Author: matt

Date: 29 January
Trail covered: 14.4km (kms 2070.3 to 2084.7)
Weather: light rain all day

I slept in just my sleeping bag liner for most of the night, because it was so warm. I did put the sleeping bag over me at one point in the night but didn’t zip it up.

I woke up to unexpected rain. Honestly, it looks like this area needs it given how brown it is, and it’s nice to know that the chance of any kind of fire on the track is now very reduced.

The hunter got back to his van at 7:30am. He said that he slept out in the bush because the best times for hunting are just after sunset and just before sunrise. He didn’t even have a tent or anything that I could see.

I had my breakfast in the shelter while I waited out the worst of the rain. There was a little mouse hanging around.

He sometimes came out to look for crumbs. I didn’t chase him away because watching him gave me something to do while I waited for the rain to stop.

Once the rain largely stopped at 9am I continued walking. I had to backtrack a bit to get back to the path. There were some cows here that weren’t here yesterday.

Sure enough they all scattered and then watched from a safe distance. Some even started following.

Back at the junction…

…I got wet from walking down the narrow, overgrown path – much more wet than I did from the little bit of rain that was still coming down.

Fortunately the overgrown path didn’t last long and I ended up back in the trees. It wasn’t long before I saw Chris from yesterday. He was joined by a little robin who was not afraid of us at all.

The robin stared longingly at us. I can’t work out if it wanted to be fed or if it was waiting for us to move so it could find bugs.

Chris said he was having stomach aches and so he kept needing to rest. He mentioned he was considering turning back, partly because of the pain but also because the weather forecast for Monday is supposed to be heavy rain and ideally we need to complete this section before then, because there are several river crossings just before Arthur’s Pass that need good weather. That’s definitely motivation to keep going!

11am came and I was still walking through the trees.

I had three options for huts today. The first was Hope Halfway Shelter, apparently 2hr40 in. The second is Hope Kiwi Lodge which is 4hr30 and third is Hurunui Hut which is something like 10 hours. I would like to make Hurunui Hut but is my pack too heavy? Am I too out of shape after last week?

The red line doesn’t match the trail just before the Halfway Shelter, but at least it matches the path on the topo map so that is reassuring.

I arrived at Hope Halfway Shelter, a very quaint little building with not a lot else other than beds and a place to prepare food. I had some cheese and crackers and continued on.

I had a quick look at the intentions book before leaving, to see where some of the people I know are. Nick and Robert are 10 days ahead of me. Rhydian is 8 days ahead, and Clem and Sabine are 7 days ahead. No sign of Dave and Baxter in the book, though.

The rain started to mess with me after leaving the shelter. It started not long after I started walking again, so I stopped and put my rain jacket on. But in the two minutes it took me to do that, the rain stopped so I took the jacket off again as it was too hot.

But then the rain started again and while it wasn’t heavy, it didn’t stop at all before the next hut. And since I didn’t put the jacket back on, I got pretty wet.

After two hours of walking in the rain, and one more swingbridge…

I arrived at Hope Kiwi Lodge.

It’s a serviced hut with 20 or 23 beds depending on which source you go by. I like it because it’s one of the huts with two separate rooms of beds separate from the main living area.

There was a hunter here who was waiting for the rain to stop before he went out hunting. There was also a group of school-aged kids here, one of whom had a real deep cough and had no hesitation coughing all over everything. I made sure to carry my hand sanitiser at all times while staying here.

I considered having lunch #2 here and then continuing on but the rain showed no signs of letting up and once I changed into dry clothes I definitely didn’t feel like going out in the rain again. So that was my decision made to stay here the night. Since I arrived at 2pm, this will be the longest amount of time I’ve spent in any one hut before!

I spent a bunch of time shooing the two big blowflies that were inside out of the hut. It was a fruitless endeavour though, because even though I managed it, unless everybody commits to keeping the doors of the hut closed they’re just going to come in again!

As the afternoon progressed, four other TA hikers showed up – Timon from Switzerland, Foure from France (the girl from yesterday in the shuttle), Florian from Dunedin and finally Pierre, also from France. The company at the hut was a good mix of people. Timon told me that he had seen Chris at the Halfway Shelter so it sounds like Chris didn’t decide to turn back.

The plan is to get up early tomorrow and try and get a full day of walking in, partly to beat the rain forecast for Monday but also because I’ve had two “practice” days now and so I should be ready and in shape for a full day of walking tomorrow.

In addition I was doing some thinking about my target finish date of February 29. That is 31 days from now and there’s a bit over 900km to go. I’m not entirely sure that’s doable, but I’m going to keep it in the back of my mind that I need to be doing 30km days if I want to hit that date. That might make me continue on some days when I might otherwise stop instead.

Lastly… I realised tonight something sad. It seems that my recent spate of losing things is continuing. Taco Terry, the toy my niece gave me before I started walking and who has been my little buddy the whole trip, seems to have gone missing. I pulled my entire pack apart three times but he is nowhere to be seen. The other things I lost over the last few days were minor and can be replaced easily… but without Taco Terry I feel sad and alone. I guess he decided to stay in Christchurch or Napier somewhere.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 30 January
Trail covered: 30.4km (kms 2084.7 to 2115.1)
Weather: sunny until the evening

Waking up this morning, the weather looked beautiful and sunny. That was quite a surprise given that I got up at 1am to pee and at that time it was still raining. So let’s go!

After a quick cereal breakfast I left the hut with Florian. Timon and Foure had left before us. Florian seems like a cool guy who started at the top of the South Island earlier this month. We have a similar pace which is always nice. He also writes a diary every day, but he writes it with a pen in a notebook. I saw him writing it last night.

The track firstly took us up across a field and then through the bush up a small hill called Kiwi Saddle. There was a brief detour to a lookout which we took to see what we could see.

The track had its fair share of muddy bits. Some of them we could simply go around.

Lake Sumner was poking through the trees a lot of the morning.

And at one point we came out of the forest right beside the lake.

Even though there is a clearly defined trail here (in the photo above on the right), this is actually the wrong way. We were supposed to be on the other side of the fence following the bushline, which meant we had to climb the fence. Luckily it wasn’t electrified.

My 11am picture was back in the forest, next to this big tree which looks like it met an untimely end.

Walking through here we heard a noise and then something fell out of a tree with a big crash. I didn’t see what it was but Florian said he saw a big branch fall out of a tree and crash into the ground. He said it “exploded on impact”. It was a surprise since it wasn’t too windy. Glad my tent wasn’t under it.

Along here was another one of those times that we were following the dotted line on the topo map rather than the red Guthook line. But soon, both paths on the map show that we needed to cross the field.

All the time with the lake on our left side.

The next hut is in view now, despite still being 2km walk away!

At the other end of the field is a swingbridge. The wind had picked up a bit by this point and so the bridge was swaying a bit. Florian said he felt nauseous.

We made it to Hurunui Hut. We were making fairly good time – it took less than four and a half hours to get here when the suggested time was six hours.

I planned to camp somewhere tonight so that my tent could dry out – it was still quite wet from yesterday morning at Windy Point. However since the wind was picking up now, I thought perhaps I should use this lunch break to dry out my stuff in case I don’t end up camping tonight as the wind might be too strong. I think there are quite strong winds forecast for later.

The view from the hut was nice.

I was looking at the topo map and the two hills directly across the river from the hut are Dinner Hill and Isolated Hill. I thought they were great names.

In the intentions book I noticed that Dave and Baxter are only 2 days ahead. That’s good, it means I might catch them soon. Another thing in the book was lots of people complaining about people leaving trash in the hut. I could see why – this hut had alcohol bottles everywhere. But there’s no point writing it in the intentions book. The people who left the rubbish in the hut have already gone.

We continued on after over an hour here. The next section has a natural hot pool and it’s a highlight of the trail. Florian in particular was excited about it.

The trail from here was quite easy.

We did see this unusual arrangement of bones.

And then not long after, this sign. That must mean the hot pool is nearby.

It was a nice and clear little pool, and yes it was extremely hot. There was a guy from Japan who had just got out of the pool when we arrived. He was a northbound hiker.

After just dipping my feet in the hot pool, I really didn’t think I’d be able to get all the way in as I thought it was too hot. Florian got all the way in and then he told me that it’s like getting in a cold pool – it’s a shock at first but you get used to it fast. So I did.

After just a few minutes I was overheating though, so I continued on. Florian was clearly loving the pool and so I left him behind.

The track got a bit harder from this point, well hard compared to the easy track so far today.

And there was a lot of mud. At this section…

I misjudged a step and ended up with one very muddy boot.

The track went in and out of the trees again.

I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t just walk down this nice open field the whole way. But I diligently followed the path like the markers said.

The track got more like a 4WD track as I approached the next hut.

This one has a little research station nearby.

And here is the hut itself – Hurunui No. 3 Hut is its name.

There were quite a lot of people at this hut already. Ben was there – the American guy who tought us the card game Kaboo at Rocks Hut a few weeks ago. There was also Troy and Jordan who I had seen before but didn’t get their names until now. I spent a bit of time chatting with them. Timon and Foure had also arrived, and there were about 5 or 6 others.

Everyone was quite quiet at this hut and it was a nice pleasant place to have lunch #2 but I decided since it was only a bit after 5pm and there was another hut (Camerons Hut) only 5km away, I thought I’d keep going. If I’m going to get to the Bealey Hotel by Sunday (and Bluff by 29 February) I can’t afford to sit around.

I had read that Camerons Hut is not the nicest of huts, and the trail notes describe it as an “emergency shelter”, but how bad could it be? I also read it was only 4 beds. There’s quite a high chance it might be full already. Shame I can’t call ahead and find out!

The track was much the same as before…

Although this time there were two things slowing me down. The first was that I’d packed my stove into my pack in such a way that it was digging into my lower back. I was too lazy to do anything about it so I just put up with it. The second is that the skin around my dead toenail seems to have become infected and it started to hurt. I’m going to have to see what I can do about that at the next hut.

This section of bush was very beautiful.

And right after that was a scary swingbridge. Well I don’t know if this one is a swingbridge or not – it’s one whole order of magnitude scarier than most swingbridges.

I wasn’t too happy about walking across this with nobody else around… but it was either that or cross the river. So cross the tightrope I did.

The hut came into view pretty soon.

But first one more walk through the trees and over a couple of obstacles.

As I approached the hut, I thought I saw two walking poles outside, but they turned out to just be two sticks.

This sure is quaint. I was almost afraid to go in. But the wind was starting to pick up and I felt a few spots of rain, so I did go in.

The words I used were “Jeepers Creepers”.

Nobody else was here. At least there’s only one mention of mice in the intentions book, so they’re not a huge problem, and it was cozy and I had the place to myself. I had a quick dinner and then hung the food out of reach of any mice.

The wind was really howling once I had dinner and it was raining a bit too. I was very glad that I actually made it to the hut in time and that I was inside and not in my tent, although having one other person here for company would have been nice. Actually, if you believe the intentions book here, I’m the first person to actually spend a night in this hut in over a week.

This hut has strange plastic hammocks instead of the mattresses the other huts have. And there’s no water tank so it’s a 5 minute walk down to the river to get water.

I’m glad I pushed on the extra few kms to this hut. I have a good head start tomorrow and I should have plenty of time to get to Bealey Hotel by Sunday afternoon. It sure is cold in here though. The wind comes into the hut under the door and through holes in the wall. I was curled up in my sleeping bag by 8:30.

Lastly the toenail update. If you don’t want to know you can finish here!

Since the lower left part of the toenail was digging into a swelled up and seemingly infected part of my toe, the toenail had to go. I got out my Swiss army knife and used the scissors to hack away at it bit by bit until the only bit of the nail that was left was the small bit connecting the nail to the skin in the lower right corner. Then I got out an antiseptic wipe and cleaned it up a bit.

It was good to be rid of this toenail. I no longer have to gingerly put on my socks each day now. Underneath it looked weird, but there is definitely a new nail growing. If you want to see… click here.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 31 January
Trail covered: 30.9km plus at least another km trying to find a good river crossing point (kms 2115.1 to 2146.0)
Weather: wet and windy until lunchtime, then it cleared up

It was very cold in Camerons Hut during the night. I was sure the cold was coming up through the plastic hammocks and the howling wind all night under the door and in the holes in the walls of the hut didn’t help. Plus the hammocks were uncomfortable. I had to constantly switch sides to stop my legs hurting. Although at least there were no rats or mice present that I noticed.

Despite that, when you’re staying on your own, it’s very easy to sleep in. I woke up at 8:30am – a lot later than usual. Since this hut is only a few kms from the previous No. 3 hut, all the other hikers from that hut came past while I was having breakfast. All except Timon, who knowing him would have come past while I was still asleep. All the other hikers as they came past came inside to talk to me briefly.

It rained most of the morning, and each time I thought the rain had taken a break, it started raining again. The three day old forecast that I looked at at Boyle Village said that there would be rain in the morning and then it would be fine. I decided that I’d wait in the hut and give it until 11am and then if it was still raining then I’d just go. At 10am I looked outside and saw this rainbow… does that mean it’s clearing?

At 10:55 the rain still hadn’t stopped so I left. I was starting out behind all the hikers from yesterday despite sleeping in the hut ahead of them. My 11am picture is just leaving the hut.

Today my ideal destination is Morrison Footbridge, about 33km away. It would put me in a good position to do the entire Goat Pass section tomorrow and end up at the Bealey Hotel tomorrow night. But since I left so late today, that is looking like a big ask. On the way there is Locke Stream Hut and Kiwi Hut as options.

I’m a bit annoyed at myself for trying to wait out the rain. If I got wet in the morning I would have dried out later anyway.

Here’s a familiar sight recently…

The valley started narrowing as I approached Harper Pass.

And it got a bit steep in places.

Over the morning I started to catch up to and then pass the people from the previous hut one by one.

It wasn’t long before I encountered Harper Pass Bivouac. A tiny little orange building with just enough space for two people to sit down and have their lunch. I’d just met up with Ben before I arrived, so we filled up the whole space.

I couldn’t spend too long here if I wanted to make my destination, so I continued on. As I started to go up Harper Pass, the views became nicer.

There were the usual precarious washed out sections where you really had to watch your footing.

I passed most of the remaining hikers at the top of Harper Pass. The only people in front of me now were Timon, Florian and Pierre.

One section coming down from the pass was a bit confusing… The arrows pointed along the top of here:

But is there really enough space to walk along the top of here? Or am I supposed to clamber down the stones? The answer is to fight your way through the trees and stay on the ridge.

