A few drops of rain started falling as I got up in the darkness around 6 am. That wasn’t such a good sign for the day.
Showers were predicted for the following few days, although I had enough time to get to Slaughterburn Hut before the real deluge might arrive.
My plans were to stay at Slaughterburn for three nights. It’s a more recent addition to the DOC accommodation supply and has good insulation, so with the fire going, I was thinking it should be nice and cosy.
I just had to hope there was some dry wood left by previous occupants to start a fire.
With the morning gloom, I spent time reading the literature about the exploits of various 19th-century parties who travelled through this area, coming back east from the Point Puysegur lighthouse. One group took three weeks getting to the Wairaurāhiri River, which they found was in flood. It’s a big, fast-flowing river, so one intrepid adventurer who could swim stripped off and tied his swag filled with his clothes with a flax rope he fashioned. He managed to get across, but the flax came undone, so he found himself completely naked on the other side of the river and lacking any baggage. He continued on for help but had to spend two nights waiting for hail and heavy rain to cease, sheltering under a big rata tree and covered with “tussock”, whatever that was, maybe crown fern.
Eventually, he made it to a surveyor’s hut that had a fire going and some cooked food on the table, the first he had seen for a long while. The two surveyors reappeared, startled by a naked man eating both their dinners.
One of the other guys who couldn’t swim fell off a log that had fallen across the river and managed to drown, but the other was eventually rescued.
There were half a dozen similar tales, so walking on a track, even in the dark, ain’t so bad after all.
I intended to get away at sunrise, despite DOC suggesting five hours would be needed for the day’s exercise, and I almost managed that, just 20 minutes late.
I crossed the newly built suspension bridge over the Wairaurāhiri River, which was still flowing too quickly to swim.
The first section of the track was pretty easy-going, but had increasingly boggy patches. These were nowhere near as bad as they were on my first trip this way seven years before, as at that stage it had just been cut up by 100 teams of four competitors running both ways as part of Godzone. That’s 1600 boots having little regard for foot placement as they smashed out the distance at pace.
The track has slowly solidified, although later in the day, in my haste, I started going straight through the middle of the wet patches myself.
I was encumbered by the weight of more than a week’s worth of food and considerable camera equipment, power banks, etc, so my time was certainly going to be more than five hours.
As it turned out, it was further lengthened by the last 20 minutes, taking an hour due to darkness falling once again. Maybe I should have started on schedule after all.
Seems old habits die hard.
Half an hour after Angus Burn, or maybe more, the track mostly became easier in the tall rimu forest, except for a few overgrown bits which slowed me right down when attempting haste.
It was fully dark before I reached the “Hut 20 minutes” sign, somewhat near the top of the 20-metre escarpment I needed to drop down.
This proved the most difficult to follow part of the track, but somehow I found myself inadvertently in front of a sign showing a change of direction after crashing around in the shrubbery while searching for the track. I luckily kept on it despite no orange markers to be seen in the darkness until I blundered into another one down the slope.
Shortly afterwards, I was surprised by the swingbridge and soon contemplated my solitude for a third night, this time at Waitutu Hut.
Eating dinner at the table, I saw my name in the hut book from four years before. I noted that I had waited four wet nights there before going up to Slaughterburn Hut, and then spent another two nights on the return trip. Despite Waitutu’s familiarity, it’s not a favourite hut.
My lengthy stays were just the circumstances of winter travel, but it was great to have decent shelter, and once again, I slid into my sleeping bag early.
I was the first person at Waitutu Hut for a few weeks.
A guide to the night’s accommodation: Waitutu Hut
