Day 65 – Top Wairoa Hut to Mid Wairoa Hut

Today reminded me why I enjoyed yesterday’s ridgewalk so much more than all the river walking I’ve been doing. The trail crisscrossed the Wairoa just enough times to keep my feet wet, but not often enough to get used to it, so I still cringed a little at each dunking. Rather than progressing slowly and steadily down along the river, the poorly maintained track would frequently divert up and around bluffs, so I was constantly climbing thirty meters and then descending forty.  The valley I was in was so deep that by two o’clock there was no direct light, so all afternoon it felt like dusk

On top of all that, I was made constantly aware of the deteriorating condition of my boots because I was constantly slipping. I’ve repaired them for stitching failures twice now, but never replaced the tread, and it’s starting to look rather smooth.

I was very glad to reach Mid Wairoa Hut and call it a day, even though it was still early.  There was no way I had the energy left to climb up to Tarn Hut, some four hours away.

Day 64 – Porter Hut to Top Wairoa Hut

Today I set out to take an unmarked shortcut across Porters Ridge.  Though I’ve frequently gone cross-country without markers, I’ve generally been following something with at least an abstract existence on DoC maps as a “route.”  Today I was operating from a 1:50,000 topographic map, a compass, and a few scribbled words in a hut book. With the added complication that there might be unseen snow atop the ridge, I was suitably cautious about this adventure, but I figured I could always descend if it got too rough.

I picked a gully that looked to be reasonably broad and not too steep. After following the trail on the flats for about half an hour, I turned right up my chosen gully. It was running with water so I tossed the contents of my bottle, figuring I’d refill before leaving the gully.

Towards the head, the gully got steeper and rockier so I started to ascend a nearby spur that would take me to the ridge proper. Now it was really tough walking, and I was frequently grabbing rocks or tufts of snowgrass to help lift myself up. It took nearly an hour to ascend, and there were a few dodgy slippery bits, but soon I reached a big plateau where I could get my bearings. I felt great, on top of the world. I would be ridgewalking today, and I had just finished paying my dues by climbing that spur. The payoff would be more of the amazing views I was enjoying right now, and very little additional climbing.  Across to the east was a smallish mountain with a light covering of snow, fast melting as the day warmed. Behind me to the South, the bigger peaks of Nelson Lakes National Park were covered in more snow.

A ridge is what they call in orientation a “handrail,” a line feature that, once you’ve found it, you can can follow to your destination. In fact, I didn’t follow the ridge precisely, often sidling a bit to one side or another to dodge a rocky section or skip some climbing. Very early on, I came within view of my main peak for the day, about 150m of extra climbing.  Unfortunately the straight-ahead route and the west side were both too steep, and the east side still had snow. I set out on the east side, figuring I’d sidle up and around, trying to step only where the rocks were visible through the snow. This quickly became impossible, and I was walking through snow, occasionally with ice underneath. I kept telling myself how foolish this was, but the slope was not steep and I would always have my hands on other rocks when taking a risky step. It was harder, slower going than I expected, but I never once fell.

I rounded the corner and found a spectacular view of the Red Hills, a ridge facing Porters and forming a long, deep valley. The head of this valley is where I would descend tonight to the head of the Wairoa River.

The Red Hills are composed of ultramafic rock, meaning they are basic and iron rich.  The iron gives them their red color as it oxidizes, and the basic pH means that few plants grow on them. The resulting marsscape is quite stunning. Below me to my right was a large mossy ledge with a tarn that I figured would make a fantastic campsite, but I had many more miles to go today.

I proceeded to pick my way along the rocks of Porters Ridge, smiling and happy. The sun was shining but not too hot, I was making fast progress, the mountains were beautiful, and I felt like everything was going my way.

Then I rounded a small peak and, ka-wow!  There it was, the ocean!  It was a bit hazy but I could distinctly see a sliver of Tasman Bay over the mountains. It was thrilling.  It really brought home the fact that I was almost finished with my tramp. At the same time, it was a weighty, sad realization – my tramp was almost over. I sat and stared at that sliver of grey-blue for a while, and then more immediate concerns returned and I set out to finish walking before the sun set.