The next hut to look out for is Locke Stream Hut. Here it is:

It is the first hut where DOC has freely admitted there are rats. They ask you to refill the bait stations while you’re there. I guess that’s why somebody felt the need to write this on the door.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this kind of thing is unnecessary, please don’t write silly messages on the huts and buildings! It’s not cool!

The sun was well out by now. The fact I was wet earlier in the day meant nothing now because the sun had dried everything out.

After a very quick lunch #2 here I pressed on. I came to the Taramakau river. I had been told that from this point, there were lots of rivers on trail and there was no point trying to keep your feet dry. So this was the first time on the whole trail I walked through the water with my boots on.

In a way it was refreshing. I could now walk through the rest of the rivers and not care about getting wet feet. And the water is actually refreshing on your feet and legs when the sun has been out. And it saves time changing footwear. I was hesitant before because I thought the boots might never dry out, however my boots got wet in the rain at Hope Kiwi Hut a few days ago and they dried out from that so I know it is possible to dry them.

It wasn’t long before I saw a green pack cover in the distance. It can’t be Timon as he’d be too far ahead and it can’t be Florian as his pack cover is blue… so it must be Pierre.

I saw shortly after that Florian was with him, so I picked up the pace to try and catch them. Pierre saw what I was doing and so he started jogging. I think he was just having a bit of fun and didn’t want to genuinely get away from me… although we had joked this morning at Camerons Hut that we all wanted to be first to Kiwi Hut because it was only a 6-bedder.

I did manage to catch the two of them after 10 minutes. Florian said yesterday he spent 3 hours in the hot pool. It drained all his energy and he didn’t think he was going to make it to the No. 3 hut.

After a bit more walking the two of them detoured to Kiwi Hut, as it’s not directly on trail. I decided not to join them as it would tempt me to stay there. Just in case the weather is bad in two days (Sunday) like has been forecast, I don’t want to be stuck due to river crossings on Goat Pass just before the Bealey Hotel.

Walking through the bush a bit further on, for the first time I put a hole in my clothes when my shirt snagged on a tree branch. How annoying.

The markers after here were non-existent. The only choice was to follow the map, firstly past two private huts:

And then down to the Taramakau River again. This time though it was not a nice river crossing. In fact it was the first river crossing I’d done where I was genuinely scared. I spent almost an hour and walked about a kilometer and a half trying to find a good crossing point.

The first place I tried to cross got too deep and too fast fairly quickly, so I retreated and looked further. The second place I tried was better, but the water was still flowing quite fast and my poles were shuddering when I put them in the water. I moved slowly, one limb/pole at a time, and slowly made my way across. It was very satisfying to reach the other side. I was really surprised such a scary crossing didn’t have any markers.

I thought I’d start up a “scariness scale” for river crossings since a lot of them are due to come up in the next week. This one was 8 out of 10. If it was 9 or 10 out of 10 I would not have crossed it.

The lack of markers continued for a long time yet. At first there was a fairly obvious path through the scrub:

But then after a while it just got overgrown and you had no choice but to wing it and just follow the river. If you were lucky there would be a few footsteps here and there to reassure you that you were going the right way.

And then, rocks.

Rocks, rocks and more rocks. Rocks for days. Rocks forever. Rocks up the wazoo. It was another case of just following the river. The rocks went on for over an hour.

I was aware that if these rocks kept up, then there would be nowhere to camp, and it was getting late. 7:30pm came and I was still walking along the rocks. It was kinda nice though. Just walking in a dead straight line with no change in scenery meant I could just relax and enjoy the surroundings. I did enjoy the walk along the rocks. But since the others detoured to Kiwi Hut I felt a bit alone again. And I missed Taco Terry still!

Once the rocks were over, the path went through gorse again, with plenty of flat pieces of grass to camp. The problem is there was lots of cow poo… and where there is cow poo, there are usually cows. I always think it’s not a good idea to camp where animals are present so I kept going.

The track then went back into the bush, which could have been a good camping spot but there was no water source so again I kept going. I knew the Otira River would be coming up soon. Maybe there’d be good places to camp there.

The next section was the flood track.

I thought since we were going near the river that there’d be a good place to camp soon.

But no, the track started going up.

And up in the bush the narrow path was quite overgrown. Again, nowhere to camp here. And it was getting dark. I wasn’t worried though. Morrisons Footbridge was a few kilometres away and if I was desperate I could do the last bit in the dark. I got my headlamp ready in case I needed it.

At this point I could hear motorbikes on nearby State Highway 73, which was the first time in a while I’d heard vehicles. Morrisons Footbridge is right beside the highway but there’s no town at that point or anything notable.

At one point the track did go down by the river and by this point is was 9:20pm and it was dark in the bush.

I decided this was going to be my camp spot for the night. There still wasn’t much flat land around but I found a little space underneath a big tree.

So I almost made it to my intended destination but not quite – I was 1 or 2km short. I was again a little annoyed at myself for not starting until nearly 11am, knowing that I would have dried out from the rain and I ended up leaving in the rain anyway so waiting it out didn’t even work.

It’s okay though, that just means I need an early start tomorrow. I decided I’d aim to leave in the morning at 6:30am. The trail notes say that the remaining part of this section will take 14 hours. That’s doable… but it would be nice to make the Bealey Hotel at the end of the section in time for dinner.

Because of the long day, the lack of flat ground and the sandflies I wasn’t able to cook any dinner so I had to settle for cereal for dinner. Damn, I really felt like something hot for dinner. As well as the cereal I had a lot of my snacks knowing that at the Bealey Hotel tomorrow I can get the food box I sent myself from Christchurch.

I could hear the Otira River since it was so close, and I could also hear trucks on the highway across the river.

Since I was walking in wet boots today for a lot of the day I was getting abrasions on my second toes (the little piggies that stayed home). I hope they don’t turn into blisters. It’s going to be the same tomorrow for the Goat Pass section tomorrow. Apparently there is a lot of rock climbing tomorrow as well as river crossings. It made me think of the big rock structures that needed to be climbed back on Mt. Rintoul in the Richmond Ranges. I hope it’s not as scary as that tomorrow.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 1 February
Trail covered: 31.2km (kms 2146.0 to 2177.2)
Weather: perfect for walking – overcast, light wind, no rain

Wow so it’s now February. Will this be the last month of the TA for me? Will I manage to finish by 29 February like I’ve anticipated? I can’t wait to find out…

I opened my eyes at one point during the night and it was still dark. Good, I thought, that means I can still sleep longer. But no, I was wrong, the alarm went off very soon after. Gee, I thought it would at least be a bit light at 5:40am. I hit snooze and slept another 10 mins.

I had wanted to leave by 6:30am but packing up the tent and having breakfast never goes as fast as I think it will. I didn’t get away until 7am.

You have the option here of going along the Otira River or back along the flood route from yesterday. Since the river was barely ankle deep in most places I chose to walk down the river.

I then followed a 4WD track into a farm.

Then it went into scrub. In hindsight I should have just kept following the river, as there was a lot of gorse this way.

I eventually got to the start of the Goat Pass track. There was a big sign listing all the dangers.

It was 7.30am by this point. There was another sign saying it is 14 hours to Greyneys Shelter from here.

I really hope it isn’t that far – the Bealey Hotel which is my intended destination is another 6km past there and I don’t want to arrive there at 10pm. But if I do there is a place called the Klondyke Campsite just past the shelter where I can set up camp. I hope it doesn’t come to that though. I want my food box and I also want a beer and greasy pub food for dinner.

This is the Mountain Run section of the annual Coast To Coast event. Apparently top athletes can do this section in 3 hours. Surely if they can do it in 3 hours, then I can do it in less than 14! In fact the Coast To Coast is actually six days from now. It was Saturday today and one of the few days in the next week where no rain is forecast, so I expected to see a lot of people out there today training for it.

Here I encountered a guy called Pete who had camped overnight beside these signs. He said he had the same plan as me originally, to start early and do this entire section in one day. But he said that after how difficult it was to cross the Taramakau River yesterday, he was having second thoughts, and ultimately decided not to do it. That was sad for me as I would have liked a buddy. It also made me question my decision to go through here today. I mean it wasn’t raining right now, but the weather can change in 14 hours!

Like the big warning sign says, the first river crossing is the Deception River. Even the name makes it sound scary. This crossing is 1.5km on and so I should be able to gauge fairly fast whether the river is at a safe level.

The trail notes have called this section the Deception-Mingha track, as you follow the Deception River up one side and then the Mingha River down the other. Hopefully it is well marked. Florian said that he has done this track before and doing it in one day is definitely doable. He also said that in the event of rain, the southern end of the track (the Mingha River) would be easier to escape from than this end (the Deception River).

If the rivers become impassable and you get stuck on the track, there are three huts to stay in. One is Upper Deception Hut halfway up this side, then Goat Pass Hut at the top, and then Mingha Bivvy halfway down the other side. So these were the backup options, but hopefully they’re not needed.

Sure enough after 1.5km I came to the first crossing of the Deception River. How this crossing goes will definitely determine the mood for the rest of the day.

It was fairly deep but not particularly fast moving. When a river is deep it is just mind over matter to cross it (as long as you can see the bottom). Fast flowing rivers are what sweep you away and where you get hurt. Crossing this river was a breeze compared to the Taramakau yesterday. Scariness rating 4/10. That’s a good start.

I didn’t realise at first but this river had to be crossed multiple times, in fact going up Goat Pass was spending almost the entire time in the river or on the rocky riverbed. There were only a few times where the trail went into the bush on the side.

I had managed to do 10km by 9.55am. I thought that was pretty good going. It was perfect weather for walking which helped. There were a fair few clouds and the sun is behind a layer of haze, but it looks like it won’t rain.

At one point a guide came through with a runner. She wasn’t running the Coast To Coast, she just wanted to see the course apparently. I spoke to the guide briefly and she said there is a lot of bad weather forecast starting tomorrow. I said that’s why I’m trying to do the whole thing today. Her response was that it shouldn’t be a problem. Nice to know.

Here’s my 11am picture: a waterfall that had to be crossed. I saw four or five guys at this point, but since it took me a while to cross this bit of water, I lost them.

Here’s Upper Deception Hut.

Well that’s what it’s called on the map and on the sign at the start of the section. But on the outside of the hut it says “Deception Hut” on the sign. I know I often talk about hut naming discrepancies but this seems to me like a big one. If you are in touch with Search and Rescue and it’s not clear which hut you’re at, it could be the difference between life and death. I wish they’d name the huts consistently.

I was the first to sign the intentions book in this hut today. I had lunch here and while I was doing that a runner went past and waved. The presence of other people coming this way again made me feel good that doing this track with a bad weather forecast tomorrow isn’t a bad idea.

From here it was really rocky. There were lots and lots of large boulders to climb over, and I was in the river most of the time. But I really enjoyed this bit. The rocks weren’t dangerous like the ones on Rintoul. If you fell you wouldn’t fall far. And being tall definitely helped.

I got up to Goat Pass Hut at 1:10pm.

I had a look in the intentions book. Joshua and Nina were in there from five days ago. Interestingly none of the runners that went past had signed themselves in. I guess they didn’t have time to stop.

It was quite windy at the top. But there was a boardwalk which was surprising – although it shouldn’t have been too surprising since the trail notes mentioned it. The boardwalk was quite long and was a nice change from the relative difficulty of the previous section.

It was really nice walking along here. I wonder if this boardwalk will last all the way to the bottom? It went a surprisingly long way.

There were still a few streams to cross. While crossing one of them I accidentally dropped one of my poles into the stream. It was quite a fast moving stream so I nearly lost the pole downstream, but luckily I grabbed it in time.

The poles have straps on them so that that doesn’t happen, however I stopped using the straps in the South Island. I remember Robert saying to me in Northland that he wouldn’t want to fall down a cliff and have his arm broken since he was strapped to the pole. Those words resonated with me and so for the last month I have just held the poles without the straps. I think it’d be more likely that the poles break than my arm breaks but I can’t get the image of my arm breaking out of my head.

Here’s the Mingha Bivvy. A fairly standard two-bed structure painted the usual “Rescue Orange”.

I didn’t stop for lunch #2 today. I wanted to save myself for a big pub dinner later.

From here it was easy going downhill at first alongside the Mingha River but as the path went further down there was more water and more climbs.

The way down was a bit “meh” after the enormity and the excitement of the uphill. You could say the Mingha River side was more of a “minger” than the Deception River side. I was glad when it was over.

The last bit was a bunch more rocks to walk along.

Near the road I encountered a Dad who was waiting for his son. The son was apparently walking or running the Coast To Coast track and Dad was getting worried that his kid wasn’t through yet. Although it had only been four hours. I told him he didn’t need to worry yet.

Soon after that Highway 73 came into view, as well as the train line that ran alongside it.

It was about 4:30 by this point. I was making good time but I had been thinking for a while about a small problem. If I go to the Bealey Hotel for a pub meal and get my food box, I either have to stay with them the night or backtrack 5km to a campsite. The other option could be to go to Bealey Hut which is 4km further on but then I’d arrive late and arriving after dark at a hut is not cool. Would the hotel have a room available on a Saturday I wonder? The weekend before the Coast To Coast? Probably not, I figured!

Well this was the point where cellphone service returned, so I could find out for sure. I called the Bealey Hotel and asked if they had any rooms… turns out they did! Phew… I will get my pub meal, beer and food box tonight after all, and won’t have to backtrack. Wonderful. And hopefully a comfy sleep too.

I was still a few km from the hotel though. There was one final river crossing before the safety of the highway – the Bealey River. This is it:

It was pretty tame. I gave it 3/10 on the scariness scale. That was the last river crossing before I was no longer “trapped” if the rain came in – if the rivers get flooded now at least I’m on a road and can get out instead of being stuck in a hut. That was a good feeling… however there are still a couple more river crossings before the hotel.

First though was a walk down a 4WD track beside the road and then under the railway line through this tunnel:

And here is Greyneys Shelter.

This was the point that the sign at the start of the day would take 14 hours to get to, and I’d done it in just over 9. Not too shabby.

In the car park was a car that had left this note in the window. I thought it was odd that somebody has explcity advertised that this car will be sitting vacant for two or three days.

Then there was this track, which had a big fence and was closed:

That wasn’t the way anyway. The way from here is the road.

At least for a little bit. Then you turn off to the left, and walk through a field:

Then a forest (the Klondyke Campsite is just after here):

Then on a 4WD track:

And then there is one final river crossing before the hotel – the Waimakariri River:

This was actually the scariest river crossing of the day. It was fairly fast moving and took a couple of goes to find a spot that wasn’t too deep. In the photo above, the river starts to turn just before the power lines. I found that a good place to cross that wasn’t too deep. The scariness rating for this river was 5/10.

