Day 40 – Camp Stream to Royal Hut

I expected I’d find the missing hut a stone’s throw away by morning light, but it was fifteen minutes before I came upon it, at the end of a 4WD track exactly as described by my trail notes.  The grid coordinates put the hut in the wrong place on the map.  Lesson learned: always read the text as well as the map.

The plan for the day was up Camp Creek to a saddle.  Unfortunately the route was unmarked and the going was a bit of a bash through tussock and occasional bogs. As I reached the head of the stream, I found myself in a bowl from which none of the saddles looked very inviting, but my maps pointed out a scree slope to the east which I dutifully surmounted.

I was much relieved to find a waratah standard at the top, wrapped in the standard orange tube DoC uses to mark its trails.  This one, and all of its sisters I was to find on the other side, were neatly wrapped at the top with reflective tape, a considerate touch I became very grateful for.

The valley I now descended was a bit trickier than the average, with a sharp drop off partway down.  The poles helped me to navigate around that part, but the terrain was still quite steep.  It was also well-covered in slippery snowgrass, such that I slipped more than once and found myself sledding downhill for several meters. Once I recovered from my surprise, I realized it had been a lot of fun, so I did it a few times more for pure enjoyment.  The snowgrass worked exceedingly well for this purpose.

But the day was getting late, and while sledding was strictly faster than walking, the slope soon ran out. I went on foot a ways, but dark closed in fast and I was again in the situation from last night: not yet at the hut, and perhaps unable to find it without better light. Tonight, though, I was helped by the reflectors on the DoC markers. I could swing even my feeble LED light around the valley until I was rewarded by an answering flash from the hundreds of tiny retroflectors on that blessed little patch of tape. I hurried to that pole and repeated the process.

I was not far away from the hut and soon recognized its square lines against the more natural contours of the valley. 

I was glad to have reached my destination tonight, and doubly glad when I found that it had numerous candle holders, most of them holding the stub of a candle.  After spending two evenings with darkness as my enemy, it was gratifying to light some of the candles and banish it, at least from within the hut’s walls. It certainly made preparing dinner easier.

A couple hours later, when I went outside to relieve myself before bed, I was greeted by the nearly-full moon.  I felt a bit foolish that if I had waited a bit, I could have hiked easily by the moon’s generous light.  But not too foolish – what would I have done in those two hours of waiting?