Day 103: Rocks Hut to Hacket Hut/Road End (20km*; 1850km total)

*includes 6km diversion off trail to road end. Not counted in total trail kilometers.

Audrey was up with the larks this morning! She quietly grabbed all her gear and went and got ready and breakfasted outside so as not to wake anyone. I went and joined here shortly before she was ready to head off. We wished each other good walk and she set off down the hill. I made breakfast outside as well, but soon enough Melissa and Simon were up. The sky was crystal blue and it was promising to be another gorgeous day!

I had planned to set out early-ish, but got chatting to Melissa and Simon and didn't head away until 9:30. This seems to be becoming a bit of a habit! Unfortunately there is no reception at the hut (despite its elevation) and I wasn't able to txt or ring my friend Richard, with whom I've arranged to meet somewhere along the track between Hacket Hut and the road end any time after 4pm. He's very kindly offered to pick me up and put me up for the night before dropping me off again tomorrow morning to walk back in to Hacket Hut and continue the trail. I'd said I'd call him from Rocks Hut to confirm, falsely assuming there'd be reception on the ridge. Oh well. I walked on and hoped for the best, checking my phone at intermittent high points to see if I could get a message out to say I was on schedule. Finally I did manage to get first a txt and then a call through. All systems are go!

It's supposed to be a 4-5hr walk to Brownings Hut, so I broke it up by stopping every 1.5hrs or so for a rest break and a snack. The walk along the ridge is nice with a few ups and downs and a section through one epic tree fall. Basically the entire forest on one side of the hill has been pretty much levelled, and we're talking big trees. It isn't recent however as young trees have begun growing up through the carnage and the trail is a well beaten route around the upended root-bowls and trunks. All the damage looks like it is around the same age however so at some point several years back there must have been one hell of a storm up here!

The Desolation of ...some massive storm. I must find out which!

After travelling along the ridge, popping out of the forest and crossing over low scrubby hillsides with some excellent view, the trail follows a long decent down to the hut. This passes the turn off to Roebuck Hut where TA used to go (I would find out later that Richard had been in touch with my Mum and told her I was at Rocks Hut, at which point she thought I'd got lost as it turns out that she was looking at an old map of the trail route, which bypasses Rocks Hut and instead goes from Middy to Roebuck...let it be noted that I did provide Mum with a digital copy of the UP-TO-DATE trail route maps, she just reverted to the slightly outdated (but still good!) book of the trail instead).

Lovely view on a lovely day

Looking back toward, Mt Richmond...?

After a steady decent and then a scramble down a section of track-come-dry-stream-bed you're at Brownings Hut. It's a nice hut (though very bright green!) set in a grassy clearing which today was bathed in blazing sunshine--so much so that I nearly got sunstroke sitting at the picnic table outside to have lunch! Unfortunately some idiot had left toilet paper scattered about. Fortunately it didn't look particularly soiled so I gathered it up as best I could and disposed of it down the bog before lathering my hands in hand sanitizer.

Brownings Hut

After a nice long lunch and perusal of the log book I set off. The sign says its three hours to Hacket Hut from Brownings but that's generous. After clambering down through massive boulders to a river bed you think it might take more, but the timing is fairly generous. I took the turn off a kilometer or so back from the hut to veer out to the road end.  I had a break at the junction where a second track leads down from Hacket Hut. I was running early and Richard and I had agreed to meet somewhere between here and the carpark, so there was no hurry to make it out to the road. I set off again at 3, thinking I could probably do the 4.7km to the road end by 4pm.

Yep, that's the track down from Brownings Hut coming
down there on the left hand side.

The track sidles alongside a river, passing under the eves of a pine plantation, crossing an ultramafic belt, past the turn off to an old titanium mine, and then back through pine country before crossing a very sturdy swing bridge. It then makes its way along a 4WD track to one final footbridge over the river to picnic area at the road end. I got there smack on 4pm and sat to have a snack while I waited for Richard. In ten minutes or so he arrived, pulling up in his zippy little blue car. I felt bad when I saw the walking poles in the back that I had deprived him of a walk, but I was pleased with myself for making good time...getting faster, getting fitter!