Where Porter’s Ridge and the Red Hills meet, I descended to the North and met up with the trail again. Not much good it did me, as it was very poorly marked through this section, and an optimistic reading of the map frequently misled me during the difficult sidling descent across tussock. The trail did get better though, and I was soon tucked away in tidy Top Wairoa Hut.

Day 63 – Red Hills Hut to Porter Hut

My boots are starting to look a little worse for wear, and the tread is especially wearing smooth.  This made today’s tramp a bit harder than I expected, since much of the track is poorly formed or slippery with moss.  One section of the trail was destroyed by a huge slide that left the earth underneath exposed and muddy, and I had several careless falls that made me thankful I wasn’t on more dangerous ground.

I had expected to make two huts’ worth of distance today, but the trail was tough enough that when I reached Porter’s Hut, I was more than grateful to stop.  It helped that Porter is what the Kiwis call a “cute wee hut,” a nicely built ten-by-ten box that I had to stoop to enter.  It’s in a scenic spot in one corner of a subalpine meadow, with views of mountains to the north and west.  The hut itself dates back to the NZ Forest Service days, but has received a couple of recent updates, like a small window next to the fireplace that can be opened so it draws better, and a “FIRE EXIT” sign above the single door.  The other neat feature here is the milk can rain gauge outside.  There is a booklet inside from the Nelson Catchment Board inviting hut users to read and reset the gauge, record the levels in a log book, and mail a postcard to the Board with the reading.

I read the hut book outside while the sun went down, visited occasionally by the neighborhood weka.  This is easily the oldest hut book I have ever seen, beating all the competition by at least fifteen years.  Its first entries date from 1986, shortly after DoC took over hut management from NZFS.  There are loads of entries imploring DoC to keep these lesser used backcountry huts, and not to remove fireplaces in the name of timber conservation.

The most interesting entry for me was from 2002, by one Geoff Chapple, the originator of Te Araroa.  He came through here scouting routes through the Richmond range, and in fact left a note in the hut book detailing the same unmarked shortcut over Porters Ridge that he described for me when I went to visit him in Auckland.  I resolved to take this shortcut tomorrow, as it shaves off quite a lot of distance and looks like nicer tramping anyhow.

Day 62 – St. Arnaud to Red Hills Hut

Good news this morning! Mari from the rural post says they have my package, and I’ll be able to pick it up at the fire station between 2:30 and 3:00 today.  I didn’t much mind the waiting, since yesterday’s rain was not due to end until this afternoon.

Opening my package was joy.  Even though I knew everything I would find in it, it still felt like getting a present.  Inside there were all sorts of good food, full fresh bags of dried fruits and nuts and chocolate pretzels.  There were non-food powerups too: a fresh pair of candles for reading in the huts at night, a new roll of toilet paper and a new set of maps.  I’ve said in the past that shopping as one proceeds along a through-hike is the way to go, since you get more variety and less hassle.  But using mail drops has distinct advantages as well.  Besides the joy of opening the package, I also saved the time I would have spent shopping, which is a surprisingly time-consuming activity given that I nearly always buy the same items.  Time spent salivating in front of food displays is probably the main cause of delay.

I was on the road and in the rain by 3:30.  I hoped to get as far as the first hut but was resigned to camping if I couldn’t.  I just wanted to get moving.  There weren’t many cars on the road and few of them were stopping for me, so I walked while I hitched.  It’s only about twelve kilometers from St. Arnaud to the Red Hills trailhead, so I might have walked the whole way before I got a ride.

Two kilometers later, I finally got a ride.  The woman said “I’m only going a short distance.”  I replied: “That’s fine, I only need to go about ten kilometers.”  She was going only eight and a half, but I got in anyhow.  I described the trailhead to her as best I could, but I hadn’t been able to find any good descriptions of it online and planned to rely on my GPS.  Turns out I was doubly lucky to get this ride, because the woman driving knew all about this trailhead, including the fact that it had been moved in December so my GPS maps would be out of date.  She also had a good idea of how long it would take to get to Red Hills Hut.  She told me I would definitely not reach it before dark, but after the first couple of kilometers the track would turn into a four-wheel-drive track, which would be easy to follow even after nightfall.

