tramping new zealand

I must be feeling tired as I slept in and then took a long while to get motivated.

The living room has a long narrow table with incorporated bench seats that were useful for trampers wishing to rest their backs as the high bench is elbow height.

The long summer days down below 46° south mean you can have a slow start if you don’t mind tramping into the evening.

Around 9 30 am, a four-wheel drive cruised past without stopping, providing some reminder to get moving.

Blue sky patches could be seen, although it was chilly for a summer’s morning. A southerly change should come through, but with negligible precipitation.

If you think too much time is spent describing the weather here, when you spend the day hiking you are out in it all day, and it is a major determinant of the joy of the day’s experience.

It proved a long day due to a detour to see the old Garden Gully Hut that wasn’t exactly the 5 km A to B straight line distance directly between the two huts—more like 20 km with all the wiggling I did following the rambling four-wheel drive tracks. There were enough of them.

Views were of two future routes, one for the following day and a second coming over from Chimney Creek Hut that I’d be doing in almost a week on the way back from my perambulations around the perimeter of the park.

The day gradually cleared with more blue sky, but the cold wind continued to cut through.

After lunch at Green Gully Hut, I removed my coat as I’d finally warmed enough. It seemed a strange place for a hut with no track that suggested people generally had arrived by horse. Remnants of a lonely existence out there, with dreams of striking it big, but it looked like a wasted endeavour in this instance.

Hut Creek Hut was empty when I arrived, but soon three four-wheel drives I’d seen at lunchtime at a distance turned up. Fortunately, they were camping, but I had a chat, my first in 48 hours, and they made me a burger for dinner.

Yum!!