Mirrors are totally unnecessary in huts - nobody cares what they look like. Nevertheless the Double Hut toilet had one I approve of.
Every longdrop should have a rear vision mirror!
It was a cold and windy day. With some climbing to be done, up to a height of 1500 meters, and snow forecast to fall down to 1800 meters, it was definitely a day to rug up.
The prospect of climbing to high level in tussock and mud with sandals on account of my cut up feet didn't exactly fill me with joy.
Early on in the day we caught up with Teresa, a kiwi who I hadn't seen since Southland, and would shortly be leaving the trail. We grouped up and formed a chilly party. The snow prediction was bang on - we were at about freezing level.
The saddle we were climbing, Clent Hills Saddle, just kept on giving. It looked like you were climbing to the peak, before it would dip down and send you up again. This happened numerous times, leaving us at chilling at altitude for longer than was ideal.
Eventually we reached the top, me sliding all over the place on the mud and tussock in my sandals. Not wanting to face this downhill I changed into boots at the top, as well as donning an extra base layer for warmth. Mercifully after applying more tape my feet didn't feel too bad in the boots.
Then it was down to the north branch of the Ashburton River through very wet and cold waist high tussock. The trail description called for a very specific 51 fords of this river in the 7km we had to cover to get to the next hut. We scoffed at this as an obvious apocryphal number; more fool us. On a beautiful day I'd have really enjoyed it. As it was, it was more to be endured as we descended through a gorge. Fortunately the river wasn't too high, each ford coming little over my knees. Still, there was no chance to warm up!
The gorge came out at Comyn's Hut. Ideas of pushing on to A-frame Hut disappeared when we saw the hut had a fire and some scroungable wood. One somewhat smokey hut later I was enjoying the first fire I've had on trail.
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