I zipped quickly along the newly cut and marked DoC track.  It’s an interesting bit of trail that mounts a small moraine and follows it lengthwise for a kilometer or two.  There were intermittent views through the trees.  I could see that the mountains to the south had a lovely fresh coat of white above 1,500 meters or so, where yesterday’s rain fell as snow.  Nice to look at, but worrisome.  The clerk at the Alpine Lodge had assured me that the Red Hills, through some meteorological quirk, don’t always get snow when the Nelson Lakes park does.  Still, I was concerned that tomorrow I might need to cross rough terrain in the snow.

Today though I was focussed on trying to get to the hut before dark.  I reached the four-wheel-drive road and started trucking uphill at top speed.  I made good progress, but the hill was steep and the road didn’t seem to end.  Finally when I couldn’t see the road without a torch, I took my first break of the evening.  As I sat  there, I noticed a light on some of the nearby trees.  Headlights, I wondered?  Maybe somebody was parked nearby?  It was the full moon rising!  So when I got up I found that I began to have more and more light.

I had heard this hut was rather dismal, but when I arrived it was not nearly as bad as I expected. The bunks were solid and the floor was tidy. When I lit a candle to cook dinner I saw the source of most objections; the place was covered floor-to-ceiling in graffiti. I don’t generally object to graffiti as much as some do. Given a well-written bathroom stall I will often linger to finish reading the thoughts of the former inhabitants. This hut was especially amusing because, as if by unwritten agreement, most of the graffitists had chosen to write in rhyme. There were no limericks here. That form would be much too constraining for the authors of such straightforward verse as “seagull, seagull, in the sky / Why’d you do that in my eye? / Boy I’m glad that cows don’t fly.”

One passerby had even undertaken to cover the entirety of the wall above the cook station with a long-form poem about wilderness, starting with the morepork’s cry. The poor author was subjected to the rough dealing of his fellow lyricists, one of whom noted at a later date “blantly mundane in rythme and rhyme [sic].”

The award for most charming graffito, however, goes to a ten-year-old who, determined to contrast with many of the cruder items, transcribed and illustrated a short educational article about the habits of a native butterfly that lives among the tussocks. It was a nice effort, but his noble pen was like a mere finger in the dike against the flood of authors so determined to be profane that they remembered to haul felt-tip markers up the mountain with them.

Day 61 – St. Arnaud

Today is a “zero day,” one of the more revealing terms in the through-hiker’s jargon.  It means a day of rest, one in which no hiking was done, and to a mind that measures everything in kilometers, it is a big zero.  Of course, through-hikers take zero days all the time, but there is always a vague puritanical guilt involved.

I whiled away the rainy day playing on the internet, visiting the tiny shop repeatedly for such luxuries as broccoli and bananas, and chatting with the hotel clerk.  The clerk was a gregarious woman in her sixties, and the only person I found in the whole town who knew much about the Richmond Range and the Red Hills, my upcoming destination.  She described it as exceedingly beautiful and rugged, and said that not many hikers get up there, though she didn’t really know why.  It used to be her old stomping grounds when she lived in Nelson.

In the afternoon the weather cleared briefly and I went for a walk along Lake Rotoiti, incidentally picking up a few kilometers of walkable track that I had missed yesterday when the DoC worker shuttled me across the unwalkable Roberts Road.  So technically today was not quite a zero day.

I’m still on the fence about whether to wait and see if my package arrives tomorrow afternoon.  It would kill most of the day, but it would save me a lot of hassle, and I would eat better than if I tried to cobble together a resupply from the country store here.

Routeburn Birthdays Intermission, Days 4-7 – Getting back on the trail

Blair flew up to Auckland to rejoin Roxane and Suzanne.  I remained an extra day in Queenstown to make ready for my next leg.  It was to be the longest so far – nine days – and the most complicated, with two major river crossings, at least one  station permission, and several options to mail food drops and book accommodations.  I also needed maps, pack repair, shoe repair, and a new raincoat.  All this was forgotten, of course, when I found a group of jugglers practicing on the green.  I borrowed some props and joined them, and over the next few hours so did several others.  There were devil sticks, poi, staff, and whip in addition to the more standard balls and clubs.  I refreshed my devilstick skills and learned a couple new whip cracks.  Some climbers came along and set up a slackrope, which I tried several times to traverse but never quite succeeded.  Before I knew it the day was gone, but I had a blast.

