Ten. Years.

9 April

Unnamed campsite to Waitewaewae Hut

KM 1587.6

Distance: 15.9km

Elevation: ascent 692m, descent 1067m

Steps: 31,500

Time: 7:05am - 4:00pm

Yes that's right, folks! Today Eliza and Vaughan are celebrating 10 years of marriage. Before you ask: No, we did not plan this trip to coincide with our anniversary. We only realised this would happen after we had already bought our plane tickets to Invercargill. But what a way to celebrate, right?! We must have a good thing going. We spent every day of the last 5 months of 2021 together because of lockdowns and working from home. Now we're spending every day of the first 5 months of 2022 together on TA.

On to today:

We started just after dawn broke, with several more layers of clothing than we normally wear on the trail. It was cold overnight! But the track conditions were good and despite a little bit of morning mist, it was looking to be a beautiful day.

The trail went in and out of native forest, with much the same mix of trees as yesterday. Morning sun streamed in through the tree trunks and leaves. 

We saw mostly the same tree distribution as yesterday [Northern rata (Metrosideros robusta), Porokaiwhiri (Pigeonwood / Hedycarya arborea), kahikatea (Dacrycarpus dacrydioides), and a few hard beech (Nothofagus truncata) with the addition of Horoeka (lancewood / Pseudopanas crasifolius) and so. much. supplejack (a vine that just grows everywhere and was hanging in and across the track today).

It took us nearly two hours to get to the end of the track that we started yesterday. All up, the track that was marked as "6-7 hours" took us either 5 hours or 18.5 hours (if you include sleep time).

We got to stop at the beautiful Parawai Lodge (it's a hut) for morning coffee and to fill up on water - we had used everything we had taken with us up to the campsite for dinner and breakfast, with just enough left to get us through to the hut/camping area this morning.

And then? Off we went to the Y.T.Y.Y track. Alternately (and officially) known as the track to the Waitewaewae hut. This track took us over a couple of rivers, but mostly up over some very rough terrain. This part of the trail is listed as 5-7 hours travel time. We came in right at 6 hours, and were fairly exhausted by the time we finished. This was one of the roughest, most technically demanding tracks we've done in our time on the TA - perhaps only comparable to the trail from Aparima Hut to Upper Princhester Hut - this was the trail that Eliza kept exclaiming "this isn't even a track!!". Part of the roughness of the track was due to the fact that there have been a few slips, so the trail has been re-routed a couple of times; and then obviously had very little track maintenance done after those routes were established.

In fact, it is our best guess that the track route was determined by setting a mountain goat loose to get to the other end of the washed out section, with a GPS collar. And then the track was just marked along that GPS route. Because. Wow. That was tough, unnecessarily up-and-down at times, and climbing over and around more treefalls than we can count.

The roughness of the track was made worse by the fact that it started off very nice and easy, and then hit us over the head with its difficulty after it had lulled us into complacency. We even started out on an old tram track, with nice surface and gentle gradient!

Obviously the track had degraded since it was actively used for trams, with some of the tracks hanging in mid-air, buried, or at times just completely missing.

We did get to see some rata in bloom, including this one that had yellow flowers, as well as red! (or maybe it's two separate plants growing next to each other?)

We finished the day with a shortcut "off trail", cutting across a few river crossings instead of following another high-water route. Picking our crossing points better probably could have saved us from getting our shorts/skirt wet, but the temperature was pretty mild and felt so good on our feet and legs after the tough day! It was only 5 minutes after the last river crossing to get to the hut. We were so very glad to see this hut!!

The Waitewaewae Hut is quite large, and at the moment has a fire starting to warm up the inside. We will share the hut tonight with a couple of hunters - unfortunately no luck for them today - who got themselves and a whole lot of gear, food, and beer helicoptered in to this hut.

Just as we were writing this another TA walker, Viktoria, we last saw back in Greenstone Hut near Queenstown arrived. She's done a couple of side trips, and commented that she had seen our names in hut books and hoped to catch up.

And then, after full dark, three more section walkers came in, heading southbound!

Finally, the stars are OUT tonight!