tramping new zealand

Yeah, cool in the morning.

I was in no hurry, only needing to get about 4 km down to Youngman Stream Hut.

So calm. So quiet, first thing.

I tried out my Merlin bird identification app for the first time, and the first bird identified was a chaffinch. Then a silver eye. I recognised the bellbird when that chimed in later, without needing an app.

A swallow flew around the hut.

I think Merlin will come in handy, even if it just confirms my guess. It should quickly train me up. Apparently, there are 65 possibilities in this area, so it’s not a whole bunch to learn.

There were frogs last night around the tarn, and sandflies in the morning.

Almost time to pack up and skedaddle, although, as I wrote, no hurry today.

From the tarn, it’s a 100 m climb or thereabouts to the top of Lilburn Hill at 1405 m.

On a perfect day, no clouds, no wind, it was an excellent place for lunch, and I confess that it stretched on a long while. Might as well make the most of the conditions.

It was almost as if Canterbury was being apologetic for the dreadful weather up to Christmas.

From there, up in the tussock, the only way was down, all 700 m of it. Pretty cruisey, except my feet had been rubbed raw, and the downhill direction was more painful than the up by a long shot.

Three-quarters of the way down, there was a substantial stretch of windfall, which slowed me even more. I’d been attending to some track clearing before then, but other than twig snapping, from there, once I cut a channel through the windfall, I put my saw away.

The Ashley River looked quite low, so I was thinking I would just stay in the river for the first half of the next day on my way out, rather than a 200 m climb and descent to get over some slips. Plus, I’d found that these tracks were scarcely maintained.

The hut was great, but it did come with sandflies. I found a few hundred had accompanied me inside, but I managed to eject most of them out the window, where they were congregating.

Despite only going half the distance of yesterday and in the opposite direction, down, I was feeling pretty tired.

It was a day’s work, sort of, but on top of real energy expenditure the day before.