I got more done the next day, but the big stumbling block was finding maps.  The shops in Queenstown didn’t have them because the area was too far away, and calling ahead to Twizel and Tekapo no one had them because the shops are too small.

Part of the problem is that New Zealand is about to switch from the NZMG coordinate system to the newer NZTM (New Zealand Transverse Mercator).  This involves a new projection as well as an update to use the newer WGS84 datum, a more accurate model of the world’s shape than the WGS49 dated which is used in the NZMG system.

All this is great news.  For instance, the outdated datum used by the NZMG topo maps mean that GPS readings from my whiz-bang phone can’t be accurately translated into a map position.   The update to WGS84 will fix that issue.  In the short term, however, it means that shop owners are trying to evacuate their stock before the new topo maps are released in September.  In the meantime there are serious lacunae in the coverage available most places.  By phoning around I finally found a shop in Timaru that had all the maps I needed, though it was fairly far out of the way.

The next day I spent trying to hitch out of Queenstown, but it was more difficult than I expected and I only made it so far as Wanaka before nightfall.  On a whim I checked the shops in Wanaka and found they had nearly every map I needed.  Oh frabjous day!  I like Wanak more every time I visit.

The last day of my return oddessey to the trail, I was at the edge of Wanaka, just sticking out my thumb, when a skinny hippy and a very tall blond fellow roll up on skateboards.  Right behind them was a girl with dreadlocks.  It was a bunch of the jugglers from Queenstown, also here to hitch!  Even more remarkably, while we’re standing around chatting – not even thumbs out yet – a woman in an SUV pulls over and asks if we need a ride.  And yes, she does have room for all four of us and our packs.  What luck!

She drives us as far as Cromwell, where we split up when a ride shows up with room for only one.  But two rides later at the end of the day, I was getting out of a rabbit hunter’s car, I spot them right behind getting out of someone else’s car.  After all that distance they arrived at exactly the same time as me!

My last ride, the rabbit hunter, was fascinating.  He gets hired by farmers who have a big rabbit problem but find poisoning too expensive.  He has multiple rifles that he has completely worn out by shooting them so many times, and he has a specialty set on order from a boutique gunsmith in Colorado that should be long lasting and more accurate.  He told me the furthest confirmed kill he every made was at 530 meters, and that on a typical day he can kill a hundred and fifty rabbits – more if hunts at night, because so many more come out at night that he can get closer, even though he needs a light.

I asked him about the use of viruses to control rabbits, which I had only recently heard about.  Evidently a group of farmers pused to the bring of bankruptcy by rabbits had applied to DoC to release rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus, which was already loose in Australia.  They were turned down, so went into business for themselves by smuggling in some infected rabbit carcasses, making a primitive rabbit / virus stew in a blender, and distributing it.  Unfortunately their deployment was not as efficient as it should have been.  Sunlight weakend the virus, and they released it at a non-optimal time in the rabbit breeding cycle.  Further, the release should have been coordinated with a trapping and poisoning program.  As is, the release had a temporary effect, but the rabbit population has now bounced back and is largely resistant.

Day 60 – Sabine Hut to St. Arnaud

When I woke this morning, I was so wide awake that I just couldn’t get back to sleep, so I tiptoed out of the bunkroom of the hut, packed, and was on my way by five thirty in the morning, a personal record and well before it was light enough to see the trail.  Hiking by flashlight is not much fun, but I was especially excited to get on the road because I would reach St. Arnaud today, and wanted to make sure I arrived before the post shop closed so I could get my food drop.  Lucky for me the light soon arrived.  In the dark I was constantly second guessing whether I was still on the trail, but once there was light I made fast progress.  The track was well maintained, with some very long boardwalk sections where the ground gets muddy.  Even so, there were still some major mud pits along the way that threatened to suck me in.

