Day 33 – Lake Pukaki to Lake Pukaki
As I woke up this morning, my plan for the next few days was crystallizing. I would hike north to Tekapo today, then hitch backward (south) to Lake Ohau and finish up the crossing to the Ahuriri River. I would take the Maitland Stream route through that section, which requires only a single permission and seems more established than the official Te Araroa route.
The track from here follows the bank of Lake Pukaki, and I enjoyed some of those great Mt. Cook / Aoraki views promised yesterday. Though I had a plan now, my feet were still dragging. Maybe I packed too much food for this section, or maybe I was just out of shape from my week of relaxation. Lucky the lake was beautiful or I might have been frustrated.
Lake Pukaki is fed by glacial runoff from the Mueller, Hooker, Tasman, and Murchison Glaciers. As these glaciers grind down their respective valleys, they carry away pieces of the Southern Alps, ranging from boulder-sized erratics to micron-sized rock flour. This rock flour stays suspended in the rivers and lakes, giving them an astonishing opaque turquoise* color.
The end of the day brought me to Tekapo B penstocks, still on the edge of Lake Pukaki. Here a pair of mighty pipes slope down from the canal above, providing the necessary pressure to spin the turbines in a massive power plant which hums along offshore, discharging into the lake.
The weather looked fine, so I found a flat spot and cowboy camped. Just as I was falling asleep, I thought I felt something across my feet. A possum? I squinted, glasses off, at the dark. Is that lump on the ground a rock, or a bundle of clothes. I kicked at it at found it surprisingly soft, so I pulled out my glasses and flashlight. It was a hedgehog, now quite thoroughly terrified, but no less adorable for his fright. He was executing his primary defense mechanism of standing still and being prickly. After some thought, I classified him as “unknown threat level” to my pack and food, so I tried to flip him over with a stick. The hedgehog promptly executed his secondary defense mechanism, “running away.” I slept peacefully the rest of the night.
*Days later, hiking with Blair, I would struggle to define this color, settling on cobalt blue. Lucky for us, a man with a very big camera around his neck happened to overhear us and chime in. This resulted in a conversation that ranged from teal to aquamarine and finally settled upon turquoise. I would like to thank this nameless hero for his assistance.