Drizzle started around 5 pm yesterday after some direct sunlight for much of the afternoon.
Having gone to sleep at 8 30 pm, an hour after dark, it was no surprise to awake to find there was a four in the hour when I looked at my watch.
I lay on the bunk, listening to the occasional drip off the trees landing on the roof. The drizzle was silent.
A plan was formulated to pack up and make a decision at 6 am about departure, weather dependent. The packing was easy, and my breakfast finished, but it continued to drizzle.
It was before 6 am, but I thought I’d move on anyway. The drizzle intensified.
I decided to wait until 7 30 am and decided about pulling the plug for the day if it was wet at 8 am. No point in walking when it was that heavy.
It sounds like I’m dithering, but at 7 am, the drizzle stopped, and I was away shortly thereafter.
The delay meant I didn’t need to wear a headlight, although it was still entirely gloomy. Still, I was confident it would clear.
As it turned out, that confidence was misguided. While patches of blue sky appeared, they disappeared quickly and it was mostly misty drizzle.
I put in some effort to get places, and the finishing of the marking of the track up towards Kākāpō Saddle helped with that. I knocked an hour and a half off my previous time, mostly as I wasn’t rock hopping in the stream or bush bashing.
That meant I had lunch at the same spot as last time and was attained by a very inquisitive robin that perched at my boot and would’ve picked at me if I hadn’t encouraged it to move elsewhere.
The part walking up to Helicopter Flat Hut was the hardest in that the track is often overgrown, but also quite uneven, so I was often stepping up or down a metre or so, which additionally exercised my quads.
Overall, a big day out with the weather keeping me on the move, along with not wanting to use my tent again.
I was pretty wet when I staggered into Helicopter Hut to find the last occupants were the three blokes I had met at Belltown four nights previously, and who would have been back at work by now.
Yes, a big day.
A guide to the night’s accommodation: Helicopter Flat Hut