By noon I was well along the way, maybe an hour from the trailhead, when I came across another tramper heading the opposite direction.  He was starting on an eight-day trip with an easy day to Speargrass Hut, just a couple hours behind me.  We struck up a conversation about Te Araroa – he is one of the few people I’ve met who is actively aware of the trail and keeping an eye on its development.  We got deeper into conversation and before long we were each sitting on our packs, he rolling a steady procession of cigarettes which he smoked as I picked his brain about New Zealand’s economy, history, and politics, answered questions about my Te Araroa trip, and asked about this guy’s job, which was really interesting.  He works for an agricultural research firm, and is investigating the possibility of using alternate feed to reduce the methane emissions from sheep and cattle.  You’re probably aware that methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, much more effective than carbon dioxide.  It’s produced in large quantities by the gut bacteria in the stomach of stock.  Evidently they’ve had some success, and different feeds do produce a decrease in methane emissions, but there are obstacles to adoption, like the fact that cattle don’t grow as quickly on many of these alternate feeds.  I enjoyed lazing around on the track chatting, and before I knew it an hour and a half had passed.  I wasn’t too worried.  I figured if the post office was open today, it would surely be open until at least five, so I was fine for time.

When I reached the trailhead, around two, I found a construction crew re-grading the metalled access road.  They wouldn’t permit anyone through because it was too dangerous.  So they had a kid with a radio posted at the trail, and he called for a guy with a car to drive through the construction zone and pick me up.  Even better, I thought, now I’ll definitely get to the post office before five.

The fellow with the car dropped me off at the St. Arnaud DoC site around 2:30.  Cool, I thought, I’m on time!  I’ve even got some time to peruse the topo maps here and get information for the next leg of my trip.  I bought a couple of maps, and asked about the Richmond Range, but no-one at DoC seemed to have much info on it.  They fielded questions almost exclusively about the Nelson Lakes National Park.

Now I ambled off in search of the post office.  A Rural Post van drove by and I waved, thinking “He must have just done a dropoff, that’s great, more chance that my package is there.”  I asked around and was directed to the fire station.  It turns out that the “post shop” is only open from 2:30 to 3:00 on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, when the delivery contractors for Rural Post show up to sort the mail into people’s boxes.  That van I just waved at *was* the post shop, and I had missed him by minutes! I would have to wait two full days before I had another chance to pick up my food box.

I ran back in the direction of the DoC info site, thinking he might still be parked there.  Four hundred meters with my pack still on was exhausting, and when I got there he was gone. I asked at the tiny shop in town whether the postman mentioned any package when he came through.  They said no, but gave me his phone number.  I called – no answer, left a message.

Dejected, I checked into the Alpine Lodge Backpackers and set about my town routines: shower, call Roxane, eat two dinners, check internet.  Late in the evening I get a message from Luanne who, with her husband, runs the rural post route servicing St. Arnaud.  The good news is that they don’t have any package for me, so I don’t have to kick myself about idling at the DoC centreduring the short window when I could have picked up my package.  The bad news is that they don’t have any package for me.  So I’ll have to either wait until Wednesday and see if they have the box by then, or try to stock up at the painfully modest town shop.  Haven’t decided yet, but tomorrow is forecast for heavy rain, so I’ll take at least one zero day, and see how I feel by Wednesday.

Day 59 – Blue Lake Hut to Sabine Hut

Many times while hiking on Te Araroa I’ve had the pleasure of watching a river grow from its trickling headwaters into a massive waterway, as I walk down along its valley.  Not so today, though.  The Sabine never trickles; instead it springs, fully-formed as Athena, from its headwaters beneath Blue Lake.  Water pours through large gaps between boulders and creates an impressive waterfall that gets the river off to a very respectable start.

I walked alongside this sudden torrent all day, descending the Sabine valley through honeydew beech forest.  These beech trees look like chimneys peeled inside-out: tall, straight, and covered in thick black creosote.  But no fire has touched this national park in recent history.  The “soot” is actually a black fungus that thrives on refined beech sap.  This refinement is courteously performed by the female beech scale insect, which burrows into the bark of the tree to feast on the protein contained in the sap.  The excess sugar is excreted by way of an anal filament which protrudes out of the bark even though the insect is completely concealed.  Looking closely at these trees you can see hundreds of fine white hairs standing out from the black fungus.  At the tip of each hair is a drop of honeydew, a favored food of bellbirds and other nectar eaters.

