Day 46 – Rakaia River to Hamilton Hut

I rose before dawn from my riverside campsite. I had made a few kilometers yesterday towards the nose of the Mt Oakden, but would still have to round it before reaching the Harper River, my path for the day.

I had thought I was well short of the Wilberforce, but rounding the end of the mountains, it was clear the river cut deeply into embankments too steep for me to sidle. Not a problem – I had mastered this river in combination with the Rakaia yesterday - surely I could master it today.

I was nearly through my first crossing of several when I happened to look up the Wilberforce valley. There I saw grey clouds and an unmistakable sheeting of rain. The string of fair weather that had given me such an unusually low river yesterday was coming to an end today. Past warnings flashed through my head about how quickly rivers could rise, and how one ought to be careful not to get trapped between streams of a rising river. I made haste to get through the necessary crossings, and it seemed to me the river was higher each time I crossed. But of course this was just because in my haste I was not as careful in choosing the shallowest crossing points.

I was relieved when I made it to the bridge over Lake Coleridge’s diversion canal. This lake is another source of electricity – in this case run by Trust Power, New Zealand’s first publicly-funded hydroelectric system.

By now the wind was getting fierce, and though the rain had yet to arrive, even the cows were piteously complaining to anyone who would listen. That being no one but me, so far as I could tell.

I was walking the flats of the Harper River when the rain finally came. It never came hard, but it was whipped into needles by the wind. Following the river was straightforward, and seemed to get easier when I reached a four-wheel-drive track. But the author of this track seemed to take especial glee in fording rivers, and I was back and forth across the river many more times than really seemed necessary.

At the end of the day I reached Hamilton Hut, a big DoC hut and modernly fitted out. It was nice to have a change from the musterer’s huts I’d been staying in. I was somehow surprised to find there were *people* in it. The fact that it’s listed as holding twenty people should have clued me in that it was popular, but I hadn’t shared a hut since Tekapo, and it was starting to seem the natural way of things.

My hut companions were a couple of Canadians, with whom I played Hearts all night and to whom I introduced the fine art of shooting the moon; a gestalt of Germans who introduced me to Tantrix, an intriguing tile-based game developed in New Zealand; and a duet of Dutch, who snored.