Day 15 – Taipo Hut to Greenstone Hut
In the morning it was raining, so the Danish couple and I lingered over breakfast a bit longer than usual. Eventually I bid them goodbye, having figured that I was well ahead of schedule by now and I might as well see if I could out-wait the rain. I had a good book, plenty of food, and some well-thumbed copies of FHM, Wilderness, and Reader’s Digest left in the hut.
Hours later, I was pacing the hut and it was still drizzling. I decided that this rain aversion was ridiculous and set out. It really wasn’t that bad once I got out in it. The landscape was much like yesterday, plenty of bog and tussock. This section of trail was well marked in that I could always find the next waratah standard, but I noticed a distinct economy on the part of whoever marked the track. Standing at one pole, I could always see the next pole – but just barely. If there was a slight rise, for instance, the next pole would be placed so that only the orange top peeked above the hill. Often I would pass a few feet from a waratah standard and be unable to see the next one, so I would have to walk over and stand exactly next to it – and invariably I would spy a tiny cylinder of orange in the distance. As near as I can figure, there must have been two DoC workers leapfrogging each other, one standing at a previous pole and the other walking away and asking “Can you see me now? How about now? Good.”
When the trail turned into the woods to cross a saddle, I was quite glad. Walking through the moss and bog was tiring. The woods to Pass Burn were quite nice. Pass Burn, naturally, originates in the pass between the Mararoa Valley and the Greenstone Valley. I turned a corner, and the path broke out of the woods to a view across a steep ravine to a beech-clad mountain across the way. There was a huge rock slip near the treeline that had cleared out a patch of forest nearly 200 meters high, and still had a couple of half-fallen trees wedged at its bottom. I thought “Glad I wasn’t there when that happened.”
Before I knew it I spied Greenstone Hut through the trees. This is a twenty-bed hut, the biggest by far I’ve been in. Taipo Hut had four beds, and Martin’s only two. It was about three-quarters full by the time dinner was over, with trampers of many nationalities coming off the Greenstone-Caples loop, and some connecting from the Routeburn Track, one of the Great Walks. In particular I met a Dutch couple just finishing a year-long trip similar to Roxane’s and mine. They were quite keen trampers, and are visiting San Francisco at the tail end of their trip, so I made a list of all the day hikes they should do and places they should go. “Whoa,” they told me, “we only have two days there!” Generally had a much nicer time than I expected at such a crowded hut, and slept well. Except that in the middle of the night I woke and discovered that a tightly closed room with ten warm bodies in it gets stuffy quite fast. I cracked the door and it cooled off. At least I know DoC builds well – no drafts!