Hiatus 7 - Home for 4 days

So many breaks off trail!  I have enjoyed the breaks home, however this is the last.  I'm off towards the Nelson Lakes and out of range of home after this.  3 solid weeks walking, over the hardest terrain on the trail will see me finished and home again.
Tomorrow morning I set out from the Lewis Pass, bound for Waiau Pass, so a fair bit of climbing ahead of me.  I've chosen to really load up too, I've got the better part of 10 days food on board, as I don't think I'll be able to get all the supplies I'm after in St Arnaud. Oh well.  A good chance to burn off some of the calories I've been loading up on at home!

Day 46 - Hope Kiwi Hut to Boyle Village, Lewis Pass, 26.7km, 6 hours 15 minutes

The beautiful bird life from yesterday continued on the final walk out to the Lewis Pass.  I'll definitely be coming in here a lot more often to enjoy it.

There were some beautiful bridged gorges to cross on the way out.

Once we got to the road there was a decision to make. There is a new piece of track linking Windy Point to the Boyle Village and the St James Walkway, however it involves a couple of fords. With a lot of rain over night we decided to exit to the road instead and 10km of walking with vehicles.

I'm heading home for a few days before I move out of range towards the Nelson Lakes, whereas Neil is going to soldier on, so the bestie break up has finally happened! Sayonara Neil!

Day 45 - Hurunui #3 Hut to Hope Kiwi Hut, 26.7km, 6 hours 20 minutes

A beautiful morning dawned and we set off early(ish) down the Hurunui towards Lake Sumner, 10 or so kilometres away.

As we walked a southerly wind sprang up over our shoulders, promising not such great weather to come. Nevertheless after only an hour of walking we came to the Hurunui Hot Springs, which I had been looking forward to for some time. I was worried about walking straight past, as it had been some years since I've been this far up the valley. I needn't have worried; the thermal waterfall that drops from it to the riverbed is a dead give away. As it happens there is currently an excellent swimming hole in the river directly beneath the thermal spring, so the next 40 minutes were spent oscillating between the hot pool, at about 38 degrees, and the river, at about 11 degrees.
It was marvellous!

Reluctantly carrying on we climbed away from the river towards the Hurunui Hut, situated close to the lake. A good place for another early lunch.


As it happens also a good place for another curio, a superfluous style.

Lake Sumner marked the 900km point on the trail. Having shortly before been stung by a bumblebee I was keen to get into the lake for a cold swim. The thumbs up photo slipped my mind! For 2km anyway.

The climb from the lake to Kiwi Saddle was more of a drag than I'd anticipated. I'd only climbed the saddle from the other direction before - you don't get the same sense for what a climb might be like when you descend it. While there was some nice scenery on route, I arrived at the top pretty tired.

A very adventurous Robin entertained us as we recovered over our snack bags at the saddle. The bird life in Lake Sumner Forest Park is most impressive. While traversing the lake there were anything up to half a dozen bellbirds singing more or less constantly. It may have something to do with adjoining the Hurunui Mainland Island in the upper Hurunui Valley that we had just exited, although I must say I didn't notice an exceptional amount of bird life further up the valley. In any case, it made for a memorable few hours walk.

From the saddle there is an easy drop to flats then across to the hut, only 4km away.

Day 44 - Locke Stream Hut to Hurunui # 3 Hut, 14.5km, 5 hours

"Mice, mice in the night" might not have the same fear factor as "Drums, drums in the deep" but did for the poor SOBO we were sharing the hut with last night. A full on scream followed by a series of high pitched whimpers woke me. Going to investigate I found that a mouse had got in her pack.  Unpacking for her, I shooed the mouse (as in waved it away, not squashed it with a boot - while this is also a viable option I had good reason to suspect this walker was a vegan and might not appreciate the gesture), and placed her pack safely up on a table. Given it's now autumn and getting cooler the recent influx of mice into the huts is not unexpected. With my preference for tramping in colder months I fairly commonly have them running over my sleeping bag in the night. I've got some good mouse stories...

The day started with crossing a very new, and very long swing bridge. It seemed a little extraneous to me, the river was easily fordable and if it's not then you probably shouldn't be going over Harper's Pass anyway. In any case, being a new(ish) bridge I appreciated not having to worry about snagging my tent on the bedraggled wire that tends to go with all other swingbridges.

There was also the interesting spectacle of a subterranean stream emerging from a scree slope near the valley floor, leaving me to speculate as to whether this had been a recent landslide with the scree still loose enough to allow the stream to run inside it.
Harper's Pass has phenomenal views into the upper Hurunui River, and especially down the long (and largely straight) Taramakau. With the weather unimproved from the day before we were not going to enjoy any of those larger views however...

...but still got to enjoy the power and beauty of the upper Taramakau as it dwindled to a stream near the pass.

I was feeling pretty cold so didn't hang around long on the pass itself, just stopping for the obligatory photo.

This led me onto a piece of track I'd really been looking forward to. I remember the couple of kilometres between the Pass and Harper's Pass Biv as exceedingly beautiful. In this case my memory wasn't shielded behind rose tinted glasses. It is just as beautiful as I remembered it; I enjoyed every second of the descent.

All too soon we were at the tiny 2 man bivvy for an early lunch. Neil and I squeezed ourselves in away from the drizzly conditions to dry off and warm and feed up.

In a piece of absurd timing the first significant group of SOBOs we had seen in weeks, 5 of them, turned up while we were lunching. It's somewhat of an understatement to say the bivvy was overfull. We left them to it and continued down valley.


