-8° Extreme Winter Camping in New Zealand

Hey everyone, Charlie here, and welcome to the frozen mountains of New Zealand. Today I'm hiking 50km through mud, ice and deep snow. I'll be walking through incredible forests and visiting glacier carved rivers. I'm spending the night in a remote survival shelter deep in the mountains and doing everything I can to stay warm. Hood's on already, and I've got my hands in my sleeves. It's quite cold. Looking like a windchill of about negative 12, negative 13 tonight. Well, I'm feeling pretty hot already, so I've taken the jacket off. That is huge. Not quite able to hug it. I think it's either a rimu or a kahikatea, but I'm not sure. A lot of the tracks like this, just narrow and muddy. Well, I've packed myself some really nice lunch for later in the day, but I think now it's time to try some of my mum's baking. Well, this is an absolute treat. I've got more chocolate chip cookies, but these ones are oat and chocolate, so they're almost got the consistency of shortbread. They're really good. Well, I've only been stopped for a couple of minutes to have a snack, and I'm getting really, really cold, so I need to get moving. Well, I must have taken a wrong turn, because this looks like State Highway 1 to me. Oh no, someone's lost one of their tramping boots. Well, I'm just having a wander off the track for a little bit. I've spotted all of these awesome places to build shelters, but this really caught my attention. A giant tree that tipped over. You can see it lying along there. And all these younger trees have just grown from the roots that were upturned. You don't want to put too many layers on, and then start to sweat lots. And when you get out onto the tops, the wind just evaporates all the sweat off of you, and you just freeze. But you've got to know your limit when you're getting too cold, and I think I was at mine. That's where we're headed. That's a lot of snow. All these ferns have dustings of snow on them. Kind of reminds me of that one Walking with Dinosaurs episode. Down in the valley floor, all the trees are fighting for the light, since there's not much each day, so they grow straight and tall to try and get as much of that sunlight as possible. Whereas up here on the ridges, there's plenty of sun, but the winds are pretty extreme, so the trees get bent and warped into these awesome shapes. Well, those peaks look a whole lot closer now. We've just got the last, albeit big, climb up to that peak, then we follow the ridge back deeper into the range. Leftover pizza, how good. I've got my walking poles out. Up there it's going to be super slippery, and I don't have microspikes. This is the dangerous stuff here. Not the soft, powdery snow, but the hard ice. There's just no grip on it, so if you put your foot wrong, you're sliding down, and you won't slow down for quite a long time. It's the K2 bottleneck. Something tells me these tracks don't belong to a person. Unless we've got an infant walking in bare feet. In which case, kudos to them. That's where we're headed, that's the peak. It's just beautiful. Brutal, but beautiful. That was quite scary. So much snow, and you don't know if you step on it if it's going to be icy or soft, or how deep it's going to be. Those rocks were really scary. I've got a couple more here, but they're not nearly as steep. And then we begin the march to the top. Well, I'm past the really scary stuff, so I can finally talk about this awesome river here. So this is the only glacier-carved river in the whole range. And you can tell, because instead of the distinctive cut-out V-shapes that you see along these rivers, it's a big U, almost like a bowl. I see the shelter down there, that little orange square. That cloud is coming straight towards us. I want to get down quick. That's the tarn there. It's completely frozen over. And just here is real powder snow. It's lovely. Although it's filling up my pants and shoes. We made it. Boy, am I happy to be in here. I'm so cold. I can't feel my fingers at all. The tips of them are just completely numb. I bought these hand warmers. Remove hand warmers from outer package, shake to activate. They heat up in 15 minutes. I'd prefer it if they heated up now, but to quote a famous British poet, you can't always get what you want. My water bottles are fully empty. I'm going to go and try the tank and hope it's not frozen. It's completely frozen. I might have to melt snow. It's not ideal. Trying to get snow into a soft flask when your hands are freezing. My gosh, my hands are cold. They're completely numb. While I'm soaking, I need to get rid of all of these wet clothes. You can probably see there's just steam coming off of me. I finally got a new sleeping bag. It packs up really tight. It's comfortable down to minus 9. My shoes are just frozen. So are my pants. Completely frozen. Well guys, I'm back to being like a bean. Thank goodness I've got my down birdies. It's just like sleeping bags for my feet. Well I've got all this food and all this gear here ready, but I'm so cold, so I'm going to get in my sleeping bag and just cuddle up until I feel some warmth in my body. Especially my fingers. I think it's time for some more of mum's chocolate chip cookies. This is going to be tricky, but I know the pieces fit. I didn't realise that was open. Should always check that. My snow is melting in there, but just check out the view. It's so cold out here though. I just sprinted out to collect a bit more snow, but every time I go out my hands just get absolutely soaked. These are just two minute noodles, but trust me, they are fantastic. I don't normally