Once you’ve crossed there you end up at the back entrance to the hotel. Some animals are waiting for you:

Here’s the pub’s accommodation.

For $80 a night I got a private room with shared facilities. It was all quite cramped and everyone was all over each other a bit. But a room with an ensuite was $180 so I didn’t complain.

I saw Dave and Baxter in the pub playing pool. They had hitched from the Otira River because they were worried about the Goat Pass section and the rain. I asked Baxter how he found the Taramakau River crossing from yesterday. He said he was “shit scared”. No wonder since he’s 14 years old and very lightweight.

In fact everyone I had talked to in the last few days was intending to skip the Goat Pass section because of the weather. I of course didn’t want to skip it, hence the big day today. Most people would do the pass in two days, according to the trail notes. I’m so glad I didn’t have to skip it, today was a really excellent day.

I had a burger for dinner and two beers, and dessert, and then also got my food box and ate sweets out of there. I was feeling a bit sick after all that. I tend to do that when I come across anywhere that sells food – stuff my face too much. I really shouldn’t.

It was a surprise that at the hotel they sold a few hiker-related items, in particular I got a new gas canister from there. Awesome – now I don’t have to worry about running out of gas with all my pasta I still have. If only they had milk powder, then I’d be set.

One final thing I noticed – I finished the section with some chocolate left over. That has never happened before. It wasn’t much chocolate – it was just one Freddo. But nonetheless, it was still an achievement.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen tomorrow. The weather forecast is all over the place. There’s a 20km walk to a hut called Hamilton Hut and then after that there are a bunch more river crossings. Hamilton Hut is apparently a common place to sit and wait if the river (the Harper River) is too high. Let’s see what the weather is like in the morning.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 2 February
Trail covered: 37.9km (kms 2177.2 to 2215.1)
Weather: wet at first

I think there are a couple of things worth pointing out before we go any further. First is the weather forecast for the next two days.

Pretty grim. The next is the logistical nightmare of the next couple of sections. You see, coming up soon are two breaks in the trail – the Rakaia River and the Rangitata River. Both these rivers are uncrossable on foot and therefore the trail simply stops on one side of the river and restarts on the other (like it does when crossing from the North to the South Islands). You can see it on the map at the end of the post.

However, there aren’t many options for getting around these rivers. The ends of the trail are in the middle of nowhere and so there’s no public transportation and very little traffic to hitchhike. It’s a massive 60km or 70km road walking to walk around each river. There’s a shuttle but it has to be booked in advance, and there is no phone reception either in Bealey or between Bealey and Lake Colridge where the first section of trail terminates. And given the awful weather forecast above, even if I could call the shuttle, how would I know what day I’d be at Lake Colridge? I could be stuck today with uncrossable rivers. You can see the problem.

Most people get to Lake Colridge and then either take a shuttle to Methven or manage to hitchhike there. Methven is a good place to resupply since there’s not a lot of resupply options in the week or so after there. Here’s the thing though – the previous section between Boyle Village and Bealey was supposed to take six days and I’ve done it in four, and the next section is scheduled to take four days but I reckon because of the bad weather I’m going to attempt to race through it and do it in one and a half or two days. Since I just picked up a food box and I had food left over from before, I’m carrying seven days worth of food for a section that will only take two days. My pack is unnecessarily heavy. I do miss the prunes and dried peaches I had in my last lot of food though.

It’s already raining this morning so I tried to put my pack cover over my pack but it’s a struggle to make it fit.

One of the guys staying in the Bealey Hotel shared accommodation is training for the Coast To Coast and he is apparently sponsored by Radix Nutrition who make freeze-dried meals similar to the Back Country Cuisine ones. He offered me a few and despite already having way more food than I needed, I’m never one to turn down a freebie so I accepted. But then two of the three he gave me were salmon and I don’t really like salmon but of course I was too polite to say so. So now I’m carrying two meals I won’t even eat. He did give me a free range chicken one though which will be nice. And once in Methven I can put the two salmon ones in the free food box in the campground and hopefully get some good karma (there’s always a free food box at every campground).

I was having a bit of a lousy morning. I didn’t sleep well because of the noise of the shared accommodation and the fact it’s been so hot at night. It’s already raining outside and my shoes are wet. Plus I didn’t know what to do about the logistics at Lake Colridge. I decided to just wing it. I’ll get to Lake Colridge and hopefully run into other people who have booked a shuttle. If not then there is apparently phone coverage somewhere near the village, possibly off trail a bit, so I’ll organise something there.

To try and improve my mood I treated myself to a fresh pair of socks since yesterday’s were wet through. Also I didn’t want the abrasions on my toes from the wet shoes yesterday to get any worse.

I talked to Dave and Baxter before leaving and they said they were also continuing on despite the fact it’s already raining. Their destination is Hamilton Hut, about 19km south of here. There are a lot of huts on the path today but once past Hamilton Hut there is nothing until a Campsite at Harper Village which is a further 19km on. I’m trying to go as far as I can to beat the weather and if I’m gonna make 38km today I better get a move on.

I did have a quick cereal breakfast leaving just enough milk powder for some pasta tonight. The “pasta meals for one” that I have require milk.

I left at 9:30am and it occurred to me once I put my pack on that everything is starting to smell bad. Even my rain jacket stinks, which was surprising. With that going on and the fact the rain is due to get a lot worse, it was really hard to get into a good mood this morning.

The first few kilometers today are down State Highway 73 again.

There was a very strong wind behind me on the highway. It was very helpful actually… however once I reached here:

I knew I had to turn right twice and once that happened it’s likely the wind would be blowing right in my face.

Here is the car park for the “Cass-Lagoon Saddles Track”.

Like always, if there is a car park then I figured the walk must be a little bit touristy and therefore might be fairly well groomed and marked.

This sign says Hamilton Hut is 7.5 hours away and by now it was 10:15am. That means an ETA of 5:45pm, which doesn’t leave much time to then do the 19km after that to the campsite. At least at a campsite it’s okay to turn up after dark if required. Time to go.

Bealey Hut is just five minutes up the path. It’s surprising to see a hut so close to the road. Normally they’re at least a few hours’ walk from the road.

I almost skipped going to the hut but I thought I better not. It’s only a two minute detour off the path. I stopped in and wrote in the intentions book.

I noticed my heavy pack quite early on. With the long days I’ve been doing everything is starting to hurt a bit. And the start of this path is a slog up a hill with a 500m elevation change. I couldn’t have done Goat Pass yesterday with such a heavy pack – climbing up all those boulders.

I stopped a short distance up the steep hill to remove my rain jacket. I was of course drenched in sweat already. With the big hill and muggy conditions it’s gonna be unavoidable. Pretty sure it will be an on off on off day for the rain jacket. I had a snack while I was stopped because of the small breakfast I had earlier and also to try and perk myself up. I was still feeling pretty miserable.

Up until this point I was listening to Linkin Park. To try and lighten the mood I put on some cheerier music to try to get me out of my funk. I remember saying to myself at the start of the whole TA that my success on this trail will depend on how well I sleep and how wet I get. That’s going to be tested here today I think.

It just so happened that where I stopped to take off the rain jacket was right beside a geocache. It had been a while since I found one. This one was an easy find.

My 11am picture is walking through the forest.

The music did help with my mood, especially when I started singing out loud to it. And the fact that I was in the forest meant the wind wasn’t blowing on me. That was good. Another thing that was good was that the big woolen socks that I put on were absorbing the water from my wet shoes but seemed to also be keeping my feet warm. And the rain was slowing rather than increasing. Maybe this day won’t be so bad after all.

Once above the treeline the view was pretty good.

That picture is the Bealey River that I followed yesterday. What was interesting is that yesterday the river was not very big, and there were a lot of rocks either side. From here, today, I couldn’t see the rocks. Is that because the river was now swelled because of the rain? Or has the rain just turned the rocks a darker grey and I just can’t see them? It was hard to tell because it was a bit cloudy.

I tried to zoom in on the phone camera and for the first time I realised it has a 50x zoom setting. Wow, that’s a lot of zoom. Let’s try it out now.

Hmm, that doesn’t really help me. I still can’t tell if the river is up from yesterday or not, although it kinda looks like it is.

Despite the exposed summit, the wind wasn’t blowing too hard. It was actually quite nice being up there and admiring the view.

I met two people called Rob and Nina going the other way. They heard me singing to myself which was a bit embarrassing. They mentioned to me that while they haven’t crossed the rivers beyond Hamilton Hut today, the other rivers they’ve seen on their travels today don’t look higher than usual. That’s more good news.

Here’s the first “hut” today – the Lagoon Saddle Shelter.

It’s a neat looking building and was quite cosy inside, although interestingly there’s nowhere set up for sleeping. I had lunch #1 here.

My lunch consisted of my new favourite wrap. Marmite, cheese and potato chips on a Smoky Chipotle wrap.

And also this fantastic Iced Mocha drink – another impulse purchase at the Bealey Hotel.

I think I’ve raved about these before, perhaps back in the first week. They taste so nice. The only problem is that they cost $4.50 and it takes no more than twenty seconds to drink them.

Time to continue on, back into the forest. There is apparently another hut right here, less than 100m from the one I just had lunch at, but I never saw it. It must have been hiding.

It wasn’t long before the trail appeared to reach a dead end. At this point, it simply reached the river and stopped.

The next photo was looking behind me. There was a marker there so I at least knew I was in the right spot here.

But where to now? I tried a bunch of different paths that led nowhere. That could only mean I’m expected to go down the river. That’s fine and nothing new, but I like it when the river crossings are marked so I don’t endanger myself for no reason.

The trail went in and out of the forest. Near this particularly slippery section,

I met someone else going north. She was from Quebec and she said she’d had no problems with river crossings, and she also said the section of trail beyond Hamilton Hut was easy. That’s great news. I told her some information about what was coming up next for her and we continued on.

Then soon after I met an American girl, also going north, who also had no problems with the river crossings. “Piece of cake” is specifically what she said.

Suddenly I was in a much better mood. The rain had stopped, I had a great lunch and the news for the upcoming section was all good.

Throughout the day I met about twelve people going northbound. That’s a lot of NOBOs, in fact possibly more NOBOs than I’ve met on all the rest of the trail combined. It must be about that time of year.

The next hut is West Harper Hut.

From the outside it looked a bit like Camerons Hut, where I spent the night three nights ago.

I wonder if it looked the same inside as Camerons Hut?

It most certainly did not look the same inside. Camerons Hut was not particularly comfortable but this was something else. I did not spend a lot of time here.

I did notice though that the majority of northbounders I passed didn’t write in the intentions book. I wish everyone would, so that the fullness of the upcoming huts can be anticipated.

At the hut I heard a bird noise I never heard before. Like a crow but higher pitched. Then it made a sound like “blebl lebl lebl lebl lewwwwwwwww”. Is there any chance that could be a kea? I’ve got no idea! But I didn’t fear. Time to step it up a gear and get out of here. I had one last jeer and left with the hut in my rear (okay that’s enough of that).

From here the trail got a fair bit easier. I even saw some cyclists when I stopped to get water, although each of them were pushing their bike.

The last guy I met going northbound was very chatty and we talked about all kinds of things. I mentioned I’d had no injuries since Waipu Cove “touch wood” and he suggested I touch his wooden walking pole. And it was only a short time further on that my left leg started to hurt. Clearly on this occasion, touching wood didn’t work.

I was quite conscious of the time. I’d been setting myself goals in my head. 16km by 3pm, 19km by 4pm, 22km by 5pm, etc. That way I’d get to the campsite (38km) not long after 10pm.

I got to the Hamilton Hut turnoff in 6 hours 20, not quite the 7.5 hours on the sign but I didn’t cut off as much time as I hoped.

It was a 10 minute detour to go and see the hut, and it’s a really popular hut apparently, but I didn’t get to see it. I just pushed on.

After the Hamilton Hut junction, the trail did indeed get easier. It was following a 4WD track in and out of the Harper River for about 13 km.

The trail notes say that if you don’t want to go through the river that it is possible to follow the left side of the river downstream without actually going in it. However I really didn’t believe that was possible. There was a lot of bush and at one point a cliff that had fallen away. And the 4WD track was so easy, I had to go that way to make efficient use of time.

So that meant getting my newly dried boots wet again. That’s okay, I remembered that it actually felt nice coming up Goat Pass with wet boots. And there was a comment on Guthook for this section by “John Goes Places” saying “just get your feet wet and embrace the suck”. So I did indeed do just that.

The river was really refreshing actually in the late afternoon. Maybe I shouldn’t be afraid to swim in it on days when I’m not on such a time pressure. If anything it might mean I’ll smell less.

A surprise along here was this 2,200km marker, although like the 2,000km marker it was a bit early, according to Guthook. The app reckons I was only at km2198.7.

My left leg was starting to hurt fairly bad now. It was the same sort of pain that made me take a week off in Kerikeri and Whangarei in the third week. I was worried about it, but I always had the dire weather forecast in the back of my mind and so I kept on walking through the pain, even though I wasn’t happy about it. Plus there were absolutely no hills in the 19km between Hamilton Hut and the campsite. That hopefully will help with my leg pain.

One landmark that I passed was “The Pinnacles”.

It was an interesting series of pointy rocks, but I don’t know much more about them than that. I know there are other places in New Zealand called The Pinnacles too, for example there’s a place in Coromandel with that name.

This spot is worth mentioning:

When you’re at this point, this is the last time that the Harper River is crossed. It’s easy to spot because of the two fine specimens of mountains in the background. The one on the left is named Gargarus, and the one on the right is Mt Fitzwilliam.

I didn’t notice at the time, but when I looked at my photos later I noticed the same orange haze over the area that descended on Auckland a few weeks back during the Christmas Break. I’m surprised I didn’t notice it at the time because it looks really obvious in these pictures compared to the ones from earlier in the day. I did notice that the sun was much redder than usual but I didn’t think much more of it. It must be the smoke blowing across from the Australian bushfire again.

I crossed the final crossing of the Harper River. Its scariness rating was 2/10.

Not long after, at 6:25pm, I got hunger pangs. I’d never actually stopped for lunch #2 so I wasn’t surprised. I sat down and just had a mix of nuts and fruit called “Sunshine Mix”. While I was doing that, I took some time to just sit and look and admire the scenery and take in the grandness of my surroundings. I suddenly felt like all the problems I had at the beginning of the day had gone, and I had no problems in the world. It was When I’ve finished the trail maybe I could do meditation or something. It would be nice to have this feeling all the time.

There was one last river crossing – the Avoca River. This is the one I’d been dreading all day. Let’s have a look…

It was deep but hardly flowing at all. Scariness level 1/10. What a fizzer. All that worrying for nothing.