Below the bivvy was the worst piece of track I've yet seen on trail. A 6 or 7 meter high bank, perhaps 10 metres across and pitched at more than 45° with no discernible safe route across. I wasn't too subtle in my approach, attempting a controlled slide, which quickly became an uncontrolled slide. I was fortunate to get to the bottom with nothing ripped or injured.
Neil, being a rock climber, had a bit more finesse and was able to pick a way across the top then down climb an easier section.


Unwilling to trust the track further we took to the Hurunui River bed for some easy travel, stopping at Cameron's Hut for afternoon tea and some amusement with a particularly brave mouse...


Before calling the day off at our now customary mid afternoon time when we reached Hurunui # 3 Hut, roughly midway between the Pass and Lake Sumner.

Day 43 - Pfeifer Creek to Locke Stream hut, 15km, 4 hours

Kiwi Hut

A quick, easy day today. Fortunately the sandflies weren't as bad this morning as they were yesterday, not that I risked venturing out of my tent to find out until it was time to pack up!

The day entirely consisted of walking up the Taramakau Valley, with Harper's Pass hidden for most of the day by the drizzly conditions.

Close to the very attractive Kiwi Hut, we found some private huts, well secured, Mr Bean style.


After morning tea at Kiwi Hut, we ventured into the bush to avoid having to retrace our footsteps by 500 meters.


It was always going to end in a bush bash of course. 15 minutes later we'd covered the 200 meters back to the river, and promptly threw ourselves into the river to remove all the bush detritus, feeling exhausted but virtuous in an early explorer kind of way.


Some fairly tedious valley walking saw us at Locke Stream Hut, a good kickoff point for Harper's Pass tomorrow. Queue a fair bit of drying the tents and clothes off, some scouring around for wet wood and a fairly reluctantly burning fire. Still pleasant to sit in front of though!

I remember loving staying in this hut last time I was here with Karen's uncle Bob and cousin Ian. It's lost none of it's charms. Beautifully positioned on a knoll above a confluence of 2 cascading mountain rivers, it is a labour-of-love, constructed in the old style with hand adzed floors and supporting timbers. It certainly makes for one of the more memorable huts in New Zealand.

Week 6 summary

A full 7 days walking, 135km covered.

My feet are back in really good shape, and I've been enjoying the familiar Canterbury tracks and being within range of home at trail heads. Indeed it has felt more like a series of tramps rather than a long trail for the past couple of weeks. It's great to have some family life, and Karen & the kids have really enjoyed it too.

I'm coming to the end of the Canterbury Rivers in the next few days, and will be starting the trek towards the Nelson Lakes and out of range of home. This will commence the final 3 week stint that will finish off the trail.

I'm still really enjoying the walking - I haven't had any more "I don't feel like walking days", like the day out of Hawea, and then again out of Rangitata. Nevertheless the prospect of the end of the walk is pleasing - I guess it'll be bitter-sweet.

My back is still holding up but had been rather stiff today - the difficult Goat Pass route no doubt hasn't helped. In any case today I took 2 voltaren for the first time on the whole walk. Not ideal, but given I expected to do that every single day, I'll take it!

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!

Day 41 - Bealey Hotel to Goat Pass Hut, 15.5km, 4 hours 30 minutes

With a good weather window required for the next section and a settled forecast for the next few days, it was time to hit the trail again.  Karen dropped me off at the Bealey Hotel with a plan to meet me 5km up the river at Greyney's Shelter, where the Mingha River comes down to the Waimak.  

Setting off there was an early ford of the Waimak, which was bitterly cold, albeit not any deeper than mid thigh. This led onto a rough marked trail up the Bealey River bed; it was all pretty easy going and within 40 minutes I spied Karen making her way towards me. 

Shortly afterwards with pack donned it was goodbye to Karen and Morris and off up the Mingha River. 

With a week of food on board, I was surprised that the pack felt so good, especially with a warmer and heavier sleeping bag now on board.  Weighing my pack before I left it came to 20kg, not bad given how many supplies I have on board. 

The Mingha Valley provides good views up towards Goat Pass.

It wasn't long at all before I was sitting down for lunch on Dudley's Knob, a short but sharp protrusion above the river, and only a couple of kilometers past that saw me at Mingha Biv. 

In the few kilometres that remained until Goat Pass and the hut, which is pretty much right on the pass, I happened upon Neil, my now longstanding trail mate.  We proceeded to the hut together.


Remembering the fantastic views to be seen when I was here late last year (with Caleb and the fellas) it was time to setup shop for the evening and enjoy said views.

Hiatus 6 - Home for 3 days

Having reached Arthurs Pass I took the handy proximity to Rangiora as an excuse to head on home for resupply and for a couple of days with the family.

The next section is over Goat Pass to the West Coast, then up the Taramakau River and over Harper Pass into the head waters of the Hurunui.
The first few days especially are very exposed to flooding rivers, and with the northwest arch looking like it did there was no way I was getting back on track on schedule.  So an extra day at home spending time with Karen and the kids and calorie loading.  Oh the pain!

Back on track today, next to be seen on the Lewis Pass in about a week.

Day 40 - Hamilton Hut to Bealey Hotel, 19.2km, 6 hours

From Lagoon Saddle, looking toward Arthurs Pass and the upper Waimakariri

After a bizarre evening and next morning in the hut it was a relief to be back on track for the trip up the Harper River to the Lagoon Saddle, a very familiar route.



From the saddle there are spectacular views towards Arthur's Pass and into the upper Waimakariri River.



The trail then follows the Western flank of Mt Bruce before dropping to Cora Lynn Station and some quick road walking to the Bealey for a beer, a pickup by Karen and home again for a few days.