As with most New Zealand ecosystems, there’s a war story waiting to be told, and in this case the invading army is comprised of wasps, and to a lesser extent honeybees. These exotic species thrive on the honeydew and reduce the supply available for nectar-eating birds.  I saw few wasps directly, but whenever I was far from the rush of the river, I could hear a low omnidirectional hum like a massive piece of machinery operating just out of sight.  It gave the forest an oddly industrial feel as I descended to Lake Rotoroa.

Walking a nice trail through beech forest was a pleasant change from the rough alpine routes
yesterday, and from the river flats of the day before.  This is the most enjoyable sort of
tramping, when each day brings changing terrain and different challenges.

Now that I’m in a national park, the huts are bigger.  Sabine Hut, on the shores of Lake Rotoroa, sleeps thirty.  Luckily when I arrived there were only four people playing cards around one of the tables, with a couple of hunters due back later that night.  A wood stove in the center of the room was doing a very effective job of pumping out heat, and I was still warm from walking, so after dropping my bag I donned my swimsuit and ran down to the lake for a dip.  Sabine Hut is serviced by a water taxi, so there’s a wooden jetty near the hut.  After splashing around a bit I lay out on the jetty and watched the clouds dimming as I cooled off.

The hunters returned well after dark, as hunters typically do, and started cooking dinner.  There’s no love lost between trampers and hunters, and the card players took this as a good time to retire.  From the younger, slightly less brusque, hunter, I heard that there were lots of eels down by the jetty and I went down to take a look.

It was eerily silent at this time of night – the wasps were in bed, and there were no birds about, not even the nocturnal morepork.  The air felt surprisingly warm, much warmer than when I arrived.  When I lay down on the jetty with my head sticking out, and pointed my flashlight into the waters, I was delighted to see a cluster of longfin eels swimming in, out, and around the pilings below.  The water was so crystal clear they appeared to be floating above the ground, and their silent movements were hypnotic.  I watched them for almost an hour between rolling over to gaze at the now-visible stars.  By the time I left I could identify a couple of eels by their habits.  One of them in particular was fascinated by my flashlight and would alternately charge towards and shy away from the source of the light.

Day 58 – Waiau Forks to Blue Lake Hut

There was frost on my sleeping bag this morning. Better frost than dew, of course, because you can brush it off. And I felt plenty warm all night. I woke at first light, though, anxious and excited to go over this challenging pass. I was actually grateful for the initial steep climb through scrub, as it got my heart pumping quickly and I stayed warm even though the sun was not yet risen.

I had been led to believe by others’ accounts of the pass, in particular Eric Martinot’s, that the route on the South side of the ridge was obscure and hard to follow. It wasn’t so in my experience.  Where it was brushy there was a reasonably worn-in track, and where the track faded there was a generous number of cairns.  This may be a recent development, especially since the recent purchase of the St James Station means permission is no longer needed to hike this route.  I’m sure that has boosted its popularity quite a bit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some keen hikers had come through in the last year and put up all these cairns.  Many of them were small or sloppy, adding credibility my “recent cairn-building age” theory.  No complaints though – a small cairn is better than none at all!

The track followed the West fork of the Waiau for a while, then hooked right to follow a spur up towards the pass. The bowl I sat in looked truly formidable at this point, and it was hard to see how I could get up top, but I kept following the cairns, which were now joined by a number of snow poles, almost all of them bent or snapped off by past avalanches. Gradually this brought me closer and closer to my destination, which was still unseen. By gradually I mean to say that my heart was pounding and I had to stop every few minutes and rest.

Not that I minded the rest breaks, of course. The view behind me became more spectacular in direct proportion to my increasing altitude, and the sun was rising on a gorgeous blue day. There were small patches of snow on nearby slopes that were probably a remnant from last winter, but my path was free and clear.

Towards the top I came to the part where serious rock scrambling, almost climbing, was required.  I could easily see now why Eric found this section extremely challenging and even dangerous.  He was coming from the north, and going backwards down these rocks would be much more challenging than forwards. I was glad going north made this particular section easier, though it certainly was no cakewalk.

