Day 8 - Birchwood Station To Telford Camp Site, 25km, 8 Hours

Camp site at the Telford Burn

Staying in a Shearer's quarters last night I had a bit of a late start, with a shower to start the morning (luxury) before heading onto the trail just after 8.

The day consisted of a traverse of Mt Linton station, one of the larger high country stations in New Zealand.  Route descriptions were rather confusing.  I was looking forward to a shorter day of 19km, but in fact the station had recently changed the route, adding another 9+km to the day.

Early on I could tell that my left heel was cutting up badly.  I stopped to have a look and was confronted with an open wound of a blister - different but located right next to the first (which has started to heal quite nicely).  This one is more serious than the first and is pretty concerning stuff.


I've resorted to double socking the foot, which helps considerably; I'll need to buy another pair of socks in Te Anau to accommodate this longer term.  Oh and I'll try not to besiege the blog with blister photos!

Mt Linton station is very beautiful further in towards the mountains - it is good of the owners to allow access (from what I understand they are very reluctant to do so).
However some of the routing is pretty farcical, to the point where it feels like they are taking the mickey a bit.  Remembering this is all high country station, grass country; the route goes over large hills where a route around them is available within the same paddock, it religiously follows fence lines which means many 90 degree turns where the paddock could easily be traversed diagonally, and worst of all sends the walkers 400 meters up a hillside away from the destination, where a pleasant riverside walk leading directly to the destination is available.  I get that the station has requirements completely foreign to the average walker, but it felt so ridiculous at times that I'm fairly sure many walkers will just ignore the route, which is good for neither the trail or the station.  Rant finished, back to the route.

Having taken time to sort my foot out, I now walked the day solo.  It was enjoyable to set a fairly leisurely pace with frequent climbing stops now that I didn't have a fit young bloke to keep up with.
With climbing comes views, and some pretty spectacular ones of Fiordland were opening out to the West.

Perhaps bovines find body odor attractive.  On my stops I attracted quite the herd.

With water again non existent, I pushed on to have a mid-afternoon lunch.  I had spied on the map that the route forded a biggish river, the Wairaki, which would provide drinking and cooking water for lunch, and (I hoped) somewhere for a swim.
It did!  A nice little meter deep runnel, nice and warm.  With lunch in between I mucked around here for about 40 minutes before moving on.


Throughout the day the Takitimus were getting closer and more impressive.  Towards the end of the day I skipped the 400 meter climb previously mentioned and followed the river banks.  There was DOC signage there, so it's bizarre it's not allowed to be used for the TA.

I'll sleep well tonight with a river bubbling along directly beside my tent.  Just as well, tomorrow is a hard climbing day.  I've heard rumours of an excellent swimming hole at the hut past where the usual stop point is tomorrow.  If I'm up to it I may do a double stint to get to that hut, then have a rest day swimming.