tramping new zealand

I had camped very close to the hut because I could hear about six stags roaring from my tent, and there was a four-wheel-drive parked about 150 m away over a farm fence.

Just as well, because before it was like, around 7 am, I heard a low thud of a rifle with a suppressor.

I packed up, still in the dark, using a small area of the hut veranda that I had semi-cleaned up the previous night. It takes a special skill to roll up my old Thermorest sleeping mat without touching local surfaces. The wet tent got chucked in last.

The day was one of three bigger days after the initial two lackadaisical half days.

It started with a 500 m climb, then a long, undulating ridge. That was all quite delightful. The track condition had been unknown, but as this was the only marked track to the hut, I assumed it would be clear enough on the ground. Just occasional problematic windfalls.

It turned out that the first half of the track, up to the ridge and while in the forest, was excellent. It was very well marked with an obvious pad to follow.

It reminded me of the deer-ravaged forests I experienced while tramping around Nelson as a teenager.

When I made it out into the tussock an hour or two after lunch, the track changed quite a bit. A sidle took me to a creek crossing, at least on the map. I didn’t go quite that far and went on the true left down a few hundred metres before crossing to the theoretical route.

The creek had some bluffs beyond that, so once I got through the stream, I had some scrub bashing through head-high scratchy stuff before a boggy bit. It was just a 50 m climb to get above the forest. Then I had a kilometre or two long sidle through chest-deep tussock and scrub, with me keeping an eye on my watch to encourage movement.

It took a while before the vegetation thinned, and then I could move more quickly and without swearing much of the way.

Saw a spiker and heard a couple of roars elsewhere.

I had been thinking I would do the 200 m descent mid-afternoon, but with all that thrashing around on an entirely theoretical track, the sun was getting low in the sky.

The Rescue Orange painted hut was clearly visible way in the distance, but by the time I was at the bottom of that descent, I only had enough light to make out a newly cut, if rough, route through the scrub from there.

I was most of the way through it when I lost the track in the dark and took to the stream for a while, then a swamp on another scrubby slope that led to the hut.

In the end, I arrived around 8 20 pm in the pitch dark, so thanks, GPS.

After unpacking, I had to drop down to the creek for water with minimal lighting as my headlight batteries were starting to fade.

Now, that was a day.