This section through to Queenstown was intended to be walked with my cousin, Caleb. With his tragic death just days before coming away on this walk, this part of the trail was always going to be extremely difficult for me. However my brother, Stephen; and son, Eli, have stepped up and joined me for this section in Caleb's sted. It's not going to stop things being painful, that's for sure, but it's going to be much better than mucking through it by myself. I'm very grateful to Stephen and Eli helping me out like this.
In a sense Caleb came along in spirit - Stephen brought along Caleb's bottle of excellent single malt whiskey with a couple of swigs in the bottom, which we polished off in Te Anau over reminisces of our life with him, and regrets over his lost future. We've decided that tramping together without Caleb will always hold regrets for us, as being a time when he would likely be out enjoying the experience with us. We need to find a way to embrace that and make it a positive thing, rather than dwelling on it. I'm currently thinking about always tramping with nips of that same whiskey with Stephen so we can have a tot together once the day is done.
To the walking.
We had an early morning fright when Eli, who had tweaked his ankle, found it unimproved in the morning, with him barely able to put weight on the foot. Amidst panicked arrangements to try to get Eli home to Christchurch while simultaneously rearranging track transport, I sent Eli for a 15 minute stroll to try to walk it off. He came back declaring it good, be so the trip was back on as originally planned.
Once on the trail, actually a long shingle road into the Mavora Lakes, and having dodged a nutty school bus driver who took the turnoff corner near on 2 wheels before slamming his brakes on hard and skidding to a halt beside us (I presume he doesn't like walkers using 'his' road), we started off at a good pace.
With 4 days rest, and 10 days food on board (5 days each for Eli and myself), my pack felt heavy at first, but quickly settled down to feel somewhat normal.
With snow down to low levels on the mountains we were walking towards we experienced cold winds throughout the day - not unpleasantly cold generally, but certainly enough that my long sleeved merino stayed zipped up most of the day.
It has been cold enough in Te Anau recently that I nixed plans to send some of my warm clothing home, preferring to hold onto it until at least Queenstown.
For morning tea I pulled out a Boston bun as a surprise. It had turned into a Squashton bun (no surprise there I guess), but was no less edible for all that.
It was another 50/50 day weather wise, but this time it never really settled into any pattern, with a few light showers at times, but generally excellent walking conditions.
It was easy walking as we approached the mountains, clearing off the road from time to time as a vehicle came along, but not very exciting, so few photos to worry about clogging up memory cards today.
At lunch time I had a bit of a rude shock. I did a boil up for lunch, but it turns out Eli had brought no eating utensils; plate, bowl, cup, spork. Nothing. Fortunately we can share my cup and pot (which is also my bowl) without too many problems, and I happened to bring a spare spork, realising it would be a real issue if I lost mine.
It has been, and continues to be, my plan to walk every step of the South Island's length. However I realised over lunch I may have made a mistake. When I walked down to the Mavora turn off after coming out of the Takitimus, I never crossed the road to where we were dropped off this morning. So I've missed about a 10 meter section, the width of State Highway 94. A small enough mistake I'm not going to beat myself up over it.
It was my intention to lower the kilometers we did per day through here to give Eli, unused to long distance tramping, an easier time. However as we approached the area I'd picked out on the map where we'd start looking for a campsite, both Stephen & Elijah were keen to push on to the hut, at least another 8km further on.
I had walked the whole day in sandals, and was feeling fine, feet in no worse condition than the start of the day. Conversely Stephen's feet suffered from the gravel walking, especially through this last part of the day.
He soldiered on however, and eventually we came to where the Mavora River needed to be forded to get to the hut. I had spied what I took to be a fisherman's access from the road. Reaching this turnoff I sauntered off a couple of hundred meters towards the river, only to be surprised when I came into a farmyard, complete with farmer. Apologising for barging onto his land, I was relieved when he readily acceded to my request to complete our crossing to the river.
The river was in high flow, but looked OK. Gratifyingly, mountains of didymo were being washed downstream, although with the prodigious amounts still holding onto the rocks of the river bed I would imagine it will take a serious flood to somewhat clean the river out after this dry, low flow summer. We took the precaution of linking up with packs unclipped - the flow was fast and to the bottom of our shorts - it would not have taken too much more water to have made the river not crossable in safety.
There followed a kilometer or two of easy bush travel. Stephen's feet were really suffering by now, and he went bare foot with gaiters for the last section, an interesting combination.
Fortunately it didn't take much of this before arriving at the Kiwi Burn Hut, our destination for the night, after a not at all shorter day.
Never mind, it will make for some very short days as we go through the lakes, so hopefully gone Stephen's feet time to recover once off gravel roads.
The hut is very agreeable and we have the somewhat unexpected pleasure of having it to ourselves. It has a nice little pot belly stove, which, given the rain and temperature, we've fired up for the evening - it has a tiny firebox so will be difficult to keep going for any length of time.
The day ended with some more pack repair. I'd overfilled one of my outer accessible sections, and the thread had started coming away. I must remember to get some more thread in Queenstown.
A very short day beckons tomorrow, so I'll be sleeping in as long as the sun allows.
Continuing on, the valley opened out into one of those huge, wide, glacier carved valley's that this part of the country is well known for, similar in many ways to the better known Matukituki valley.
