45 Green Bottles

But in this case the bottles aren't hanging on the wall, they've all decided to come to Carrington hut, all 45 of them. It's Good Friday evening and with this many people everything is in a state of chaos and hut etiquette is strained. It's 9pm and people are still arriving, trying to find a bunk or even just floor space and placing their wet boots in front of a fire that is not even going. In the midst of the chaos there is a small corner of order where Monopoly Deal is being fiercely contested and recipes for dehydrated meals swapped. The two Swiss hunters look a bit overwhelmed.

The next morning there're only 2 green bottles as we leave the hut early to get ahead of the hordes. We don't expect to be on our own as there's bound to be plenty of people doing the Three Passes.
There's already a cluster of head torches forming a bottleneck at the Clough cableway and we quickly cross the Waimakariri and leave them behind as we head up Taipoiti river. And that's the last we see of anyone on the trip! All the green bottles have fallen and it's just us.That night at Park Morpeth we cannot believe no one else has arrived. That's one of the things that's great about tramping: out of 4.5 million people, only 2 have decided to do the Three Passes this Easter.

Park Morpeth hut

The zig-zag track up Browning Pass turns out to be far less steep than expected. 160 years after it was made, it is still clearly visible ans easy to follow. Not wanting to join the shades of the miners who benched the original rote through the bluffs, we wisely decide to give it a miss and follow the modern orange markers. This could definitely be challenging in winter but at Easter it is a piece of cake.

View from Browning pass down the Wilberforce river

The trip is worth doing just to see Lake Browning which is definitely a highlight of the trip. There is fantastic camping around the lake and next time we will spend the night there for sure.

Following the old miners track down the valley one gains a huge amount of respect for the prospectors who carved this trail into the mountains. Strange to think that this could once have been the main road to Canterbury. The Three Passes is a classic backcountry trip linking Canterbury to the West Coast. Picking the weather and the season will greatly influence the difficulty of the trip. Doing this in winter would make it a full-on alpine experience.

Lake Browning