New Zealand's BREATHTAKING Brewster Glacier (as a day hike) 🇳🇿

So we're heading out to tackle the Brewster Glacier today. There is a hut, the Brewster Hut, however we are going to be doing it in one day. Starting off the day with a nice refreshing river crossing. So right before the trail starts there's an unbridged river crossing. So we are going to cross this river and then I'll tell you why we're not staying at the hut. The one thing I'll say about this area is we're in Haas Pass. Sandflies can get pretty thick so if you're gonna take your shoes and socks off to cross the river you gotta do it quickly because you will get swarmed. Especially if you're wearing dark clothes. They love the dark clothes. So standing here essentially acting as sandfly bait because they will swarm the dark colored stuff. They love the dark colored clothes. So the lighter clothes you can wear the better to avoid the sandflies. We're headed to a glacier today. It's gonna be an epic day. Day hike and something like 1,500, 1,600 meter elevation gain and we are excited to go to the snout of the glacier. Sam has been working on her glacier snout noises all day long and she wants to share them with you. That's untrue. You worked on yours. What are we gonna do when we get to the snout of the glacier? No, you do it. Already working up a good sweat as we're headed straight up more or less. So this is what they call a tramping track. These orange markers denote tracks here in New Zealand and when we first got here I was a little confused the difference between a walking track and a tramping track and a route and all that stuff but finally after two years we figured it out. We figured it out a while back actually. But a tramping track is you know routes and not not really a well-formed track whereas a walking track is like a maintained track. They put like gravel down. It's really wide and on the great walks they only increase by a certain percentage grade or something like that. So this is definitely a tramping track and then to get from the hut to the glacier I believe is a route and some routes are marked and some routes are unmarked. This one is kind of unofficially marked from what I've heard by Cairns. The reason why we're not doing this has an overnight staying at the hut. We had originally planned to stay at the hut but there was some weather moving in and so we didn't want to get stuck on this side of the river in case that river came up and we weren't able to cross it. Apparently last week there was a big storm like three or four days. They got something like 600 millimeters of rain in this area and a group of people got stuck on this side of the river because it was just way too high and swift moving to cross over. So we adjusted our plans. We got up early and we're going to hit the glacier and back in a day to avoid that incoming rain. Above the tree line now starting to get some epic views already. Just a small taste of what's to come because once we catch a glimpse of that glacier with the sun reflecting off the pools it's going to be amazing. So it took us three hours to reach the hut. We weren't going exceedingly fast. Actually we're going pretty slow. We stopped to talk to every group we passed. Three hours to reach the hut. Supposedly it's another two hours to the glacier. We're going to have plenty of daylight to enjoy the Brewster Glacier today since sunset's not till nine o'clock. Pretty sweet views though from up here at the hut. I think this is Mount Armstrong over here. So it's another peak you can do. So they do have a rainwater catchment here at the hut and they also have a pit toilet in the back there. So it's a good pit stop. No pun intended. If you want to just hoof it all the way to the glacier as a day hike. I mean we're going pretty slow so I mean I could see people making it up here in less substantially less than three hours. Two hours up maybe. Maybe another hour and a half to the six seven hour day. I think our day is going to be definitely longer than that. Probably nine or ten hour day. Maybe more. Sam is on her second v and she had floated going to this other peak Mount Armstrong. So it could be even longer if she finishes that v. So this hut is actually pretty nice. I believe it's a 12 bunk hut and it's $30 a night per person. You have to book online to pay ahead of time. Well we made it to the epic viewpoint of the glacier here. I don't think it took very long. Maybe an hour hour and a half something like that. So the key thing is there are cairns so it is kind of marked but there's some lot of different cairns in certain areas but it's pretty mellow. I mean you're sidling across kind of a scree slope at some points but in terms of elevation gain like right after the hut it kind of like levels out like you go up a bit and then you're kind of just sidling across the scree slope and got this epic view of the glacier here. I think we're going to go down and maybe take a quick swim in one of these melt lakes here. They look absolutely inviting and freezing which I could do for a little cooling off right now. Worked up a good sweat. Just a magnificent sight here. These glacial melt lakes. The mountains in the background. The glacier there. It's amazing to see this glacier up close and personal. It's pretty sad to see how far it's receded. I mean we looked at the topographical map and it was glacier where we were standing on rocks so it's receded quite a bit just like all the glaciers in New Zealand and around the world. The loss of the glaciers and I can't help but just it feels like when you see the water dripping off the ice there it's almost as if the tears of mother earth are flowing from the glacier. Not sure if that's a little cheesy or melodramatic but that's how I felt in the moment looking at looking at that glacier melting. I feel grateful and lucky to be here but I also feel incredibly sad. Infamous.