Day 6 – Martin’s Hut to Martin’s Hut

This morning, the rain had mostly stopped and I started out in good spirits. The track from the hut to the summit, though, was quite difficult. It was a river of mud from all the recent rain, and there were many large blowdowns blocking the way. I often had to hunt around to find the trail again after circumventing some obstacle, or after the trail simply disappeared for a few meters. Fortunately, the trail was well blazed. Someone had come through with segments of venetian blind and nailed them to trees along the way. It’s a surprisingly good way to mark the trail – they’re sturdy and quite visible. In places where the blinds were insufficient, often some kind soul had tied a bit of marking tape around a branch or limb as an extra guide. Even so, I frequently found myself off the trail and had to backtrack to find it again. Progress was slow, the rain had started again, and my boots were soaked from the trail.

It was then that I had my first encounter with bush lawyer. This horrible plant seems like the invention of some evil scientist. Imagine a blackberry bush. Now imagine that it has five times as many thorns, including on the bottom of the leaves. Now imagine that instead of a bush, it’s a climbing vine that frequently drapes itself at head height across a trail. Getting tangled up in this stuff feels like being attacked by Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, and struggling just gets you more tangled. You have to stop and painstakingly pull away each vine, following the direction of the thorns and hoping it doesn’t get re-stuck after you’ve pulled it away.

So between the bush lawyer and the blowdowns, it was several hours before I reached the top of this relatively short trail section. The sight of the bald on top of the mountain was encouraging, and the sky even cleared up a bit. Unfortunately, on top the trail becomes both overgrown and poorly marked. I later found out that the trail was supposed to die out – with the good visibility on top you can just forge your own path. But at the time it felt like one more failure of navigation. I sat down and started to reconsider my trip through the Longwoods. The section I had just finished was the easy, well-marked bit. It was the section ahead, on the other side of the summit, where Kevin had told me the trail was quite obscure and advised me not to go without a guide. If I had this much trouble navigating the good part of the trail, it was unlikely I would get through the rough patch ahead within my allotted time.

As discretion is the better part of valor, I decided to give up on this section for now and head back down. Going down, of course, was much faster, and by now I recognized much of the trail. I spent another night at Martin’s Hut and pored over my maps. Declaring defeat here meant that I was giving up on the whole Longwood range. North of that was the Island Bush block, which was navigable but very short (5 kms). Beyond that is the Woodlaw block, which is a decent hike but evidently there are still permissions issues to be worked out so I couldn’t really go through there. The next section north is the Takitimu Mountains, the southern half of which is also blocked by permissions issues. There was quite a long chunk of trail that I was just going to be skipping.

I began to get quite discouraged about the entire trek. What if the whole trail was as difficult as this? What if I kept having to circumvent impermissible sections? What if it rained the whole time? I resolved not to give up yet, but I was at a pretty low point. Looking at the maps I decided that I would try to get the necessary permissions to do the Takitimus so I wouldn’t be skipping as much. I would get up early the next morning, head into town and resupply, then head right out again. With at least the nugget of a plan, I was a bit happier about my prospects, but still frustrated.