Day 42 - Goat Pass Hut to Pfeifer Creek, Taramakau Valley, 21km, 7 hours

In the interests of full disclosure we shared Goat Pass Hut last night with 4 very friendly French nationals.

It was another poignant day walking, with much reminiscing on the awesome tramp through here last year with Caleb and the fellas, although I was doing the route in reverse this time out.

The route was difficult directly out of the hut - the upper Deception River in particular is a notoriously difficult route. Down climbing waterfalls and the like with a heavy pack makes for exciting walking, but it's the kind of terrain where you feel you are really taking your chances with an injury, even if the boulders don't get slippery until further down the valley. I was using 1 stick to cushion down climbing, but packed the other away so I could more easily swing off trees and down climb boulders. It's nutty to think a race comes through here. Kudos to my mate Andy Croucher for completing it last month as part of the last coast to coast.


There are some great plunge pools down the Deception River, and it wasn't too long before I was throwing myself in for a swim; undies, boots and gaiters on - there was no point taking them off with us crossing the river so often.

After 90 minutes of hard yakka we had made 2km which saw us at the Deception Hut, and out of the very worst of the terrain.  I didn't have to go too many pages back in the hut book to find our entry from where we stayed last year.


Carrying on we stopped for lunch at a great looking plunge pool. It was only after I had swum that I realised it was the same one Caleb and I had used for impromptu last year. The selfie I took afterwards I will always treasure. Two guys out having a great time, loving life, having just had a (very quick) dip in a mid spring snow melt river. Queue much more sober photo this time out.


Sigh....
Back to the trail, it wasn't long after this that I had an incident that could have finished the walk for me. I was walking between two large boulders, each probably a meter in diameter and the better part of a ton in weight. Unbeknown to me, one was resting on a smaller stone lower down that was acting like a fulcrum. When I stepped on this boulder it rotated away from the other. My knee and thigh became wedged between the two boulders, with the two coming back together once my weight was off the first one. With a now firmed wedged and immovable leg, I resorted to pushing the movable boulder with my hands and managed to get it to engage with the fulcrum again, thereby creating enough space to withdraw my leg. Immediately afterwards there was a crunch as the fulcrum gave way, and a resounding thunk as the two boulders crashed more permanently together. A close call!

The Deception Valley, while still having difficult sections, opens out further down valley, the going becoming easier.

Before long we reached the Otira Valley and the road.

Avoiding the road we took to a grassy 4 wheel drive track for the 3km traverse down the Otira to the Taramakau River, our route up towards Harper's Pass and the upper Hurunui River... but not before an electric fence had delivered my first shock of the trail.

Setting up camp a few kilometres short of Kiwi Hut it didn't take long for a reminder to be delivered that we were now on the West Coast - in the form of swarms of Sandflies that descended as soon as we stopped. They're brutes too. They land and bite. No mucking around. This called for defcon 2, on with the long clothes, the dimp, and even the insect hat.


I think I'll largely be confined to my tent until tomorrow morning. Every time I open the zip it's no exaggeration to say at least 50 of the blighters get in. They sound like the constant patter of rain against my tent. Never mind. At least the views are good!