But wait! Not long after, another river crossing! This one didn’t even have a name on the topographic map and so I was surprised it was fairly notable. It was moving quite fast. I gave it a 4/10 for scariness. I really hope that’s it with the river crossings now.

The 4WD track ended at a place called Glenthorne Station – a big cattle and shep farm. The trail went around the edge of it.

That’s Mt. Ida in the left of that picture. The Harper Campsite is near the bottom of that mountain and then the road walk to Lake Colridge tomorrow goes around the back of it. After a bit more walking I could even see the road in the distance.

I had it in my head that tomorrow’s road walk was 22km, but I looked at Guthook while walking and it said that Lake Colridge Village is 28km from the campsite. Gee, how did I get that wrong?

That’s gonna be a long walk tomorrow since if there is a shuttle coming it will turn up between 2:30pm and 3pm. And right now there is still 5km to the campsite and everything hurts now. Every single step hurts in both legs. No wonder people take four days to do this section. I really ought to leave the long days until I have a lighter pack. But I can’t change the weather forecast, even though this time it seems to have been wrong.

All this walking in a dead straight line gave me time to think. My brain completely went into its own little world. I thought about what I’d write in my final Facebook post once I get to Bluff, what car I’d buy myself once this is over, I started reliving the first day of the trail, anything to take my mind off the walking and the pain. Luckily there was nothing in the way, I completely zoned out. If there was any obstacle in the pathway I would have walked right into it.

In fact it was hard to know how much further to the campsite. The GPS watch started going haywire. Whole kilometers were taking only 5 minutes if you believe the watch (I wish). And there were again times where the Guthook line didn’t match reality. It was trying to take me right through the middle of the farm.

With about 2km to go the wind really picked up again. That meant it could be hard to sleep tonight if the campsite is exposed.

After what seemed like forever, I reached the end of the track and came out at the road, just as the sun was setting.

With the ease of the last 19km of terrain, I had made really good time, in fact it wasn’t even 8:30pm yet. Since it was still a respectable time, while I was walking along here I took my phone off flight mode and also turned on my backup phone, in the hopes that one of them would have cellphone coverage. I thought I read that there might be some here. That way I could call the shuttle and them to expect me tomorrow.

Sadly no, I didn’t get signal on either phone. Shame.

It was one more kilometre to Harper Village where the campsite was.

I saw my first South Island sheep! And they look different here!

The campsite is, for some reason, run by Trustpower.

Trustpower have power generation facilities both here and Lake Colridge. Apparently there’s a guy called Kev who works at Trustpower and he calls into the campsite sometimes to see if people need a lift to Methven. I bet he won’t be around this late though.

I hobbled into camp at 8:45pm. Wow, fifteen tents are already set up here. Surely someone here has organised a shuttle for tomorrow. The first people I talked to were going northbound but they pointed at the tents of people going south who they reckon have organised a shuttle. Sweet. They’re asleep now but I’ll catch them in the morning.

After walking all day by myself it’s a bit of a shock to have so many people in a campsite in the middle of nowhere. It all felt very different from the first two weeks when I was always alone in the campsites (until Rhydian turned up).

I looked at the trail notes… Now I know where the 22km came from earlier. There is in fact 22km of road walking but then there is also a “lake track” and an “arboretum track” before you hit Lake Colridge Village. So that explains that. I will have to leave before 7:45am tomorrow to get there in time.

By the time I settled down it was still very windy, and hard to get the tent pegs into the ground because of the rocky ground. Not a good combination! I set up my tent the best I could and then went over to the picnic table to have dinner. When I got back to the tent two tent pegs had already come out in the wind. I put them in again and weighed them down with rocks. I also put rocks inside the tent in all four corners, which should be fine. The wind is strong but nowhere near the wind levels from Havelock back in December.

And actually there is just the right amount of wind: a bit so that the temperature is cool, not so much that I’m concerned about it, and the best part is… it keeps the sandflies away! It seems they don’t like wind! I could make a nice pasta dinner at the picnic table with not a single sandfly coming after me. It was excellent and a great end to a long day. I could even take my time getting my stuff organised and getting into the tent, and no bloody sandflies anywhere. Actually I tell a lie, one lone sandfly did make its way inside the tent. It was quickly dealt with.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 3 February
Trail covered: 29.6km (kms 2215.1 to 2244.7)
Weather: gale force winds and hot

During the night the combination of hot and windy weather and sore legs meant I lay in my tent wide awake. I didn’t feel tired at all. At 1am I went outside the tent to check on the tent pegs because of the strong wind and to open the little ventilation door at the back of the tent to try and let a bit of the wind inside the tent to cool it down. As I was getting back into the tent I looked up and saw the stars. They were amazing, it was like almost every space in the sky had a star there if you looked far enough into the distance. It was like looking at the ends of the universe.

I tried to take a photo with the night mode on my camera. Of course I knew that it wouldn’t even be close to what I was seeing, but I was surprised that it did at least capture something.

The wind picked up at 1.30am. I hope nobody else’s tent blows away (or any of their other stuff). I’m the last tent downwind in the line of tents so I’d be hit with it.

I think it was probably about 2am when I finally did fall asleep. Of course then the alarm woke me up a few hours later at 6:30am.

When I woke up a few people had gone already. Not the occupants of the two tents that had organised a shuttle, though. I went and used the loo first. I had to queue for the toilet for the first time ever since starting the trail. I’m surprised that doesn’t happen more often honestly! While I was queueing, there were a few spots of rain which seemed unusual as there were hardly any clouds above us. Did that mean the forecasted torrential rain was going to come today?

I talked to a guy called Simon, who had booked the shuttle. Uh oh, it turns out Simon is getting picked up from Lake Georgina, which is near Lake Colridge but not on the same road. That’s a bit of a pain. I’ve asked Simon if he would ask Wayne who drives the shuttle to detour into Lake Colridge. He said he would ask, but I have no idea of the likelihood of the shuttle actually detouring to get me. I figured that there must be NOBOs who will be dropped off at Lake Colridge, so the shuttle is likely to come past. I mean, there were 16 of us here last night!

I had some breakfast and had left by 7:45am. The shuttle would turn up sometime after 2:30pm if it was going to so that leaves nearly 7 hours to walk 28km, at least 22km of which is on the road. I can’t waste too much time.

On the way out I realised that Harper Village really doesn’t have much. Just a few industrial buildings, a few houses…

… and a couple of friendly horses.

I also noticed this sign.

These old black and white signs were around when I was a kid but I haven’t seen one since then, in several decades. I know it doesn’t sound like much but I was excited about it.

Here’s another cool sign. It’s one I’ve seen on many Instagram feeds and Facebook posts. For some reason I thought it was further south.

Can I get a selfie by it?

The view didn’t change much for the 22km of road walk.

There was a rainbow at one point. The rain cleared after a short bit of walking, and it got hot.

There were a few toilets on the way, but every single bit of grass and toilet and reserve had “no camping” signs.

While walking I passed a European girl. I didn’t get her name, mainly because she had her headphones on while walking and she was walking down the middle of the road. That’s really dangerous! I mean I know there weren’t a lot of cars on this road, but I saw a couple each hour, and she really wasn’t paying attention. But it wasn’t my place to say anything.

About 10 minutes after I passed her, a loud car horn pierced the air. I bet I know what that is. Somebody tooting at this girl trying to get her to get out of the way.

Here’s my 11am picture. It’s another piece of the same road.

I caught up to a guy called Steven from the Netherlands. We walked together for a while, and we had the same pace so it was nice to have a bit of company.

The wind was behind us almost all of the road walk. It was gale force at times and would blow us from side to side on the road. I’m so glad it wasn’t blowing into our faces. It was hard enough walking with my sore leg. Having a headwind probably would have made me break down and curl up into a ball on the side of the road. I feel sorry for the northbounders today, if there are any!

Steven was trying to hitchhike instead of walking all the way to the end of this section of trail at Lake Colridge, so when he stopped to filter some water I left him behind as I had to keep walking.

I also passed two others who were taking a photo of this view. I think this might have been Lake Georgina where the shuttle was going to meet Simon today.

My left leg really started to hurt again by the end of the day. And 22km is a really long way to be walking on the road, especially at a fast pace.

After 21km on the road you encounter this intersection and have to make a hard turn to the right onto Homestead Road, and then walk one more kilometer on the road. It was from this point where the gale force winds hit me in the face. For 1km I got to learn what it would be like to be someone going north on this section today. It wasn’t pleasant, in fact when the wind was at its worst I had to just stand there and wait until it died down, as it was simply too strong to walk through.

After the road walking was a section of track called the Lake Hill Track.

It was described as being adjacent to private property. Oh no, that is “TA speak” for an unmaintained, narrow and deteriorating track through the back of somebody’s farm. Sure enough that’s exactly what it was.

It was an easy track at first as you can see above, however then it deteriorated really fast. It was overgrown:

And swampy:

And had every spiky plant known to man.

It had Lake Colridge right beside it though, that was its only redeeming feature.

Lake Colridge is a very beautiful, very blue lake. If it weren’t for the beauty of this lake, I could very well have declared this the worst section of trail ever… but that could have been the exhaustion and soreness talking.

The track got better as time went on and then it was back onto the road again. A guy stopped and I hoped he might offer me a ride but he asked me if I had seen a dog around and when I said no he thanked me and drove away.

The last bit before Lake Colridge village was the Arboretum Track. It went alongside some pipes used by the power plant.

This was also the first spot where I could see the Rakaia River, in the background of the photo above. This large, braided river is the reason the trail ends at Lake Colridge and restarts on the other side of the river. This river is very dangerous and the Te Araroa Trust don’t recommend that anyone attempt to cross it. I certainly won’t be giving it a go.

Sure enough the Arboretum Track went through a bunch of trees – although a lot of them were simply dead pine trees.

This was a nicer track to walk down though than the Lake Hill Track, that’s for sure. There was also a bit of phone reception coming down this track, so I used that opportunity to call Wayne from the Alps2Ocean shuttle. It went straight to voicemail which likely means he is out driving. Since it’s an 0800 number, there’s no way to send him a text message. Oh well.

Coming into Lake Colridge Village at 1:45pm, it was clear that this is similar to Harper Village. There is nothing here but a power plant and a picnic table.

It’s not going to be easy to hitchhike out of here if the shuttle doesn’t turn up. Luckily one of the guys working at the power plant said hi to me as I walked past and I asked if he could take me into Methven. He said that if I was still here at 5pm (over three hours away) then he would be able to. That was reassuring.

There was also the Lake Colridge Lodge in town which was going to be my backup option for accommodation if I couldn’t get a ride out of here but there was a big sign saying “lodge closed”. Well, there goes that option.

Three other TA walkers were already here, but they decided to walk towards Methven at the same time as hitching to increase their chances. My leg hurt too much to be doing that. So I sat in this spot near the picnic area and power plant sticking my thumb out towards any vehicle that came past (which was maybe one every twenty minutes).

While I was waiting around another TA hiker came and joined me at the hitchhike spot. I kind of hoped that wouldn’t happen because a car is much more likely to pick up one hitchhiker rather than two. But I can’t very well tell him to go away.

One lady stopped and said she was going to Windwhistle, about two thirds of the way to Methven. I declined the offer as I had faith in the power plant guy who said he’d pick me up later but the other hiker accepted the offer. So at least that meant I was by myself.

Another couple stopped but said they weren’t going towards Methven.

Nearly two hours passed, and at 3:30pm it definitely appeared as if the shuttle wasn’t coming today. That sucked.

At about 4pm some contractors doing gardening at the power plant stopped to give me a ride into Methven. Hooray, it was starting to get hot sitting there in the sun for over two hours. They were cool guys. They said that they always see walkers along this road.

While driving, when we passed the Rakaia Gorge we stopped and I took a photo of the Rakaia River. As it flows through the gorge the braids of the river all join together. This is one of only two roads in the whole South Island to cross this river, the other being State Highway 1 out on the east coast.

It would be very very difficult to hitchhike directly to where the trail restarts on the other side of the river. Almost every hiker spends the night in Methven because the campground is apparently really hiker-friendly and cheap, and it’s a good chance to resupply. So that was always my plan.

The contractors dropped me at the Methven Campground. There already were Julie and Susan, Troy and Jordan, Brad and Lisa, and at least two other hikers. Most are waiting out the rain tomorrow and then we will all be starting on Wednesday (two days from now) on the south side of the river. The owner of the campground is going to take hikers there who want to go.

And also… I couldn’t believe it, Rhydian was there! He was so far ahead of me a few days ago.

I got one of these little cabins. As expected it was like a sauna inside. But for only $25 a night, that really isn’t too bad. I booked in for two nights because I definitely need a rest day for my sore leg, and to be honest it’s hurting so bad I might even need more than one rest day.

I did go for a walk with Rhydian into town to get a beer. We had two each and caught up with all the trail gossip then I got food on my own. I bought way too much food like I always do in towns.

When I got back to the campground at 8:30pm I saw Rhydian in the kitchen and he was with two new hikers called Becks and Dermot. Becks had been reading my blog and recognised me. We had a chat for a while but then I had to excuse myself and go and lie down because I was feeling a little sick from eating so much. Pretty much as soon as I lay down on the bed I fell straight into a deep sleep with the door and window to the cabin wide open and no sheets or sleeping bag on me.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 4-9 February

So it appears I have injured myself again somehow, and this time it’s more serious. It’s so frustrating. I’m ready and willing to walk the trail but my seemingly unfit body can’t handle it. It wasn’t too much of a surprise when this happened after two weeks but I haven’t felt any real pain since Waipu Cove on day 29 and so to have this happen now is really surprising. Not only have I been stuck lying around in the Methven Campground for nearly a week just waiting for it to heal but all the people I know and wanted to stick with are now ahead of me. And I still can’t walk without pain.

It sucks. It truly sucks. I just hope I’m not permanently injuring myself in some way by doing Te Araroa. I don’t know if it’s the heavy pack I’ve been carrying over the last week or the long days I’ve been doing (even though I did longer days in the North Island) or if this is just all starting to take its toll on me slowly but surely.

Until now I haven’t bothered going to the doctor or physio because the advice is always the same. Go home and rest up. Put ice on it. That’ll be $90, please. But I’ve had six days of rest now and my leg still hurts.

So I’m going back to Auckland tomorrow while this heals, which looks like it could be a while. I’ll go to the physio while I’m up there. Hopefully it will be healed by March and I can finish off the rest of the trail next month. But right now I’m not optimistic.

Here’s a brief rundown of what I’ve been doing this week.