Richard astounded me by producing an amazing picnic afternoon tea including the choice of cold beer, iced coffee or iced chocolate (no contest there...I went with the chocolate), grapes, yoghurt and an apple. OMG hiker heaven! When the grapes and iced drinks were gone we bundled my gear into the back of the car and set off for Nelson. Over the course of the next couple of hours I was able to shower, plan the next section, take a trip to the supermarket to buy the 8-days' food I'd decided I wanted to take (2 days' spare), returned home, and was being treated to a home-cooked steak dinner. Incredible. I did the dishes while Richard beat his ailing washing machine into submission so I could wash my clothes. After I'd hung my clothes out to dry under the porch (protected from the forecast rain) Richard took me through some old family photos of he and his kids hiking in the Richmond Ranges. It's obviously a part of the world they all love very much, and after having just a taste of it myself I can see why.

For a trip down memory lane, and I suspect for my amusement, Richard also showed me some other photos of his family growing up. Richard's son was my first boss, through whom I met and am now friends with his family, and it was weird to see him as a young twenty-something...with long hair! What my ex-colleague Kristen would say if he could see! (Although if memory serves me right Kristen once showed us a photo of himself as a young man and he'd had a haircut very similar!). Richard also introduced me through photos to the beloved old family trekka jeep. It certainly looks like they have had many excellent adventures in the hills behind Nelson!

I crashed into bed at 10pm, I'm looking forward to this next section...it's supposed to be one of the highlights of the TA...although the forecast really doesn't look good. The thought of hiking in the rain over Mt Rintoul, about which the trail notes say that "particular care needs to be taken and trampers should be prepared to wait out adverse weather" is not all that appealing! Not to mention there probably won't be a view if it's raining! Fingers crossed the weather holds a few days more.
 

Day 102: Captain's Creek Hut to Rocks Hut (9.5km; 1836km total)

Another cold night. I went to bed with my hat on to save having to fish it out in the middle of the night. Jeff was keen: he went and camped down by the river!

I got up around 7:30; Slater was up by the time I came back from the loo. I had breakfast and packed up. I was moderately surprised the boys were making such a late start--Mt Richmond is no easy climb and is supposed to take a full day. Mind you they're fitter than me so will probably run up the mountain in an afternoon!

I set off at 9:25; the sign says it's 3hrs to Middy Creek Hut. I tried to do it in two, but it took two and a half. IT's a nice undulating walk along the riverbank, spoiled only by the numerous wasps! The forest was positively vibrating with their buzzing, and clouds of them were semi-settled on the trunks of the black mould beeches. There weren't many other insects, but after watching a wasp take on a weta five times its size when I was on the Queen Charlotte Track I'm not surprised. Curiously the wasps don't appear to want to attack each other. It's a pity, otherwise they could make like the orc packs in Cirith Ungol and all kill each other off!

After one scary swing bridge yesterday there were a few more today, over a river, then a stream, then another river. Finally, in another grassy clearing on the bank of the Pelorus River you come to Middy Creek Hut. It's similar to Captain's Creek Hut except it's dark red instead of green. I'd barely been there fifteen minutes and was halfway through reading the logbook when Jeff and Slater showed up. We all sat outside and had lunch, chatting about DOC and pest control, before moving onto other trails we'd walked. Jeff recommends doing the Larapinta Trail (223km trail near Alice Springs, Australia). Before we knew it and hour or so had gone by. I was still surprised when I set off again just before 1pm that the boys still didn't seem to be in any hurry. I wished them good walk and set off.

Scary Swing Bridge #...oh I'm losing count now!
But check out the colour of that water!

Beech forest along the Pelorus River

Middy Creek Hut

A short distance upriver the trail crosses  a swing bridge over the Pelorus River and then veers off up a ridge, slowly rising through open beech forest. After climbing steadily for a while the trail then undulates up and along, and then climbs again. While it was warm and humid down in the valley, it got cooler and drier on the way up...but I was still sweating buckets. I stopped every kilometer or two to hydrate and rest my legs, but I must slowly be getting fitter as my heart never pounded in my ears. Winning!

Gradual climb up out of the Pelorus Valley

The rocks change as you head up the ridge. First they become poxy and rotten and I was half thinking they looked baked when I came across a serpentinite dyke (for the non-geos: iron-magnesium rich rock intruded as a semi-molten sheet into another rock). Point to the rusty field geologist! The dyke wasn't very big and soon we were back in sedimentary rock territory, but then further up there was an abrupt vegetation change coincident with a change back to ultramafic (Fe-Mg rich again) rocks variably on the dunite-harzbergite-peridotite spectrum (but I couldn't tell you with a hand lens, or more likely a thin section!). Almost at once I felt like I was hiking through one of my field areas back in Tasmania. Since several NZ plants hearken back to Gondwana, even much of the vegetation was the same, or at least very similar, that is, woody, dry and scrubby.

