Day 53 – Hurunui Hot Pool to Hope Kiwi Lodge

Soaked again this morning and set out feeling quite refreshed. It was another easy day down the Hurunui River valley. There are so many things to like about being on a popular, well-established track: there are frequent markers, windthrow is cut away or routed around, there are nice huts. But the thing I like best is: they avoid unnecessary river crossings. When the river cuts into an embankment, the trail cuts a path into bush allowing a tramper to stay on the same side. When it becomes necessary to cross a river, there is typically a swingbridge. All of this means dry boots, and there is no higher luxury for a tramper.

Towards afternoon the trail began to climb to the Kiwi Saddle, then down a beautiful broad valley and over to the Hope Kiwi Lodge, a very nice hut with twenty bunks. I had the whole thing to myself and had a nice quiet candlelit evening.

I’ve been keeping an ear out for kiwis (note the lowercase k). The flightless birds have been doing rather well in Arthur’s Pass National Park and in particular the Hurunui River valley, which is being managed as a “Mainland Island.” Much of New Zealand’s bird conservation has been focussed on some of the offshore islands, which can generally be kept predator-free. The idea of a mainland island is to combine natural barriers like water and mountains with predator-proof fences, trapping, and poisoning to create a place where birds can thrive with their eggs unmolested by stoats, ferrets, weasels, and possums. There’s also a kiwi egg snatching operation currently being run by DoC. DoC tags kiwis with radio collars so they can tell when a bird is nesting, then they go in, steal the eggs, then hatch and raise the chicks until they are large enough to fend for themselves. This has worked quite well and boosts chick survival rates quite dramatically.

So I was listening keenly for kiwis, and I thought I heard a call, but every time I opened a window to listen better, the sound seemed to be coming from the other direction. At first I thought the bird saw me and stopped calling, but after walking around the hut a bit trying to figure out from which direction it was coming, I concluded that it must have been a squeaky wind spinner atop the chimney, which sat atop a logburner exactly in the center of the hut.