tramping new zealand

The day had rain forecast, so I didn’t muck about. The beautiful sunrise hinted that it was on the way.

No breakfast, just packed my tent and the rest of my caboodle and set off up the valley in the first drops of many.

It was right on 5 km to the hut, and took over an hour as the four-wheel-drive track wound its way across the landscape.

It sure didn’t feel like January or summer.

By the time I spotted the hut about a kilometre away, my clothes were wet, despite my raincoat.

Realising there was a creek crossing before the hut, the mud wasn’t always avoided, but it did get rinsed entirely off in the end.

Then it was time for breakfast, mainly to help me warm up. The wind and wetness had certainly cooled me down.

Breakfast, consisting of warm porridge and coffee, was eaten in my sleeping bag as I tried to warm up and dry out, having taken off my soaked outer layers.

I stayed in my cocoon for the next three hours.

Sheltering in the uninsulated corrugated steel hut was like being inside a large drum, with rain pouring down on the roof.

Eventually, after lunch, the rain stopped drumming, blue skies appeared, along with shadows. Things sort of dried, and the in-house insect repellent proved useful. There was a crummy open fireplace with the top of the chimney lying on the ground some distance away, no wood in the vicinity, so a warming fire was out of the question.

Later in the afternoon, I went down to the stream to check how much it had come up. A little, not a lot.

Perhaps there would be a longer delay to flow from the hills, but while the rain had been falling for six hours, it was not always intense. It wasn’t a deluge.

However, the temperature was still low, likely in the single digits.

Interesting that if I climbed a hill not much further on up the valley, I’d be looking down at Lake Te Anau and the Eglinton Valley with cars streaming off to Milford Sound.

Well, I wasn’t about to do that.

Rather than those crowds, I was quite content with my solitude.