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After I first arrived at the campground on 3 February and had dinner, I lay down on the bed and immediately I fell straight to sleep. I didn’t actually wake up again until 5am. The door and window to the cabin were still wide open and it was starting to rain so I went outside and quickly brought my shoes inside. Luckily they were still dry.

It was at this point I noticed that my left leg was sorer than ever. It was similar pain to the pain I had in Kerikeri in the third week but not quite as bad. It is a shame that I can’t continue tomorrow because it would’ve been cool to travel with this group.

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4 Feb: I went back to sleep from 5am until 8am. I took some painkillers and waited for them to kick in, then hobbled into town for breakfast.

I got some coffee and food and a few groceries and then planned to put my feet up at the campground all day.

However in the common room at the campground there were a lot of people wanting to play pool. I couldn’t resist, so despite it not being a really active sport, I didn’t sit around with my feet up as much as I should have.

It rained almost all day. I spent nearly the entire day in the games room with the other hikers. It was a very social day.

Rhydian took the two salmon Radix Nutrition meals off me that I was given a few days ago. I must remember to ask him how they tasted.

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5 Feb: most of the hikers got the owner of the campground to take them to the trailhead at the southern side of the Rakaia River. Rhydian has decided not to go with them – he’s going to walk a different way to Tekapo. He’s really against paying a guy to get around the second river – the Rangitata River. He’s from this area so he knows it well. He was originally going to stick to the trail and cross the Rangitata River but it’s likely to be flowing too fast because of all the rain recently.

I stayed in the cabin most of the day because my leg still hurt and I don’t feel like I actually rested it yesterday. When it’s not so hot outside the cabin is a much more pleasant temperature and is a nice place to chill out.

I spent almost the entire day lying on the bed playing a game called Lemmings on my phone. I loved this game when it came out in 1991.

I did try walking into town at 6pm to get an Indian curry for dinner. It was really nice. I was the only one dining in but there were lots of people getting takeaways. During the walk my leg hurt but not as much as the last two days.

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6 Feb: the day was largely spent watching TV in the common room. Shows watched were Tipping Point, The Chase, the news, Mom, 2 Broke Girls, Millionaire Hot Seat.

Then more resting in the cabin playing games. I went and got dinner and a Guinness from the Blue Pub.

My leg still hurts, not as much as the first day but I definitely can’t continue walking yet.

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7 Feb: Florian and Pierre are here. News from them is that they had to wait two rain days in Arthur’s Pass. At least six other hikers are also here.

The Coast to Coast is today. The Goat Pass section was scrapped because of the week of rain and a changed route was used instead. I have a feeling the new route is mostly on-road but I’m not sure.

So again, even though I’ve hurt myself because of the big hiking days, I’m so glad I got to do this section.

I went to the pharmacy today and got some strapping tape and some Arnica tablets.

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8 Feb: I woke up to what seemed to be the aftermath of a lot of drinking by the other hikers. There were a lot of hangovers and at least one pile of vomit. I’m glad I didn’t partake in that. They must have been out until late because I was still awake at midnight and I didn’t hear anything.

It’s Saturday and it’s a long weekend but the campground is still very quiet. My leg is ever so slightly better each day but I still don’t think it’s ready to hike on just yet. I’ll probably end up taking seven days off like I did in week three.

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9 Feb: I finally bought a new car to replace my car that got stolen in December.

Yeah right… sadly that’s not true. While this is the sort of ridiculous car I would buy, this is just one I saw across the road from the SuperValue.

My leg still really hurt after a walk into town today. Today is the day I decided that since it’s not getting any better, it’s going to be an extended period of time off for me.

The campground is quiet today so I spent the rest of the day watching TV  and packing up.

Date: 10 February – 6 March

Back in February, at the end of my 7 days staying at the Methven Campground, I realised that since my leg wasn’t getting better, I flew back to Auckland on February 10 and spent the first week or so after that staying with family. I still couldn’t walk very much during this week.

The Coronavirus COVID-19 is suddenly a big thing now here and around the world, and while I was staying with my sister in Whangaparaoa we saw all the campervans that were being used to quarantine people on the cruise ship where Coronavirus was discovered.

After that I actually did buy a new car to replace my car that was stolen at Christmas, so for most of the rest of the time I was actually able to go for a few road trips. It’s funny how much quicker it is to drive around the country than walk it! There was a lot of visiting friends done, and a lot of geocaching.

I saw a kiwi while I was at the zoo. It would be cool to see one in the wild while walking but I think that’s unlikely! I’ve only heard them at night a few times so far. This one at the zoo got so close I could have reached out and touched it.

After a few weeks, once my leg felt healed I did several long walks, at first without my pack, and then with my pack to make sure that my leg didn’t hurt any more. My leg seemed completely healed towards the end of February but due to reasons that aren’t trail related, I didn’t end up making it back to Methven until the 6th of March.

Now that Coronavirus has reached New Zealand (only three confirmed cases in Auckland as of right now), I’m glad I’m not working in an Auckland office job and instead I’ll be walking in remote places in the South Island where hopefully the virus won’t reach me. Plus I’m looking forward to walking again. There were times during the last month when I almost decided not to finish the walk and just end it at Methven – I thought that I had already got everything out of the walk that I wanted to. But I do want to finish the walk, I do want to see Bluff and I also want to see a kea.  #goals

I arrived at Christchurch Airport to find it colder and windier than when I left. I hope it doesn’t get too cold over the next month.

I did see a tank outside the airport when I went for a walk.

My weight has gone back up a bit. It’s now 80.7kg:

25 September: 82kg
4 November: 78kg
1 December: 75.5kg
6 January: 79kg
4 March: 80.7kg

It doesn’t look like I’m going to catch up to anyone I know, most people I met have finished now. Rhydian tells me he is going to finish in a week, whereas I’ve still got a month to go. Oh well, hopefully I’ll meet a lot of new and cool people.

This morning I flew Jetstar for the first time in all my recent flying – every other time I’ve flown Air New Zealand. They were on time, and they appeared to be weighing people’s carry on luggage (and they look like they’re really strict about it). That’s good for someone like me that always sticks to the rules. And they have a “maze” for boarding so that when boarding time comes it’s not one big push for the gate, it’s an orderly queue. Jetstar just went up in my books.

However I did make a mistake with my timing. I thought the Methven shuttle left the airport at 12:30pm, so I got a 9:15am flight meaning I got up at 5:45am to catch it. Turns out the Methven shuttle only runs at that time on Mondays and Wednesdays. On Fridays it leaves at 4:30pm… so I had six hours to sit around the airport. I could have used that six hours to sleep in and get a later flight. Oops.

On the way to Methven from Christchurch Airport sharing the shuttle with me was a girl called Anka from Germany who is restarting the trail from the same point as me after skipping this section earlier. She was friendly and chatty, and the best bit is she’s already organised all the shuttles for all the upcoming logistically awkward sections! And so I can just piggyback on all her hard work. What a nice surprise. And I might have some company too. All I had to do was call Wayne at Alps 2 Ocean and say that I want in on the same shuttle.

Once at the campground it was like I never left. I even got the same cabin that I spent an entire 7 days in last month. It felt a lot better being here and being actually able to walk.

Here’s the pizza I got from the village takeaways. I had to wait an hour and a quarter for it, because at first they forgot to make it and then they dropped it on the ground and had to make a new one.

At 8am tomorrow morning the trail will officially be starting again. FINALLY. The highlight coming up on Tuesday or Wednesday is the Stag Saddle, the highest point on the whole trail. Can’t wait.

Date: 7 March
Trail covered: 15.5km (kms 2244.7 to 2260.2)
Weather: pleasant

Im back on the trail today after 31 days off!

For those that don’t remember, I finished at Lake Colridge last month but I don’t start up again from there now because there are two breaks in the trail to get around two rivers that are uncrossable on foot – the Rakaia River and the Rangitata River. See the map at the end of the post which makes it clearer. Lake Coleridge is on the north side of the Rakaia River and I’m starting again today on the south side.

Some people, including Rhydian, say that the Rangitata River, which is the river I’ll be shuttling around on Monday, is crossable after several days without rain, but I’m not attempting it.

Last night a very loud group of guys was staying in the campground, all wearing some kind of sports uniform. At 11pm last night when I went to the loo I could see them playing some kind of drinking game in the games room, something like Beer Pong. For the first time I was glad that Cabin 1 was the furtherest cabin from the games room and kitchen so I wasn’t kept awake by all their shenanigans. Anka and Ian (a NOBO who also stayed at the campground in a tent last night) both said they could hear these guys until quite late making a lot of noise.

Since I have piggybacked on Anka’s shuttle that is pre-booked for Monday, we both have the best part of three days to walk the 70km to the Mt Potts car park where the two of us will be picked up and taken to Geraldine. I don’t like walking to a schedule because that means if it rains hard or I start hurting then I have no choice but to walk through it, and in general I won’t be able to relax as much. However here there’s simply no choice, so I will just embrace it. Louise (who I walked with for a few days before Auckland) commented on one of my Facebook posts that the section between the two rivers is a beautiful section. That’s great to hear!

I was looking at some of my previous blog posts last night and I didn’t even realise until now that the pain I got in my leg and foot that caused me to take a week off in Kerikeri in the third week was in my right foot, whereas the month I’ve just taken off was to heal my left foot. I really thought both times it was my left foot that hurt. I’m really getting forgetful. In a way I’m happy about remembering that – I’ve hurt both legs once and they’ve both healed. In theory that’s got to be good, right, better than hurting the same leg twice?

Speaking of being forgetful, after a month off I can’t remember which hut is which anymore. Anka was talking to me in the shuttle yesterday and we were discussing our favourite huts. She mentioned Nicholls Hut and I couldn’t for the life of me remember which hut that was. It took me a while to remember it was the hut on the Richmond Ranges between Dracophyllum Hut and Waitewaewae Hut. A month ago I could have named every hut in order from the very beginning to now. Now it’s like they’ve all gone from my head.

It’s cold this morning again. A few days ago I bought new shorts from The Warehouse to replace my old shorts which were getting holes in the pockets. These new shorts are much shorter as they’re running shorts. Let’s see how long it takes for the tops of my legs to get sunburnt.

Okay that’s enough talking, time for some walking. But first, Darren the campground owner is driving Anka, Ian and me to the start of the trail.

First we took Ian to Lake Colridge as he is going north. That was fairly uneventful, although the strong wind was blowing the van around a lot.

However on the road to Glenrock where Anka and I needed to start from, we encountered a truck stuck in the middle of the road.

We worried that this was going to really delay us from getting to the start of the trail but another truckie arrived in about 5 minutes with a tow rope and pulled the truck out.

Then, to further slow us down, there were sheep all over the road.

Darren just drove right through them and hoped they would all run to the side. He was right.

Then there were more sheep up the road.

Finally we did make it to the start of the trail.

There was a warning about crossing the Rangitata River, saying don’t do it because you can’t do it without crossing private property.

We set off down the path, heading up the valley.

The wind we encountered while driving to the start was notably absent once we started walking, which was a pleasant surprise. The first ascent was over 700m up, from about 460m to at least 1190m, although it was fairly gradual.

The view never really changed that much. There were never really any trees and at first there wasn’t even a river. The air was filled with the sound of crickets.

There was also the odd interesting natural feature.

We passed three people going north. They said that the A Frame Hut (the next one we will be coming to) is where they stayed and that it’s a nice hut. We won’t be able to stay there though, it’s too close to where we left from and we have a lot of ground to cover in three days.

I was keeping my eye out for the 2250km mark. I have been telling people during my break that I’ve done 75% of the trail (2250km) but I was a few kms off – the actual 2250km mark is at the top of this hill.

I liked this hill – other trails would just lead you right up the side of a steep hill like this but the big switchbacks here made it easy. And once at the top, I took a photo of the view.

And a selfie at the 75% mark.

From here on all the way down the hill you can see the toilet for the next hut. It was the only thing on the landscape that wasn’t grass or mountains.

This hut is the A Frame Hut. Not a very original name, but judging by the Guthook comments, people seemed to agree with the NOBOs that it was a nice place to stay.

We spent an hour having lunch here, we certainly didn’t rush. I got to know Anka’s story – she has done the whole trail except she skipped the section between here and Tekapo because of “lack of motivation” apparently. So now she’s just walking to Tekapo.

I was excited to look at the intentions book and see where everybody I knew was, but the book had been replaced on 20 February (2 weeks ago) and so I didn’t really recognise any names. I knew that most people I know have already finished the trail so I don’t know what new information I hoped to get from the book. Mickey and Michelle are five days ahead, so there is a chance I might catch them. I thought I might see Henry’s name because he had been posting Facebook photos from not far ahead but they could have been old photos. His name wasn’t in the book.

After continuing past this big slip,

You have to cross this river four times. I tried to keep my feet dry but ended up with one foot in the water on the last crossing as there wasn’t an easy way across.

Then after this hill,

I had a look back to see where we had been walking.

It wasn’t much longer before arriving at Comyns Hut.

We got here at 3:30pm after being dropped off at 10am. Normally I wouldn’t stop at a hut this early but since it was the first day back after a month off walking, and the fact that our shuttle is at a fixed time on Monday, we stopped here. Plus the next hut (Double Hut) is seven hours ahead. It meant only a 15km walk today but I was happy about it. Tomorrow will be a big day but day 3 should be okay.

There were no sandflies either at this hut which was really surprising. It was very nice to be able to wander around outside just admiring the view and enjoying the peace.

I had some pasta for dinner, and it was at this point that I noticed that the handle is missing from the lid of my cooker. That’s really annoying as it means that once food has been cooking, I can’t take the lid off the pot without it burning my hand. I tried to find the handle but it was nowhere to be found.

The reason I think this happened is that yesterday when I checked my bag in at the airport I had my lighter inside the gas stove, and when I got to Christchurch there was a security note saying that security had opened my pack and removed the lighter from inside the stove and confiscated it. I didn’t realise I couldn’t have that checked in my pack but at the time I didn’t think any more of it. But now I realise that security must have broken the handle off while getting into the stove. Did they do it on purpose as payback for endangering the lives of the people on the plane? They certainly didn’t admit to breaking the handle on the note. How annoying.

So then since it had been a month without using the stove, I had a few problems when cooking my pasta snack, it’s like I’d forgotten how to cook suddenly. Firstly it requires milk powder and whenever I boil water with milk powder in it, it bubbles over the top very quickly and makes a mess unless I keep my eye on it. Of course I didn’t keep my eye on it and it made a mess all over the floor.

Then when the pasta cooked, there was this weird black stuff in the pasta. It didn’t look like food and I wondered what it was.

