Tramping the Travers - Sabine Circuit

Time Taken: 4-6 Days

Difficulty: Moderate.

Location: Tramp starts at St Arnaud which is a small village one and half hours from Nelson and Blenheim or about five hours from Christchurch.

General Info: The Travers-Sabine circuit is a great walk with specatular alpine scenery.  It combines river valley walking with reaonably straightforwards alpine passes.  You definitely want good weather when doing the higher parts of the track, as well as being able to see where you're going you'll be able to enjoy the amazing views.

Trip Report - 26th November 2007

Last week my friend Paul and I made the trip up from Christchurch to Nelson Lakes to do the Travers Sabine circuit. The weather forecast wasn't the best and the people at the DOC centre had doubts as to whether we would get over the Travers saddle. We decided to go ahead and check it out and just turn around and come back if it didn't look good.

Day One: St Arnaud to John Taite Hut (4.5 hours)

We cheated a bit by catching a boat across lake Rotoiti to Coldwater hut. This cut out about 3 hours of walking. So after a quick trip across the lake we started the walk up the Travers river towards John Taite Hut. This took about four and half hours with a few breaks thrown in there.If you're into trout fishing there is some good looking water in the lower part of the Travers. Don't make the same mistake that I did by waiting until reaching the hut to go fishing. The river is rather small up there and the current just rages through in most places, no doubt there would be a few fish up there but the water further downstream did look a lot more inviting.

John Taite hut was a very comfortable place to spend the night. There were about 8 other people staying at this hut which was to be the norm for the trip. Most of the huts can sleep about 30 people so they were not full at all. Apparently things get a lot busier in January and February.

Day Two: John Taite to Upper Travers Hut (3 hours)

This section of the tramp is marked as taking 3 hours but seeing as we had all day to do it we took our time stopping at Travers falls and various other places and managed to drag it out to about four hours.

Upper Travers Hut is set it a great location tucked away in the trees.

Looking back down the Travers Valley from the Upper Travers Hut. Upper Travers hut is about five hundred metres higher the John Taite hut but this altitude is gained gradually so it's not a hard day at all. Quite a lot of people made the trip from cold water hut through to upper travers in one day.

After arriving at the hut we decided to check out the snow on the lower slopes of Mount Travers this resulted in the snow man shown here. As you can see the snowman goes to the best hairdresser in the entire valley and was also participating in Movember.

Day Three: Upper Travers - West Sabine Hut via Travers Saddle (6-10 hours)

The main feature of this day was the first difficult part of the tramp up over Travers saddle. Fortunately the weather forecast was incorrect and there wasn't much fresh snow. There was a bit of snow to negotiate on the way up but only enough to make it more fun and interesting without turning it into a difficult slog. From Upper Travers Hut it takes roughly an hour and a half to the top of the saddle gaining around 500 metres in altitude along the way. There is one particularly steep section in the middle of the ascent

From Travers Saddle you can see right down the western Sabine valley to Sabine forks some 1000 metres below. The hut is just about five minutes up the eastern branch of the sabine from the forks.

In the afternoon I tried some trout fishing in the Sabine river just below the Sabine forks. It's a reasonable sized river but easily crossed in many places at least with the water levels that I saw. The water was brilliantly clear and with the mountains all around it made a great setting for trout fishing. There really are some good looking pools and runs up here.

Here's the trout I caught after only one minute of fishing. Unfortunately things didn't continue in this way. I saw four other trout over the next couple of hours but scared all of them. I did manage to catch a nice one of about 3-4 pounds. It was a beautiful pool, I scared one in the tail of the pool and then further up tried casting just to the side of some faster flowing water that I couldn't see into. After the fly had drifted down the current for a few meters I saw a trout swing out from behind a boulder to grab my fly ... I struck and the fight was on. This fish was much more active than the one I caught earlier it initially surged upstream almost into the rapids at the head of the pool before taking off downstream and sitting on the edge of the rapids. If it went down the rapids there was no way I could follow it as the current was very fast and the banks were too steep. After a minute or so which seemed like forever I managed to coax it back upstream and was able to bring it into the quiet water and land it.

Day Four: West Sabine - Sabine Hut (5 hours)

A fairly easy walk down the Sabine river valley to lake Rotoroa. I tried some more trout fishing on the way down but didn't see or hook anything.

Just as we were getting near lake Rotoroa the track crossed the Sabine river on a footbridge, from this vantage point we could see into a really deep pool which had several large trout a couple probably in the 10 pound range. Unfortunately there were steep rock faces on either side of the river so it was pretty much impossible to have a go at catching these trout and that's probably why they are so big. If you click on the photo to see the larger version you can see two dark shapes near the centre of the picture, these are trout.

Day Five: Sabine - Lake Angelus Hut (6-8 hours)

After a good sleep at Sabine hut we woke to a nice calm morning and a very pleasant looking lake Rotoroa. Things were soon to get quite hard though as we had chosen to take the ridge track up to Lake Angelus. We were going steeply uphill within seconds of leaving the hut. The track climbs to the bushline 900m above in about 4km so some parts were really steep. I found the first half hour particularly hard, I guess it's better to warm into things gently than just getting stuck into a big hill first thing. I felt better as we continued with a few breaks along the way.

After reaching the bushline we were treated to some great views of lake Rotoroa. Getting up to the bush line wasn't the end of the hill but things did flatten out quite a bit as we proceeded up past Mt Cedric and along the ridge.

The scenery got even better as we continued along the ridge which tops out at about 1750m. Here you can see up the Sabine valley. We hadn't originally planned to go up to Lake Angelus but quite a few people in the huts told us it was really good and as it turned out the were right. It was the highlight of the trip.

Another view of the Sabine Valley and the with the Travers Range on the left. This track is high up and quite exposed. It's fairly well marked but could get difficult to follow in bad conditions.

Tarns near lake Angelus with the travers valley in the distance.

Early December and Lake Angelus is still mostly frozen over. If you look at the enlarged picture you can see the hut on the other side of the lake.

Chilling out at lake Angelus 00120-chilling-out-lake-angelus.jpg Chilling out at lake Angelus ... with a warm day and a mostly iced over lake we just had to go for a quick dip. Here's Paul testing the waters and doing a pretty good job of making it look comfortable.

As you can see from my hasty exit it wasn't exactly pleasant to be in the water but it was very refreshing. The hut had a kind of conservatory on the side which made a great place to warm up afterwards.

Day Six: Lake Angelus - Roberts Car Park (5-7 hours)

Finally the insanely good weather had to come to and end. It wasn't even really bad weather just rather misty. The mist combined with snow on the ground made the track along roberts ridge hard to follow at times but we found our way without any problems. Definitely wouldn't want to try it if the visibility was really bad though. There is the spear grass route which is better in bad conditions because it minimizes the amount of time spent up on the ridge.

Alpine Coliflower? There were lots of these plants in the area around Lake Angelus. Does anyone know what these are called? Just add a comment to the article if you do.

One last view from the tops looking down at lake Rotoiti. From here the track soon entered the bush and went down a steep hill fortunately the track is very well built zigzagging it's way down the hill instead of dropping straight down in a knee busting fashion.Once down at the carpark we were able to catch a lift back to our car at St Arnaud with a couple from the Czeck Republic. This was great as it saved us and hour and half of road walking.