Finally I crested a small ridge, and could see the pass for the first time, only a hundred meters away!  It hardly seemed a pass at all, since it was not dramatically higher than the adjacent ridge.  It was framed by two tiny peaks that seemed to surpass the pass by only a hundred meters or so.

It was still bright and beautiful, and the views from the top of the pass were truly fantastic.  But I only paused briefly at the top since there was a bit of a cold wind.  Soon I was surfing down a scree field on the North side.  When I had descended a little way I stopped for lunch out of the wind, soaking in the view down the walled-in head of the Sabine River valley.  A semicircle of mountains surrounded Lake Constance, a classic blue alpine tarn below me.

Starting out after lunch, I and a Taiwanese man mutually startled each other.  Neither of us was expecting to see anyone on this challenging, remote traverse.  We exchanged pleasantries and headed on.  As he walked away I looked back up at the pass – it was now socked in with cloud, less than an hour after I had crossed.   I had very good luck to cross when it was still clear.

Lake Constance is a wonderful deep tarn, with a textbook example of a terminal moraine at its North end, a massive earthen dam of which any human engineer would be rightfully proud.  The only thing to distinguish its glacial origin is the rocky scattering of erratics across its top.  That, and the complete lack of any spillway, since Lake Constance’s waters drain out through the ground itself.

Before setting out, I read on Nelson Lakes Shuttle’s excellent Waiau Pass page, which mentioned “don’t try to go around the shore of Lake Constance, you’ll get bluffed out.”  Naturally I managed to do exactly that, by losing track of the markers when they turned uphill.  I rounded one bluff, carefully clinging to the rock to avoid a dunking in the cold water with all my gear.  On the other side I found a waterfall and another bluff.  Foolish stubbornness led me to try this one too, but I soon saw that it was too hard, I had lost the track and would have to backtrack.  The real track was actually at the top of the waterfall, and I had another stubborn attempt at climbing that before I finally admitted I would have to go back to the head of the lake.

I was surprised how steep and challenging this sidling route was, it took almost as much energy out of me as the the actual traverse of the pass.  By the time I descended to the natural dam at the foot of Lake Constance, all thought of making it past Blue Lake Hut had vanished.  I was dead knackered.

A short wooded descent brought me soon to Blue Lake, a sixteen person hut.  Surprisingly large given that it mainly services difficult alpine routes.  The Blue Lake itself was fabulous.  The water was unfathomably transparent and still, giving perfect views all the way to a wide variety of mosses lining the bottom.  It may very well be the most beautiful lake I’ve ever seen.

I walked along the lake for a while as the sun set, and sat on the rocks at its foot.  There was a massive rushing and gurgling sound constantly emitted from these rocks as the lake water drained through them.  It sounded like a massive bathtub.

Day 57 – Christopher Hut to Waiau Forks

Frost on the ground again this morning. As I set out a number of cattle and horses were grazing in the area around the hut, and I got a close look at some of the horses living here.  Evidently the St. James owners bred their own horses for years, and they were much prized at a biennial horse auction they held.

I scouted the Ada River near the hut, but found no place I could reasonably cross without getting my boots wet, so I reluctantly resigned myself to having cold, wet boots for the day.  It was a dark morning in the shadow of the hills as I followed the Ada downstream, but when I turned into the Waiau Valley, it was sunny and warm.  The broad cattle flats were easy to navigate, and I made great time up till Catherine Creek Hut.  I met a hunter along the way with a stag’s head, trying to cut off the bottom jaw to make it easier to carry.  It was the first time I’ve actually seen a hunter with a catch, and I half expected that as a vegetarian I would find the sight repulsive, but it just wasn’t that gory.  Evidently this hunter and his friends had had a great day.  After he bagged his catch, the three of them were walking back, talking and being loud, when they just stumbled across another stag, which one of his friends shot.  They were following common hunting practice here, which is to take the head for a trophy and hindquarters for meat, leaving the rest as the meat is tougher and less tasty.

There’s a hut at Catherine Creek, but I wanted to ensure I got over Waiau Pass before the weather could change, so I pushed on further to Waiau Forks.  There’s supposedly a nice campsite here, but I never found it – instead I found a patch of flat ground just big enough for my sleeping bag and cowboy camped under the cold stars.