I could only assume it was mould from not having used the pot in over a month. Grossed out, I threw out this pasta, gave the pot a proper clean and cooked a second lot. The second lot had the same problem, so the only thing I could determine it to be was burnt milk powder from the boiling process. I really should have stirred the milk powder into the water before boiling it. At least it can’t have actually been mould or anything disgusting.

At about 6:30pm three other people turned up going southbound. They were Hannah, Gito (I assume that’s how you spell it!) and Chris. They said that Wayne from Alps 2 Ocean had dropped them off at about 1pm. So it ended up being the five of us in the hut tonight.

Hannah thought the fact that I had my food inside reusable shopping bags was amusing. I’ve always had my food inside reusable shopping bags since Day 1 and she is the first person to point it out. I notice that other people sometimes put their food inside dry bags but I haven’t thought that necessary before.

Anka used her fancy satellite phone to get a weather forecast for the next few days. Tomorrow – 50% chance of rain. That’s about as “wishy washy” as a forecast is possible to get. At least the next day is supposed to be fine.

You can hear the wind inside Comyns Hut very loudly even when it doesn’t actually seem that windy outside. The three new people that showed up were complaining a lot about the hut and how they didn’t like it. I thought they were being a bit negative and it actually wasn’t that bad, especially for a “basic” hut which is free to stay in. Although I did set up my sleeping bag originally next to a hole in the wall where the wind came through, before moving it to somewhere better afterwards.

Since there was only one small window in the hut it was very dark inside and everyone was in bed by 8:30. I only had a small dinner as I wasn’t very hungry – no doubt once the walking is more regular the hunger will come back again.

The South Island has had some big sections so far, so it’s nice that this section is only 3 days and then we will be in Geraldine. Then it’s only a couple of days to Stag Saddle and then Tekapo and Twizel. I’m looking forward to that bit.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 8 March
Trail covered: 21.2km (kms 2260.2 to 2281.4)
Weather: wet wet wet

In the morning I woke up and it was still dark, and I groaned because everybody was making noise. But then I looked at my watch and surprisingly it was 7am. I’m going to have to get used to these shorter days I think. Although I guess the hut did only have one tiny window so it was dark all the time.

Just before we left the hut to begin walking Anka realised she didn’t have her tent with her. She said she must have left it in either Methven or Christchurch. She was visibly upset and I felt sad for her. I would notice if mine was missing as it goes inside my pack but she stores hers outside her pack as do a lot of people so I bet in that case it’s much easier to accidentally leave it behind.

Fortunately in two days we will be in Geraldine. The destination today is Manuka Hut 21km or so away. Anka and I will likely be the first there so its unlikely to be full, and so there shouldn’t be too much worry about needing a tent to sleep in tonight. However once in Geraldine she might have to go and get her tent from wherever it is, so I might not have a walking buddy all the way to Tekapo. What a pain to have to go and recover her tent just for three or four more days before she finishes for good.

After breakfast Anka and I left at 8am. We left before the other three. We knew that the first half of today is another big climb, from 850m all the way up to nearly 1500m, and it’s following rivers all the way up. We’re going to get wet feet today.

Sure enough the first crossing was almost immediately after leaving the hut.

There was no point trying to keep dry feet. They were gonna get wet.

About half an hour into the walk the rain started. On went the rain jackets and pack covers.

The rain didn’t let up for the next six hours. It was to be a very wet day indeed. 50% chance of rain my ass.

Whenever my boots get wet they keep coming untied. The first time this happened this morning I bent down to tie them up, but my sunglasses were in my pocket and one of the lenses popped out of the frames. Very annoying. I forget how many pairs of sunglasses I’ve gone through now, I think it’s 5, although maybe I can get the lens to go back in somehow.

The saddle we are heading towards is the Clent Hills Saddle. Nearer the top we moved away from the river however the track wasn’t obvious and we spent a lot of time finding the right path through tussock.

If you stood in the wrong place you might end up falling into a hole. You had to be careful.

There were a lot of these spiky things. I think they’re called Wild Spaniard. I don’t know if they’ve been around before now but I really noticed them up here. I didn’t touch the big spiky plant sticking up out of the centre but even the leaves at the bottom are really spiky, and they don’t even look it. They caught me out constantly.

Here’s my 11am picture, almost at the top of the saddle.

The view at the top was kind of nice, although it was hard to see much with the rain.

The notes specifically say don’t immediately descend the saddle, instead head off to the right over the scree.

I’m surprised the notes needed to specifically mention that. It’s marked fairly well with orange poles.

Up at the top it was getting really cold, and we were both wet through by now because the rain hadn’t stopped. The wind was blowing and I wished I had my gloves handy so that my hands could get some warmth back in them. I wondered if I had a lot of this sort of cold to look forward to now that it’s March, but we are up quite high up here so hopefully it’s not a regular thing.

Today was simply starting to feel like a longer, harder and wetter version of yesterday. Up, over and down a saddle, and with a quite beautiful but relatively featureless and unchanging landscape. It was harder though because of an unformed path and following a river, and wetter because, well that’s pretty obvious.

The first hut you come to at the 15km mark is called Double Hut, but to reach it is a detour off-trail of 1km out and 1km back and since we were both so wet and cold we just wanted to keep walking and get to Manuka Hut, 5km further on. That meant that we forewent having lunch, which is possibly the first time ever that I’ve skipped lunch (both lunch #1 and lunch #2).

The next bit is flat, in fact we suspect that it’s now flat all the way to the Mt. Potts car park which is where the shuttle picks us up tomorrow. So we walked the next 5km very fast. It reminded me of the second day of the Timber Trail where it was so wet and cold and all I wanted to do was get to the shelter to change into dry clothes, so I just put my head down and put one foot in front of the other until the hut was in sight. It rained less today than that day but it was colder and after six hours of rain, no matter how heavy, you get pretty wet. No way were my shoes going to dry today even a little bit after the river walk, this rain and walking through the soaking wet tussock.

Manuka Hut was very much a sight for sore eyes. It was so nice to be able to go inside, change into warm clothes and light a fire and remain warm for the rest of the day. One thing this hut was missing was a place to hang clothes near the fire to dry them – I’m surprised all huts don’t have that. I’d like to buy 900 clothes horses when I’m done with this walk and put one in every hut in the country.

After an hour Chris turned up, and not long after he showed up the rain stopped. I don’t think he was very happy about that.

When it was clear the rain wasn’t starting up again any time soon I went for a walk up the medium-sized hill beside the hut as there is supposed to be a geocache up there. I wasn’t successful in finding it but I did get a slightly different view.

The three of us spent time in the hut talking about all sorts of things. Chris is from Poland and has been travelling and hiking since he was 19, and he is now 34. He is trying to reach Bluff by April 1 as he flies out the next day. That gave me optimism that maybe I can finish by April 1 also but I’m not sure that will be possible. Chris is going to cycle the section beyond Tekapo which a lot of people do but I won’t be doing that, and I think he is planning to hitchhike the road sections.

Chris also said that he started at Cape Reinga in December and in the North Island he only saw 9 other SOBOs the entire time.

A lot of my stuff was wet, this time the pack cover didn’t seem to help that much. My tent and sleeping mat were sitting in a little pool of water at the bottom of my pack so I put them by the fire to try and dry them, along with all my wet clothes and shoes. I don’t think the fire will dry my clothes much though, and certainly not my shoes.

I did use the toilet once while I was at the hut and while I was sitting there doing my business, something fell off the roof and landed between my feet. I got one hell of a fright. Turned out it was a gecko. It stood there motionless on the floor for a second or two but then ran off out the door.

I was surprised to see a gecko, and then I noticed this poster on the wall of the hut:

There may have been a gecko but like yesterday there were very few sandflies. There were a couple but they weren’t a problem.

Hannah and Gito never showed up at the hut. Chris said they were likely going to camp between here and the car park somewhere, and they can have a shorter day tomorrow and try and hitchhike out into Geraldine. Manuka Hut is also a detour (500m) from the trail so it’s not a surprise that they didn’t stop in.

My water filter bladder got a hole in it today. It’s only a small hole at the top so it still works but it means as I’m filtering water into my bottle a small stream of it comes out the side of the bag. That’s frustrating, the 32oz bladder I had from Cape Reinga to Pelorus Bridge never had any problems, but then I switched to the 64oz bladder and it’s already got a hole in it. It means I can’t filter water inside anymore unless I want water all over the floor.

This last photo is from my bed. I’m not sure how well I’ll sleep as Chris insists on having the fire going as long as possible and it’s making the hut so hot and quite smokey as well. But anyway… goodnight for now! Long day tomorrow – 32.5km to the car park and we have to be there by 5pm!

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 9 March
Trail covered: 32.4km (kms 2281.4 to 2313.8)
Weather: fine

I managed to sleep alright last night, despite the warmth in the hut from the fire. I had the sleeping bag unzipped and so it wasn’t too hot.

Today since Anka and I wanted to start walking early, we were packing up and eating breakfast by candlelight, which was something different. I nearly put my sleeping bag into the candle while was packing it away. I’m very glad that the flame from the candle didn’t actually touch the sleeping bag.

Before we left, we knew that the notes said that there is no water source after Manuka Hut for 17km, so we were sure to take enough water with us. Today was going to potentially be a hot day. It was also supposed to be almost completely flat, which would help us a lot since it is 32.5km to where we would get picked up by Wayne of Alps 2 Ocean shuttles at 5pm.

Anka left first at 7:15am. She wanted to find phone coverage which apparently wasn’t too far on. She needed to call around and find out where her missing tent is.

I wasn’t quite ready so I didn’t leave until 7:30am. Chris left some time after me.

After less than 3km though arose this not totally insignificant hill.

This is where the phone coverage was. I saw Anka on the phone when I got up there. Sadly it seems she wasn’t able to work out where her tent was – none of the people at the places she thinks she left it have seen it. That sucks for her.

Lake Emily came into view soon.

And the sun started to appear on the mountains.

Lake Emily is a beautiful lake and apparently a lot of people camp here, although I have a sneaking suspicion it’s on private property as there are signs around.

But am I right in saying there are lots of birds on it? Let’s use the 50x zoom and find out.

This is the first house I’ve seen since restarting the trail. It seems pretty remote out here and so I bet they have a long way to travel to get supplies.

Of course where there’s a house, there’s a road. We were in for 5km of road walking.

This place is called Maori Lakes. I’m not entirely sure why as I didn’t walk down to look at the info board at the edge of the lake. I do know though that there is a geocache here, as I found it.

Anka had been walking with me since the phone reception and we were talking about geocaching. She told me about something called “wine caching” organised by wineries in Germany. It sounded intriguing but I didn’t find out that much about it and all the websites about it are in German.

There was another geocache on the bridge one kilometer on that crossed the Ashburton River. Anka left me alone at this point because I was taking too long to find it. It was a good place to have some lunch before continuing on.

While I was here I pushed the other lens out of my broken sunglasses to make them match. Maybe I’ll start a trend.

Since I stopped for quite a while finding the geocache and having food, Chris caught up. Here’s my 11am picture:

That’s Chris walking along what was again fairly unchanging landscape for the first half of the day. He has a solar charger hanging off his pack to charge his phone, and he also has a knee brace because a week ago he was “rock-hopping” across a river and slipped and hurt his knee. We all know rock hopping across a river is a bad idea but we all do it because it keeps our boots dry.

I felt like I was getting blisters with the amount of time I was spending in wet shoes and socks. I could feel the friction on the back of my feet and on some toes, so I stopped by this pond and put plasters on them the best I could, and changed into new socks.

There was yet another geocache here.

I had stopped here for about 40 minutes and little did I realise that Anka had stopped just 100 metres on. I didn’t know at the time that there was a really great view of Lake Clearwater and some of the nearby mountains just a bit further up. Of course when I tried to take pictures of the view they didn’t do it justice.

The next part of the walk was a long walk past Lake Clearwater. It was 11km from here to the pickup point and my legs did start to get a bit sore. Not the kind of sore that they were when I injured myself last month, just “my legs haven’t walked this far in a long time” sore. The sun had been beating down on us all day but at least there was the right amount of wind so that it didn’t feel hot but wasn’t too hard to walk. I did start to feel a bit sunburnt though.

It wasn’t long before the Rangitata River came into view for the first time.

There was still a bit more walking to do. Eventually we came to the Potts River. Once you’re here, it’s not much further walking down the side of the riverbed to the pickup point which is at the car park beside the bridge you might be able to see at the end of the river.

Anka and I gave each other a high five once finally arriving at the car park. The car park is not a particularly exciting place to finish the trail but there are great views across the river to where we’ll be restarting the trail tomorrow.

Lord of the rings fans may recognise this mountain here as Edoras, otherwise known as Mount Sunday. I have no idea if that’s right or not, but that’s what Anka said!

Wayne turned up at 4:30pm instead of at 5, and since Anka and I were the only two booked on the shuttle it meant we could leave early.

While we were talking, Wayne said I sounded Australian. Interesting, I haven’t been told that before! But then I haven’t been this far South before, so maybe people down here expect a different accent, I don’t know.

As we were driving away Wayne saw someone running on the trail in the distance. Since we had technically left early, Wayne drove back to the car park and waited for them. It turned out to be Gito and Hannah. They made it to the pickup spot at 4:51pm – 9 minutes to spare.

Anka and I were surprised, we thought they were ahead of us. But it turns out they’d stayed at Double Hut because all the rain and cold meant they didn’t want to go any further yesterday. They knew that Anka and I had booked the shuttle for 5pm and so they figured they could just turn up then and get on. Talking about cutting it close!

Gito said that in Double Hut he slept in the same bed as Sir Edmund Hillary did in 1951 (if you believe the hut graffiti). I thought that was pretty cool.

While we were being driven, Wayne said that Lake Clearwater Village is “off the grid” – they aren’t connected to the power or water supplies. People there have solar and gas and rainwater tanks. Apparently some guy built a house by the lake to go fishing and suddenly all these other people decided to join him. I wish I got a photo of the village as we drove past, it was near and colourful but I was sitting on the wrong side of the shuttle.

We all got driven to Geraldine. We checked into Rawhiti Backpackers at about 6:30pm which seemed like a nice enough place but since I’m leaving again at 8:15am tomorrow morning it was all rush rush rush to get resupply done before the shops closed, get dinner and shower. The backpackers offer free laundry apparently which is really great but there just wasn’t time.

Anka said she decided not to continue walking tomorrow and instead decided to have a rest day, as she has a sore throat. Gito and Hannah are also resting so I will be catching the shuttle to the trailhead tomorrow alone as far as I’m aware. We didn’t see Chris but we know that he managed to hitchhike into Geraldine, so he might be continuing tomorrow too.