condone breaking up your chicken noodles, but when you're camping like this, it helps them cook way better. Now we wait for them to cook through, hopefully. It's starting to heat up a little bit, which is really good news. Looks like it's cooking now. Oh, this is exactly what I need. I think I'm going to get back into the sleeping bag, just for as much warmth as I can get. Oh, I almost forgot to go with them. I bought gear sticks. So we've got plenty of water in here. I might drain some into the water bottle. May not look nice putting chicken noodle water into your water bottle, but it's warm. Pro tip with these, always do the lid shut as tight as possible, so really bad things can happen if you don't. That's the best my hands have felt pretty much since about midday today. Well, I've gone princess and the pea style now. I've got both the mattresses there, just in the hopes that it'll be a little bit more insulation and keep me warm. I'm inside the sleeping bag now. I'm starting to warm up quite quickly. I've got my hot water bottle in here. It is losing heat pretty quick because there's not much water, but I've also got a body warmer inside my two thermal layers here. I think by the time my body starts to heat up, this sleeping bag will do its job well and keep me warm for the whole night. The morning's going to be a different story, though. I'll be heading out in absolutely freezing temperatures. My throat is so dry just from how cold it is. It's currently between negative seven and negative eight outside, and negative four in here without the wind. What I will do, though, is I'm worried about my jacket and my pants freezing tomorrow, so I'm going to put them underneath the bed to hope that a bit of my body warmth and them being compressed down will keep them from freezing solid. I think I'll still have a reasonably comfortable night despite the freezing temperatures. Tomorrow morning's going to be a different story, though. It's going to be negative seven when I leave. I'll see you guys then. Well, good morning, everybody. It's just after five in the morning. The wind has picked up. The good news is my sleeping bag has been super, super warm. That window is completely frosted up. Look at this, the little bit of remaining water I had. Frozen solid. Trapped my fork in there. Glad that started easily. They're all steaming, so that's good. I should be able to get them on without them being completely frozen. I'm just going to wrap the jacket like that. The bottle's in the hood now. Just look at how much it's steaming. Well, this is the Hutt Intentions book. Anyone staying here will write down the date they've come in, their name, how many people they're with, and what their intentions are. It's good for search and rescue if they need to find anyone, but it's also cool for if you're bored, you can go through and look and see who else has been at this hut. I'm sure I can find my name in here, so I'm going to have a look for it while I wait. I've found my name right there and right there. Both of these times were when I was running through here from the northern end of the range, running through to the south end of the range. That first time it took me 25 hours to run through. The second time I did it in just over 20. Well, I had plans to make some nice pancakes for breakfast, but I want to use all of my gas for making heat since it's just so cold. So I think I'm going to have to have some pizza for breakfast. It's half frozen. My shoes are frozen. Here's yesterday's socks. I didn't think the day would ever come where I'd have to use a survival blanket, but what I'm going to do is try and cut it off a little bit and wrap some of it in between my thermal layers just to keep as much heat in and just to stop as much wind as possible. That's a good sign. They at least bend now. It's time for the last hot water bottle and this one is boiling hot. It's time to put on my icy pants. What I'm going to do is I have to take off my down booties. I'm literally going to stuff them into my thermal pants. There's one less thing I have to carry and it's a little bit extra insulation. Those pants are cold. Saying goodbye to the hut, swept up. Wow. It's beautiful, but it is freezing. Make sure that is nice and shut. Goodbye to a rat hut. That's the way ahead. Well, we're pretty much on the summit of a rat peak. All the way down there is where we stayed last night. Well, I look a bit silly now. I'm about half laid up, half not, based on what was feeling warm and what wasn't. My legs have been through a lot of snow, so I've still got all the layers there until they feel really warm. But at the moment, I'm just cruising through this awesome forest. Just love this stuff. Well, that's why you leave early. I'm glad I'm not up in the peaks in all that rain and cloud and probably snow up there. Te Araroa is a beautiful trail, but the problem is tracks aren't built to sustain the traffic they get, especially here in the Tararuas, so you get massive bogs like this. That's pretty cool. Well, guys, we are back on the boardwalks. Looks like we've got some friends. They're all looking at me. I think they're wondering why my pants are sagging so much. They don't know the belt buckle snapped five hours ago. I think I've accidentally herded them the wrong way. I didn't mean to put them anywhere. And now they're all standing by the gate. I see the car park just over there. Well, thank you guys so much for watching another one of my adventures. If you want to see more like this, feel free to subscribe. I'll be getting out on adventures like this as much as possible. We made it.