That’s the thing about hills… you can go up, you can go down. Two directions. 
How hard could it be to get lost?
“Um, Kelly……do you think we’re lost?”

It was nearly nine-thirty by the time we pulled into the small car park at the trail head.
Still in shadow, the parking area was cold and wet underfoot, despite a day stirring to blue sky promise.
From the very first muddy scuffle, the track rose steeply without so much as a warmup.
The guidebook advised us: Rocky Hill Summit Circuit return – 7 km. Please note that sections of this track are steep and slippery.
At 777 meters Rocky Hill is little more than an angular geological blemish, dwarfed by the 2,000 meter snowcaps that surround it.
Bullied up against a curve in the Matukituki river, it sits stubbornly like some giant, over risen layer-cake, having resisted the glaciation of the surrounding valleys during the last ice age.

Leaning into the challenge, it was not long before I could feel my quads pumping out in protest, and by the time we rounded a large outcrop of silver-run schist, we were both breathing hard. We stopped for a time to strip off our jackets and feel the cool morning sun prickle our skin.
The track levelled for a time as it traced the edge of the inky black of diamond lake before rising again through the Weeping Forrest (so named because the trees rise up and then bend over as they search for light through the canopy) in a series of wooden steps and steep acclivities.
Despite the lay of the land a few sheep had found their way up into the rich feedings of these thick green forrest grasses, and being early spring, they had some wobbly legged newborn lambs in tow.

We lingered at a lookout high above diamond lake that jutted like a diving board from the cliff, watching bumble bees swoop and hover on their little outboard motors.
These bees looked exactly how a five year old would paint a bee…big and round and yellow and black.
Leaning from the edge to better see them work, I could feel my cremaster muscle hauling my testicles up into my chest like two novice climbers on belay.

A ways past the lookout, the track up to Rocky Hill now started proper, tacking off on a switch-back varicose up the side of the hill. In places it was so steep that as I came around on the next bend in the trail, I was practically standing on Kelly’s shoulders.
We rose through tangles of bracken fern and bush lawyer and flowering ribbon wood. The air smelt of peppermint and snow. 
At one point the muddy track had recorded the flailing prints of a small hoofed animal, perhaps a sheep, or a goat that had slipped at a particularly tricky twist on the slope. The grass was freshly flattened where it had gone down but there  was no sign of the animal.

Buoyed with the hypoxia of adventure, we marched hydraulically onwards. We were tired and sore, but having a ball.
And there it was. A pyramid of stones raised to mark the summit of Rocky Hill.
Infused with newfound energy we whooped and danced like kids. Just like you are supposed to do when you reach the top of any mountain.
And then after realising where we were, I thought it appropriate to perform my best Rocky impersonation.  Center of an imaginary arial shot, the background sweeping around me as my arms punched the air, Rocky’s theme tune echoing off the mountains in Dolby surround sound. Cool.

Once that was out of my system (which took slightly longer than the actual movie) we found a grassy area to settle in and enjoy a sleepy lunch of cheese sandwiches chased with handfuls of cashew nuts all washed down with ice cold water.
The view was spectacular. Across  an electric blue sky to Lake Wanaka, the Matukituki river, and onwards, to the sparkling 3,033 meter peak of Mt Aspiring.

“Um, Kelly……do you think we’re lost?”
“ Yes Ian….
”
“….I think we might be lost.”¹

1. Ian is currently on holidays….lost somewhere in New Zealand. And loving it. [↩]