Once at the backpackers my sunburn became obvious. My face is burnt and my legs too, not only at the top of the legs where the new shorter shorts don’t cover, but also all over. I guess while I rested for a month I lost my “base tan”. I wouldn’t have got this burnt this time last month.

Anka and I were sharing a room with an Asian guy who didn’t speak much English, but I noticed he had a Naturehike brand tent like I do, although his is a 1 person tent. He was a cyclist who was cycling to Tekapo. We didn’t see much of him as he was still gone from the room when I went to sleep. On a side note, the beds are extra comfortable at this backpackers. There were two bunk beds in the room and two standalone single beds. The Asian guy had taken one of the bunk beds when we arrived so Anka and I got the two beds. How nice of him.

Well this section is over with now. I remember Louise saying she thought the section was beautiful. I guess it was – it wasn’t as beautiful as the Richmond Ranges or the Queen Charlotte Track or the Waiau or Goat Passes but it had its charm. I’m glad it’s done now and I’m looking forward to the next bit.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 10 March
Trail covered: 9km, plus at least another 1km with detours and extra bits (kms 2313.8 to 2322.8)
Weather: sunshowers

Anka woke up before me even though she isn’t going anywhere today. She was cooking bacon and eggs. What an excellent thing to do on a day off!

Since Wayne was picking me up at 8:30am from the Running Duck cafe I thought I’d go there for breakfast. I’d woken up earlier than planned (7am) and the cafe didn’t open until 8am. I met up with two new people who were staying at the backpackers too. They were Christie and Michael who were also getting the shuttle and we had a quick chat, then while they finished getting ready I headed down to the cafe and got there at 7:50am.

I stood outside the door of the cafe looking pathetic and they let me come in ten minutes early, which was nice. Christie and Michael arrived shortly after and we talked about the trail. Christie is walking the whole trail southbound and Michael is just joining her until Tekapo. They’re both from Christchurch.

You should see the toilet at this place. It has party lights and a disco ball.

Wayne arrived on time to take the three of us to the Bush Stream car park. It seems that everyone else is taking a rest day, including Chris apparently.

The varying weather forecasts show really different things today. Metservice says “rain about the divide” but Metservice says “rain about the divide” every single day. Geraldine had a fine forecast but Ashburton Lakes had “potential thunderstorms”. Another forecast that Christie uses (yr.no) said fine in the morning and rain in the evening. Who knows what will happen.

Walking to the cafe earlier it was spitting a bit but while driving to the trailhead the weather looked good. I’ll get to the first hut today, which is Crooked Spur Hut, and see what the weather is like and decide if I go on or not. Christie and Michael’s plan is to stop there.

On arrival the weather was stunning. I could see the hill where we finished our walk yesterday.

Looking at the Rangitata River, it looked crossable today, but of course that’s easy to say when you’re looking at it from a distance.

Interestingly Wayne dropped us off 1km from where Guthook said the trail started, but it was the right place because the DOC signs said so. So at first there was an extra 1km of walking that isn’t even account for. Rude.

There is a toilet at the car park, and there were also two cars parked there.

This area is called Mesopotamia. There’s nothing around – it really just is tussock and mountains.

It would be really hard to hitchhike to this spot. It was a long way from Geraldine down a very questionable gravel road and you have to go right to the very end too, which surely almost nobody would do on any given day. I wonder if Chris will attempt the hitch tomorrow.

I started walking from the carpark without the other two as they were taking their time.

There was a weird piece of water with a big danger sign which seemed way out of proportion to the actual level of danger it posed.

There was also a weird building with solar panels and some kind of receiver but it was locked and I couldn’t work out what it was.

The map made it look like we were following Bush Stream all the way up to the hut so I told myself I’d change into crocs at the first crossing. But surprisingly, the first 3km were on a 4WD track.

As I was walking on my own I wondered to myself if I would have the hut to myself if I continued to the second hut, Stone Hut. It would be spooky. The only hut I’ve had to myself so far was the very old Camerons Hut.

After 3km was the first stream crossing, so the crocs went on.

Most of the rest of the day was walking up the stream. At 11am I had stopped for a quick snack and waited for the other two. With all the stream crossings it would be good to have other people around.

While I waited for the others I looked at the Guthook comments for the upcoming section. There was an interesting comment saying not to go over the hill before the hut as there is a landslide and it’s not passable, and instead continue following the river upstream. The notes say that the hill avoids a “gorged” section of the stream so it might be harder to cross that section, however I don’t think there’s been a lot of rain recently except for the constant showers two days ago.

We saw two hunters going the other way. I stopped and talked to them. They immediately commented on the crocs. A bit different to the hunting gear they were both wearing! I asked about the upcoming hill and what they thought. They immediately said “it’s unnecessary” to go over the hill. They didn’t say impossible, they said not necessary. They said they went over the hill on the way in but used the river on the way back. Interesting. The purist in me thinks I should attempt the hill.

Not long after that we went over a spot called Sawtooth Bluff. A solitary marker pole suggested we go up a very steep hill to avoid the river, despite the fact that the river seemed completely passable. So we did, and we really weren’t sure if we were going the right way. It was very steep, in fact coming down was probably the steepest bit of trail so far.

I had to slide down on my butt. You can see in this photo on the left the path my butt made as I was sliding down.

Maybe this is the hill that the hunters meant… whereas the hill I was asking them about was a much bigger and longer hill later on just before the hut. It’s hard to say. However if the other hill is as bad as this then I’m not doing it, it just felt dangerous.

I changed into my boots to go down the very steep hill but changed back into crocs as more crossings were coming up.

The three of us decided to stop for lunch on a big log. Just as I sat down and started unpacking my food, some quite dark clouds appeared above the hill. It looked like rain was coming, so I had my food very quickly and then continued on alone.

It was only about 15 minutes after that that the sunshowers started. They weren’t heavy but enough for me to put on my rain jacket and pack cover. It was weird having rain when there were no clouds immediately overhead and the sun was shining.

It was weird, spotty rain. The kind of rain that makes the rocks look like polka dots.

The time came when I had to choose between the big hill and the river gorge. Although I didn’t see any markers up the side of the massive hill. If I didn’t look at Guthook I wouldn’t have known the path even went up the hill. I thought back to how dangerous Sawtooth Bluff was, and the comments I read that said this way was impassable, and I decided to continue up the river. There were no problems at all walking through the river at this point.

After the gorge I came across the big orange triangle that pointed out the actual trail up the hill from the other side.

There was another orange triangle pointing up to the hut. It’s apparently another steep hill up to the hut from here. It’s only 1km in length and a 250m elevation change in that time. That’s pretty steep! The notes said it takes an hour to get up this hill. Surely not. I changed back into my boots and took my rain jacket off and started up the hill.

There was no rain while I walked this bit. I could see across to the path I would have taken had I followed the trail exactly. It didn’t seem to be blocked by anything. The purist in me wished I had’ve walked the hill instead of the gorge, however I didn’t feel like I cheated.

I didn’t break either of my two rules that I use to determine if I cheated or not. Did the detour cut off any kilometers? No. Could I see the actual trail? Yes. Alrighty then.

And you know what, I’m not sure it matters in the South Island. In the North Island, the path was very contrived in places and it was very easy to feel like you cheated if you didn’t follow the path exactly. Here in the South though, you are walking for days, sometimes even a week, between towns, and so it really doesn’t matter if you take one path or another around some obstacle. The path isn’t even defined that well in places anyway. Really, just being here in the first place is just amazing.

The path up to the hut was indeed steep. I would only walk for a minute or two at a time and then stop for a rest.

Looking to the hills on the right though, the weather looked very unpredictable, so I tried not to take too long.

I got to Crooked Spur Hut at 2:30pm. The notes had classed this as a four hour section and it took me half an hour longer than that. That’s how I know I was having an easy day!

First I saw the roof.

Then the hut.

Nobody else was at the hut yet. It’s an old hut, a weird combination of wood and corrugated iron. There are weird arguments between people graffitiing the huts – between hunters and other people who think meat is murder. This isn’t the time or place. Stop graffiting the huts, people.

In saying that, people have been using the outside of the hut as a makeshift intentions book from the last half a century or longer. Looks like several generations of Proutings have been regularly coming up here. And yes it was very cool yesterday that Gito saw Sir Edmund Hillary’s graffiti on Double Hut. But you’re not Sir Edmund Hilllary. Once your face appears on the $5 note, then you can start graffitiing the huts. Until then, use the line you get in the intentions book for your silly comments and witty remarks.

While the weather was good, the hut had a nice view of the Rangitata River and the stream I’d just walked up.

This hut had a Neeco Dryer. I’m not exactly sure what that is, and I thought it was a fridge at first, but I understand hunters use it for hunting-related reasons.

It was definitely an older hut.

I’m sure my grandmother used to have a table like this.

Hunters left all their bullet shells lining the windows. Is that to scare away mice? Is it a “look how manly I am” statement? Or are they just lazy?

I looked in the intentions book. There are surprisingly few NOBOs. Only three on one whole page of the book which has about 25 people per page.

The rain started again after I settled into the hut. This is definitely my ultimate destination today. I feel I’ve already been lucky with the weather.

While I waited for Christie and Michael I played five games of kill the fly. Its always a very satisfying game. Once I’d killed all five and the buzzing of flies had stopped I had thirty minutes or so with the hut to myself with just the sound of rain on the roof to keep me company. It was really nice. But I’m glad the other two were here to keep me company for the evening.

The other two showed up 40 minutes later looking rather wet. I felt sorry for them as I watched from the window of the dry hut. Well, mostly dry hut – a few holes in the roof and walls meant that water got in.

The three of us had a nice afternoon of talking about the trail and our experiences so far. Their destination tomorrow is Royal Hut, 7 hours on. If I can push on three huts tomorrow, 13 hours on, to Camp Stream Hut and over Stag Saddle, that would set me up nicely for getting to Tekapo in two days’ time, but that would make for two long days. I’ll decide tomorrow at Royal Hut because I want to go over Stag Saddle with clear skies because apparently you can see Mount Cook on a clear day. That’s the tallest mountain in New Zealand for those that don’t know.

If I did push on that far then there is a chance the 6 bed Camp Stream Hut might be full because according to the intentions book there were two groups of people here yesterday – Seb & Elise, and Daniel, Andy, Elyce and Isabel.

As we were having our dinner we saw a mouse run across the side of the wall. We made extra sure to hang our food as best we could to stop the mice getting into it.

The clouds came over and the rain set in as we went to sleep.

I wonder if tomorrow will be a long day or an average day? Can’t wait to find out. Seems though that Michael is a snorer. That might influence my decision a tad!

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 11 March
Trail covered: 15.6km (kms 2322.8 to 2338.4)
Weather: in the clouds until midday then fine

I went to the loo at 6:45am. While I was out I saw how cloudy and misty it was. No long day today, I’ve decided already. I went straight back to sleep.

Fast forward to 9am. I’m still in bed. Christie and Michael left at that time and then finally I hauled myself out of my sleeping bag. Since making it over Stag Saddle today definitely isn’t going to happen now, there’s no rush to leave as Royal Hut is the other option and that’s signed as only 7 hours away.

I took my time having breakfast and packing up just in case the cloud cleared, but it didn’t. When I left at 10am it was still cloudy and misty.

It made it a little hard to find the marker poles. I took a wrong turn immediately, following the path across the stream. That is the path to go and get water, but it isn’t where the trail goes.

I had to walk through thick tussock all day and it was of course very wet. My shoes and socks were drenched after only 2km in. I tried to use the poles to push through the grass and to knock the beads of water off the grass but of course that didn’t work.

Like often happens, the first part of the day is up and over a saddle. It was a climb from the hut at 1024m to the saddle at 1551m. It wasn’t a particularly difficult climb though, it was just hard to see anything. At 11am I was, like many other days recently, approaching the top of the saddle.

I had left the hut with my jacket on but despite the conditions and altitude I took off the jacket fairly soon after leaving the hut. It was surprisingly not too cold as the sun was trying to peek through, it was just having a hard time.

Not too much later I saw the marker pointing out the top of the saddle.

I was full of anticipation… what amazing view would I see over the top? Dun dun dunnnnnnn…..

It was about what I expected, given the conditions.

But not long after going over the saddle, the clouds did start to disappear. I looked back and saw what I’d just crossed over.

I can see clearly now the rain has gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. There was a rainbow I’d been praying for (yesterday). It’s gonna be a bright bright sun shining day.

As you can see it was tussock in all directions. It’s okay to walk through if you can find the established path, but if you can’t, it’s just annoying. I regularly stood on the long tussock grass with one foot and then tripped over it with the other foot. It helped to try to take big steps.

I saw the others in the distance going over a hill.

We all stopped for lunch at the next hill. It was a really pleasant temperature. Warm enough to have just t-shirt and shorts but no so warm that it made me sweat.

During lunch, Christie said that there won’t be any accommodation in Twizel this weekend because of a rowing regatta. That’s a bit annoying – in a day or two I have to do the Tekapo to Twizel section which is well known for being the section where there is nowhere to camp or stay for 60km. It would be annoying to walk that far and then have nowhere to stay.

The current Guthook map ends at Tekapo and so to see past Tekapo I have to switch maps. I wanted to look at the map to see what camping spots there are in Twizel. However Guthook wouldn’t let me change maps – it just gives me “unknown error”. Very helpful. Maybe the app needs phone reception to change maps, although I don’t see why it should. Yet another reason to hate the Guthook app.

There’s reception at the top of Stag Saddle tomorrow so maybe I can research my options up there. Hopefully it won’t be too cold and windy while I do that.

We all left the lunch spot together but I headed out in front fairly quickly. I saw what I thought were deer over the next hill… but when I looked closer they looked like goats, I mean they had horns. We’d seen hunters writing about hunting tahr in the hut. I don’t know what that is. Is this them, perhaps?

Uh oh, I’ve been spotted.

The next hut is Stone Hut. The path to it was interesting, there is an orange marker on the right but then a bridge over the river in the bottom left and then a walk to the hut. I couldn’t work out why there is such a fancy bridge there when the river looks easily crossable.

Its not even a swingbridge like we’ve all been used to. It’s a proper bridge.

Stone Hut was nothing special. At least it was partly made of stone as would be expected from the name.

One thing you could see as you approached the hut is that the toilet faces a great view, but it appeared to have no door on it. Would they build a toilet without a door just because of the view, I wondered? Surely not. When I got closer it became clear.

It does have a door, it’s just been ripped off. I hope the wind did it and not some dickhead thinking that he’s doing the world a favour.

