the Bungy Ballet.  I was not as good as I had been the firt\st time around, my legs were aching from the walk so my bounce was not as good as on my first attempt, and my acrobatics suffered as a knock-on effect.  Still had fun though.

The only other thing to note today was the earthquake at midnight - 6.7 magnitude out in the Tasman Sea off Milford Sound that had Queenstown actually shaking; enough to make me and my dorm-mate Sarah wonder if we should be getting under our beds and into doorways.  It subsided after about two minutes, but we spent the rest of the night fitfully dozing, wondering id the big was was still to come.

Print this entry Share Queenstown hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry