Day 39 – Tekapo to Camp Stream

I was still busy making arrangements as of this morning, most importantly booking a jet boat to cross the Rakaia, which is generally too high to ford.  I wasn’t looking forward to spending $175 on the crossing, but the only alternative was a long hitch on a lonely dirt road to a road bridge 40 km from the trail.

Evidently the owners of Ryton Station used to run a jet boat operation that was handy for this crossing, but the station has been sold. The new owners referred me to an operator who is based at the Terrace Downs golf course, down near the road bridge. When I called them and explained I only wanted to be ferried across the river, not down to their golf course or from the course up the river, it seemed to confuse them to no end. I got passed from one operator to another, who told me she’d have the guy who drives the boat call me back. He never did.

Eventually I started the long walk up the east side of Lake Tekapo. The weather was ominous but not yet raining. As I went along it turned to a light drizzle, then to my surprise – snow!  It was a light dusting, and down where I was, it didn’t stick, but after an hour or so I could see a thin layer of white accumulated on the nearby ridge.

There’s a hut not shown on my map, but I had a description of its location and a grid reference. Before departing I had marked the grid reference on my map so it would be easy to find.

As I neared the confluence of Camp and Coal Creeks, it was starting to get a bit dark. Luckily the hut was just atop a little rise to my left – or so I thought. Thinking I had misread the map, I re-read it and started climbing the next highest rise.  I bumbled around until it was so dark that I knew my feeble flashlight wouldn’t pick out a hut in front of my eyes.

The landscape was all tussock, so I couldn’t hang my hammock but would have to use it as a bivvy sack, on the ground. I was glad it had stopped snowing, but now there were intermittent sprinkles of rain. I pulled my rainfly atop my sleeping bag and anchored it with my boots.  It performed quite well overall. I stayed warm through the night, though in the morning my bag and rainfly were quite wet with condensation from my body.