Rocks! (ultramafic rocks no less)

As you near the top of the ridge there are some larger boulder outcrops. Then after crossing a small stream you come round the corner and there's an unexpectedly flash hut--Rocks Hut. While the hut is large and modern, I was even more surprised when I went to use the facilities and found flush toilets! Was the rock just too hard to dig a sizable hole in? I wondered. The hut was already occupied by a Canadian couple, Simon and Melissa, who are TA NoBos (north-bounders) and unbeknownst to me were asleep in the sunshine. My arrival woke them up and they were surprised to find they'd been asleep for a couple of hours, having arrived at 1pm--I arrived shortly after 3.

I had a wash and got changed and then hung out my tent and wrung out shirt etc. to dry. Melissa, Simon and I chatted, swapping stories about the trail and the people we've met along the way. Apparently they encountered a pair of SoBos who were taking ultralighting (hiking with minimal and very light-weight gear) to the extreme. Apparently they had a muesli bar each for breakfast, a wrap for lunch (with nothing in it) and shared a pasta snack for dinner. I had no idea how they'd stayed upright. Apparently they'd run into trouble though, having developed black lines on their finger nails and eventually needing to get medical treatment for calcium deficiency. Go figure.

Rocks Hut

While we were talking another solo hiker passed through; he signed the log book and set off again, spending several days exploring the Richmond Ranges. Then in the late afternoon another TA NoBo arrived--Audrey, from Scotland. It transpired that Audrey was from Dunblane and that today marks the 20th anniversary of the school massacre there. Understandably Audrey had a somber moment as she filled in the logbook, but after acknowledging the anniversary, cheerfully joined in our discussion. It turns out she has a fantastic idea for getting fresh vegetables on the trail: she buys a bag of lentils or split peas and soaks them overnight. Then she drains them and seals them in a resealable bag, rinsing them through with fresh water once a day. Within a day or two they sprouted and she gets to eat fresh sprouts for the next several days--yum!

I asked the NoBos about the major river crossings coming up: the Rangitata and the Rakaia. In the trail notes these are "hazard zones" and it is advised that people get a lift around or over them and don't attempt to ford them. That said, popular trail wisdom seems to be that most people have been able to ford the Rangitata without too much trouble...however "most people" are walking in pairs or small groups and I am a bit reluctant to take on the Rangitata solo. I can just see myself crossing 19 or 20 different channels (the river is after all braided) and then getting to one channel I simply cannot cross and having to go all the way back and hitch round anyway. Melissa and Simon forded the Rangitata and hitched around the Rakaia. Audrey on the other hand benefited from what has to be the most unlikely piece of trail magic I've yet heard of: she plane-hitched across. It turns out she spent the night in a hut where a recreational pilot also stayed after spending a day or two hiking. When he heard she needed to get a lift over the river he offered to fly her over, landing (apparently) on one of the rural airstrips on the other side. Incredible. (Sometimes other hikers' stories seem a bit far-fetched and part of me wonders if such stories, like plane-hitching and people basically starving themselves on the trail aren't told by some hikers for their own quiet amusement at stringing others along. Though fearful of seeming gullible, I figure in such instances it does me no harm whatsoever to believe them. And besides, it's Te Araroa and I really wouldn't be surprised by anything happening to someone at some point).

Today I was super-hungry. For lunch I'd had a salami and cheese wrap, then had a tuna wrap when I got to the hut, and now for dinner I was having a pasta snack fortified with salami, cheese and mashed potato (flakes), then a few spoonfuls of peanut butter for good measure. And I was still hungry. This doesn't bode well for the Richmond Ranges! Some people try and do the entire Richmond Ranges leg in one go, and notoriously they run out of food. I'm planning to walk out half way and resupply in Nelson, so I'm not really in any danger of running out, as I explained to Melissa and Simon when I offered them some choc-banana loaf (oh yeah, I had some of that today too). They couldn't quite believe I was willing to share it with them and turned down my offer at first, despite saying that banana cake was their favourite. But as greedy as I am I don't mind sharing food with people (having heaps for a 3-day stretch does help) and eventually they did have some with me.

Oh yes, the final piece of exciting news for the day: I saw my first bush robin of the trip. In fact I saw two! I remember when I was a pre-teen walking in the bush one day and a robin popping out and sitting on my boot and pecking at my shoe laces. I hope to have many more close encounters of the robin kind as I make my way south through the South Island forests!