45 almost epic adventures on the South Island & Rakiura
Blue Lake, Nelson Lakes National Park blog | April 2016
If you see an opening in the calendar sometimes you just have to jump, make use of my Backcountry Hut Pass and have a few more nights in the hills.
There is a different flavour to the air when it’s cool, and that tingly feeling in the morning.
A long weekend in mid-autumn, if you wait any longer it will be winter, and snow, and cold, and avalanches, and possibilities entirely reduced.
Might as well go now.
I had a plan of the sort: get to a couple of huts to document, Coldwater and Cupola, then, umm, maybe the plan was more fluid. Try for Mt Misery Hut perhaps.
I’m usually there with a well-structured idea.
This time, maybe not.
I had five days, that’s five nights’ food, and some decent weather, barring the wet Saturday according to the forecast.
As it turned out I miscalculated the number of days, it was actually six nights/seven days, but, whatever, I thought I’d probably survive.
Being Nelson Lakes there was bound to be plenty of big climbs.
After Morgans I abandoned the track for a while, just walking along the open river flats. There was plenty of low grass, nibbled by the deer if the large number of deer tracks was indicative, oh, and some boulder hopping and a few river crossings.
