Southern expedition blog | mid-winter 2025
South? In winter?
Trying to find a winter destination that doesn’t have snow, major river crossings, avalanches, etc, isn’t so easy.
Much of the Southern Alps is out. I know Kahurangi too well. The West Coast river valleys don’t appeal with their icy boulders.
Experience has shown that the South Coast track in Fiordland, and Rakiura, are good to go.
Huh?
That warm ocean current that flows down the east coast of Australia makes a sharp left-hand turn down near Tassy and bears directly towards Rakiura and Fiordland, tempering the ocean temperature, helped by a lack of high mountains that might catch winter snow. June and July are less wet than summer, and while Rakiura has precipitation on 200 days of the year, they are generally showers that whip through at night, rather than days of rain.
That’s my theory.
The issue is more with the lack of daylight hours around the solstice. The sun rises after 8 00 am and sets before 5 00 pm, so you get less than nine hours of direct sunlight plus some twilight.
You might find yourself in your sleeping bag at 6 pm, eating dinner, and asleep at 7 pm. So, eight hours later, it’s three in the morning with a few hours before getting up in the dark.
I can cope with that.
So, I’m starting with the South Coast track out west from Tuatapere for an extended period. I’ll have sufficient food to wait out any odd day of rain.
Fingers crossed.
I still spent time wallowing around in the dark before getting to the hut.
The thing with earthquakes, which happen regularly in New Zealand, is you can’t tell whether it is a nearby small shake, or The Big One at a greater distance.
It was fully dark just as I reached the “Hut 20 minutes” sign, somewhat near the top of the 20-metre escarpment above the river. Seems old habits die hard.
I was still in the forest, but the GPS on my phone app put me directly in the middle of the hut. That wasn’t right.
However, three steps more and I could see the hut wall 10 m away. Hooray!
Pity about another injury.
This was my second full day at Slaughterburn Hut, and I was glad to be there.
Leg report. Mostly muscle pain of sufficient strife to think even hobbling back to Waitutu Hut would be a risk. No inclination to need winching through the forest canopy with any aggravation.
One moment, I was injured in a hut that had taken about 35 hours of energy expenditure to get to, and 17 minutes thereafter, I was at my car.
How bad can accommodation getting a 3/10 rating be?
Easy enough to get onto the ferry, for the calmest crossing in memory.
I had been slowly working up the hutbagger rankings. Not that I’m competitive. Much.
We just stood in the middle of the road and chatted for almost an hour. He had been cutting down rogue trees and was heading home with his chainsaw. Each car that went past, he said, “Oh, that’s my cousin”.
A significant blue mussel bed is available at low tide. A tasty entree before my less appealing dehy food dinner.
I was settling in for four nights. Couldn’t think of a better place to be at the moment.
Try chewing through that, matey.
I developed a motivating philosophy during my travels. Make a Moderate Effort to do stuff.
At exactly the allotted time, 9 am, the water taxi emerged from the dense fog whiteness for my trip back to the civilisation that Oban and the South Sea Hotel offers.
Thought I would just lie down for a moment on top of the bed, still in my stinking tramping clothes, although I probably had taken my lace-up rubber gumboots off. Well, it was a 14-hour day, covering around 50 km at pace, some with slope involved.
This ten-day chapter was over. Back to civilisation.
Since I’ve been coming here over the last 12 years after my return to New Zealand, the main shopping street has been modernised with the demolition of almost all of one side of much of the block, and the building of a substantial shopping centre in its place.
I stood on the jetty for a long period of contemplation, staring over to the vastness of Fiordland.
Travel offers you opportunities, which you can either take or ignore.
I arrived at my accommodation just as dusk was falling, only to find that the office was locked up. Fortunately, I’d learned to book ahead, so my key was in an envelope, and I made my way to the room. Self-help all the way.
It’s a bit more than a kilometre through the forest to get to the new suspension bridge, with its view of the mature trout hovering in the clear blue water. Other tourists bustled past in their haste to get to the attraction, until I pointed out what I was staring at.
The best view is ¾ of the way around the lake on the north side, the Island of Views, but by the time they wandered around, the young folk had had enough and were intent on heading back to civilisation in haste.
I was aiming for Hende‘s Hut, which is a relatively easy walk on the true right of the Waiho River that drains the valley. It’s just a shelter, but it has something of interest: having been built in 1907, it features considerable ancient graffiti, much of which is over 100 years old.
It was getting dark by the time I made it back to my car, and I had the surreal experience of driving through a fern tunnel in the pitch dark.
Now 3 pm, I couldn’t stick around as I had no chance of staying overnight in the damp and derelict hut.
So, my trip didn’t turn out the way I originally anticipated, but I was able to make the most of it, considering my knee situation.