I didn’t spend long at the hut, I continued on. What I found weird was that despite the fancy bridge, you have to then cross the same river on foot just metres from the hut.

Then you ascend slightly through a gorge towards Royal Hut.

Next is 5.5km of walking through tussock. Well it’s not just tussock, it’s also Wild Spaniard – lots of it. And it is not always easy to see. I mean, it’s obvious when it looks like this:

But when the central stalk is missing, it’s much easier to accidentally walk into, and the leaves still hurt a surprising amount.

After this you encounter Royal Hut. There it is in the distance.

Don’t believe the Guthook comments for this hut. It’s not where Lorde wrote the first draft of her hit song Royals on a girl guides trip in 2012. According to the trail notes, Prince Charles and Princess Anne reputedly visited as children, hence the hut’s name.

This hut at least seems secure and doesn’t have holes in it, so that’s nice. There is even graffiti on the hut from as far back as 1945, and it’s the same families that appear then as that appear in the 1990s. There is also mouse poo to be found around the hut.

Arriving at the hut I met Meg who was just leaving northbound and not long after I arrived Timo from Germany turned up, also going north. He set up his tent outside the hut as he said he had a bad experience with rats at Martins Hut in the Longwood Forest near the southern end of the trail and now always sleeps in a tent. He said rats ran across his mattress and across his head. I’ve now crossed that hut off the list of huts I plan to stay at.

When I had dinner I noticed that it seemed that I left my knife behind back where we had lunch. Annoying. I’ll have to buy a new one in Tekapo or Twizel.

It was a beautiful day once the clouds cleared, but it got real cold once the sun went down. I guess we are at 1325m elevation. I tried to work out if this is the hut with the highest elevation that I’ve stayed at so far. I think it is but I’m not sure.

That will make the climb to 1929m tomorrow less daunting. I’m really looking forward to it, and also seeing how far I end up walking tomorrow as it’s likely I’ll be camping somewhere.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.

Date: 12 March
Trail covered: 49.4km, plus 2km for detours and getting to the holiday park (kms 2338.4 to 2387.8)
Weather: barely a cloud in the sky

During the night it was cold. I had to zip the sleeping bag right up and get as far inside it as I could. It reminded me of when I camped up near Beeby’s Knob.

And in the morning when I got up, I noticed Timo’s tent had frozen, along with the socks he left outside. That reminded me of when that happened to me just after Waiau Hut. Timo must have had a real problem with rats previously to want to sleep outside rather than in the hut in this cold!

I wanted to leave early today in case I had the energy today to make it all the way to Tekapo, nearly 50km away. That seemed unlikely since I have to contend with Te Araroa’s highest point today, the Stag Saddle. But I didn’t want to rule out the idea before I’d even begun.

I changed into “the works” – no, not the burger from KFC (man I’d love one of those right now), but the full array of cold weather gear: jacket, gloves, thermals and beanie. And also crocs – on the way up to the saddle there is apparently a bunch of river crossings. The thought of my feet being permanently wet in this freezing temperature is impossible to bear. I left the hut at 7:45am, after saying goodbye to Christie and Michael. Michael is stopping in Tekapo so I won’t see him again, and Christie might cycle past me on the section between Tekapo and Twizel that she is biking.

It was cold, but the weather forecast for today was excellent and I was optimistic that once the sun came out from behind the mountains that it would be a great day and there would be excellent views from Stag Saddle.

The sun didn’t take long to appear and it made me very happy and warm.

I was listening to a song called High Hopes by Panic at the Disco. It has a really positive message, and when coupled with how good I was feeling and the amazing location I was in the middle of, I suddenly and unexpectedly got quite emotional and shed a few tears. Sometimes on the trail when you’re in these sorts of amazing places, it’s hard not to get a little bit emotional.

There were indeed quite a few stream crossings, and I was very happy to have my crocs on. My feet got very cold in the cold water but at least this way I can put on dry socks and boots soon.

After 15 minutes of being in the sun, the works came off, and t-shirt and shorts went on. My boots went back on too. Once you start obviously going up a steeper part of the track, it’s safe to put boots back on and they’ll stay dry.

In the photo above I thought that the bit to the right was where I was heading, but no, the path takes a sudden and unexpected turn to the left and you end up going up here.

I had a look back to see where I’d come from.

Given that this is the highest point on Te Araroa, you might expect it to be really steep, but actually it’s quite gradual compared to most other high points. You might even say it was a leisurely stroll to the top. Okay, I wouldn’t go that far.

At the top, like at the top of every saddle, I got excited about what the view would be once I reached the top. I had a fair idea this time, it would be Lake Tekapo. Was I right?

Well yes, but the lake had cloud over it, it was a bit of an anti-climax!

Someone had set up this ring of stones too, presumably to camp inside. I’ve seen a couple of Facebook photos of people camping up here. You’d really have to want to see the sunrise. Otherwise I don’t know why people would brave the cold and the wind. I was happy just seeing the view briefly and moving on.

From here, the official trail heads down the valley. But everyone, and I mean everyone, says to take the alternative route down the ridge. It’s not signposted, but apparently it is easy to spot and easy to follow and you have a great view of Mt. Cook. Let’s see if I can find it. Look to the right, and you see this:

The peak on the right there is called Beuzenberg Peak. It’s not easy to tell from the photo unless you zoom in, but there is a path clear as day through the stones. So that’s where I went.

You definitely get a great view going this way, as you can see. I knew that one of the two peaks in the photo above is Mt. Cook (the highest mountain in New Zealand) but I’m ashamed to say that at first I didn’t know which one it was. Was it the snow-covered one on the left? Or was it the one on the right which looks taller? Common sense told me it is the snow-covered one.

The ridge track was indeed easy to follow. Just walk along the ridge!

My 11am picture has got to be the best one yet.

It’s a similar view to the one before, however this time at a slightly different angle it was clear that the peak on the right is much closer and so clearly isn’t Mt. Cook. Here is Mt. Cook, zoomed in:

And the clouds down on Lake Tekapo vanished into the distance, so I got to see that too! The town of Lake Tekapo is right at the other end of the lake.

While I was up here, there was phone coverage. In fact, there is phone coverage most of the way from here down to the bottom. I used this time to call the Tekapo Holiday Park. Timo said that they don’t mind you arriving really late as long as you call and book in beforehand. So that’s what I did. That means I’m now committed to walking as far as Tekapo tonight, but my legs were feeling really good and I was making good time so I was okay with it.

If you call the holiday park beforehand and make a booking, they will leave a little pack with a map and your key (if required) outside reception in a little white box. I think it’s really good that they offer this service.

So now I know my ultimate destination tonight. But the question now is, can I make it to town in time to buy a nice dinner? I looked on Google Maps. There’s a place called Blue Lake Restaurant which closes at 10pm. If I walk fast I should get to Tekapo between 8:30 and 9:30 tonight so let’s go.

The ridgeline track gets a bit harder to follow once you get down a bit, but there is a sign.

That’s clearly not a DOC sign because 1. it doesn’t look like one and 2. the time on it was surprisingly accurate, which it never is on DOC signs normally. From here it took me 53 mins to get to Camp Stream Hut, just a bit longer than the 50 minutes written on the sign.

It would be much harder to find the ridge track if you were going northbound. If you’re going north, when you see this sign:

Go left towards Rex Simpson Hut, and up this 4WD track:

When you go up the hill and around the corner, you’ll come to this orange marker:

Turn right here and continue up the top of the hill. It should be obvious where to go then.

Here is Camp Stream Hut.

It’s a private hut run by Mackenzie Alpine Trust. They ask for a $10 donation to stay the night. There is no water near the hut, so fill up at the last stream before you get there.

At this hut, you are halfway down the South Island. The top of the South Island is 1695km and if you assume the bottom to be 3000km then halfway is 2347.5km which is somewhere about here.

I just stopped for a very quick lunch and continued on.

When you get to this point,

The Guthook line makes it look like you have to climb up over this steep hill, but that’s wrong. You’re supposed to follow the river at first. What annoys me more is that people in the Guthook comments have been writing stupid, untrue things like “the hill is 700m in elevation, be prepared”. I don’t know if they’re stupid or it’s their idea of a sick joke, but I wish they wouldn’t. If someone wasn’t good at reading a map and went on that comment alone, they’d climb right up that steep hill and get lost and potentially get hurt. I wish there was an easy way to report people on Guthook for writing this kind of untrue thing.

You do have to climb over the hill, bit not until much further down.

When I climbed up here, I could see opposite that there was kind of a line at a certain altitude that cut right across the landscape. Do you see what I mean? I wonder what causes that.

A bit further on and a bit more walking through tussock, you cross a road and reach something called the Richmond Trail.

The symbols on the sign are interesting. The second one indicates that it’s a mountain bike track and therefore should be easy to walk on. The fourth one… well I’ll leave that to your imagination!

Sure enough, this section of trail is easy to walk on. Luckily too, it was 3pm by this time and Tekapo was still 30km away.

I knew that the rest of the day from here was going to be a bit of a trudge. This bit was okay but the last 18km or so is almost entirely road walking. So I put on some good music and just walked.

I did meet a northbounder at one point and he said there are other southbounders just ahead of me. I wondered if I’d meet any of them.

My GPS watch was really unreliable along here for some reason. It jumped straight from 21km to 23km and then the same from 25km to 27km so I was never really that sure how far I was from the road. It also meant the line on the map below was not particularly accurate.

Once I reached the road, I stopped at this stream (Boundary Stream) and had a quick snack, even though I was looking forward to making it to town I was too hungry to make it there without stopping.

The trail notes say no camping between here and Tekapo. You either set up camp before here on the Richmond Trail or you walk all the way to Tekapo.

While I was having my snack, a southbound hiker named Daniel showed up to get some water from the stream. I think I startled him as he clearly didn’t expect anyone else to be around. He too was walking into Tekapo and was considering a night walk into Twizel the next day. I’d been considering that option too but didn’t want to let on.

Tekapo to Twizel is a long way – almost 60km, and there’s apparently nowhere to camp along the way. A lot of people choose to hire a bike and cycle it. Other people choose to hike it at night because it is flat and not dangerous. I might walk that section at night tomorrow if my legs feel up to it. It’s a full moon at the moment so that will be nice. But after the long day today my legs might not be up to it.

I didn’t want to let on to Daniel that I was considering the night walk too, because 60km is a long way to be trapped with someone if you don’t get on well with them!

Time for the remaining 18km into Tekapo, mostly down this gravel road.

Not a lot happened on this section of the walk. It was really just one foot in front of the other for most of it, walking as fast as I could to try and get to the restaurant in time. I did see these creepy houses though.

It’s hard to tell from the photo but the smallest building second from the left has a toilet with no door, totally exposed to everyone going past. Maybe that’s a thing in these parts and I just don’t get it.

After a while the town came into view, just as it was getting dark.

I did spend time trying to work out if the town is called Tekapo or Lake Tekapo, because it’s always referred to as Tekapo in the trail notes but it is Lake Tekapo on all maps. Wikipedia tells me it is officially Lake Tekapo but it’s usually just called Tekapo to avoid confusion with the lake it sits on.

I was offered a lift by a guy in a rental car, but I declined as I was only 2km from town, and of course I wouldn’t have taken it anyway regardless of how far along I was.

Not far from the town, you turn right into a park.

You then actually get to walk alongside the lake for the first time.

I made sure to actually touch the water at least once. It looks so turquoise while you’re walking but it is so clear once you’re up close to it.

The sun was really setting now.

As I came into town, I got asked how far I’d walked today by a couple (a very common question). I told them “50km from over the hills there in the distance” and the guy said “you’re awesome”. That made me feel good.

I passed various interesting things on the way into town. I had to adjust the brightness on each photo so you could actually see anything. That’s why it looks like a different time of day in each photo, but they’re all posted in order!

“This monument was erected by the runholders of the Mackenzie County and those who also appreciate the value of the Collie dog, without the help of which the grazing of this mountain country would be impossible. Unveiled March 7th, 1968”.

Here’s the Church of the Good Shepherd. It’s a very famous church and despite being very late, still had a lot of people taking pictures of it. I couldn’t see much on approach,

But with the right light I could still get a good picture.

Next is this pedestrian bridge. I understand it’s a fairly new bridge, which probably explains why the trail doesn’t go across it.

Instead, the trail goes across the road bridge, which seems to also act as flood gates.

This road is State Highway 8. I’m up to the “8 highways” now. Only the 9 highways to go and I will have finished!

At first I thought the Blue Lake Restaurant might have been this restaurant, and I thought “this place is too posh, they won’t let a hiker in here”. But it turned out to just be a hotel.

The Blue Lake Eatery seemed almost as posh though.

Luckily they seemed nice and the clientèle was varied and I sat far enough away from other people so that they wouldn’t be offended by my odour.

The problem here was that I didn’t really like any of the mains on offer, so the only thing I could have was pizza. I couldn’t go somewhere else because this was the only place in town that was open. So pizza (and onion rings) it was.

The whole time I was in the restaurant I was uncomfortable. I’d walked so far that even just sitting there was painful, and I was also sunburnt. I got quite shivery and cold and had to put my jacket on. I tried to straighten my legs as much as I could, otherwise they ached.

I also had dessert but didn’t photograph it. It was a nice lemon and blackcurrant thingy with French merangue. I was so full by the end of it. I wasn’t even sure I could walk the last bit to the holiday park.

The holiday park as it turned out was a fairly long way from town. It took about 20 minutes to walk the 1.5km there.

They had left a map with my name on it as promised, but it was still hard to find the tent site in the dark. The map suggested the sites would be numbered but they weren’t. There were a lot of other tents around so I felt bad setting up at 10:30pm making noise. After setting up I found the living room and plugged in my battery pack to charge it overnight. I hope it’s okay and nobody steals it. There were at least eight or nine other devices being charged in there.

It had been over a month since I set up my tent and sleeping mat, the last time was at Harper Campsite. Luckily both seemed okay – no extra mould or damage or anything. But I did notice that when I took off my left boot that my sock had filled with blood from the back of my foot rubbing against it. I was surprised because I didn’t feel anything like that while I was walking. And boy did it smell bad. I couldn’t wait to do laundry tomorrow and have a shower.

One last thing to do before attempting to sleep was to change to the last of four Guthook maps – I’m now on the map from Tekapo to Bluff. Now that I had Internet access it seemed to work this time.

I wasn’t sure how I’d sleep with my sore legs but I was glad to finally be lying down. This has been the longest day so far where I’ve had my pack the whole time, beating the previous record of Paekakariki to Ngaio so it was great to finally get some sleep.

Click here to see today's walk on the map.