tramping new zealand

What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday, all cloud, snow imminent. Today, not a cloud all day and an early morning frost.

The sun arrived early, but I mucked around and left at 8 30 am. I like the hut and enjoyed sitting in the sun on a bench out the front, knocking off a couple of rounds of coffee.

Eventually, I saddled up and hit the climb up to the ridge, just 250 m to start with.

Surprisingly, I hadn’t worked out what to do for the day, wanting to go to Diggers and Boundary Huts.

Going straight to Boundary Hut wasn’t much for a day, so I thought I’d drop down to Diggers Hut for lunch.

It wasn’t hard to find the start of the track, and like yesterday, it was easy-going up higher, then steeper towards the Waikaia River.

Much steeper.

I thought of dropping my pack and just walking down unencumbered, but I never did. My full pack went all the way to the bottom, then back up again.

It was just a case of plodding out the remaining steps up on the flat ridge until dropping down to the splendid Boundary Hut.

A few four-wheel drives went past during the day as it’s a reasonably well-known road, but they were all going the opposite direction. On the other hand, I was happy enough to dawdle along a four-wheel-drive track along the flat ridge and take in the views.

Plenty of energy expended for the day, and I was glad to have consecutive nights on my lonesome in decent DOC accommodation.