Day 7 - Merriview Hut to Birchwood Station, 29km, 8 Hours 35 Minutes

I have a new definition for the word "optimism", air freshener in a longdrop.

(Not to put too fine a point on it, it wasn't effective).  But while on the subject of ablutions, I find I really don't need any.  My body seems to be consuming almost everything that's thrown down its gullet.

A nasty shock awaited me this morning.  Hanging my pack away from the mice a couple of nights ago by the side handle had been a bad idea, and one corner of my pack frame had broken the material and was hanging 2 inches from it's normal position.  This obviously destabilised the whole pack, and I was amazed I had not noticed the issue yesterday.  Out came the jury rig material - some very agricultural sewing, some souped up repair tape, and finally a big safety pin right through the whole lot.  It looks like it'll hold, but may need to be fixed properly in Te Anau.

My feet are feeling a bit sore, and half the walk today was on road or pine forests, so on went the sandals and into the pack went the boots.  The only problem was, on the first 200 meter climb through a forest, I got them covered in biddy bids.  This didn't seem to affect my feet and I carried on irrespective.

After this first climb we (Neil and I have stuck together) had an hour or so on country roads, before embarking on another 300 meter climb, this one with a 1 in 5 gradient.

I've decided that climbing with a pack is rather like interval training:

Keep going until you reach max heart rate.

Then go for as long as you feel ok.

Collapse to the ground (preferably on some moss) and slurp some water.

Wait for the heart rate to return to some kind of normality.

Rinse and repeat until the top of the hill is reached.

The whole process leaves me looking pretty drenched!

The top of the hill marked 5 hours walking and lunch time.  I found a moss beanbag that I could sink into and enjoyed some hard boiled, free-range eggs from Merrivale farm.  Water being in short supply again today, no boil up was possible.

After some time walking along a ridge we came into another exotic (well, pine, so perhaps not so exotic) forest, before missing a turn, fortunately in an area that wasn't too steep and only 1km off the trail.

Views opened out just before we descended a ridiculously steep hill - I'm pretty sure the steepest I've ever done.  It was 1 in 4 or steeper.  400 meters of that was hard yakka on the feet!

By the bottom of the hill water had become an issue, yet again no streams were to be found during our day's walking.  I found a sheep pond at the bottom of the hill, and so a first use for the water filter on this trip.  Tasted a little daggy, but all in all not too bad. Waking across the last paddocks there was some watching of the bulls.  But fortunately no running of the bulls, so my skills at the pack laden fence high jump remain untested. Tonight we are staying at the Shearer's quarters at Birchwood Station, a couple more beers provided along with an excellent home cooked meal.  I'm fairly sure I'm putting on weight on this trip. Tomorrow we head into the Takitimu mountain range, and away from any known civilization, before coming out near Te Anau.  Not much of Southland to go!