Day 24: Hurunui No. 3 Hut to Kiwi Hut

27.9km, 8.5 hours

Today was one of my favourite days. I felt great, the scenery was beautiful and I felt like I'd spent the day in a fun outdoor adventure playground. It had a little bit of everything.

It's so nice being able to just wake up naturally to the sun and bird song at 5:45am and slowly wake up. It was so quiet in the hut so I read a bit before getting up at 6 when the others stirred. I had my usual dehydrated fruits with oats for breakfast and then I was packed up and was on trail by 7:30am. It was down in the river flats again. Within 10 minutes, i had missed the orange marker, and went down to the riverbed, but I didn't care. I just followed it because I knew we were following the river up stream and I thought I'll put my navigation skills to the test. I didn't realize that both Laura and Conny were following a bit behind me. After about 20 minutes they were just like, where are the markers? And i was like, oh, i'm not following the markers and kept on going. I knew they wouldn't be too far up into the bush on my left so I wasn't too worried. Then down in the riverbed I came across a poor little lost sheep. As I walked through it looks like he lives in that little part of the river. He was was quite tame and curious. I got quite close to him before he ran away. I knew that I needed to cross the stream from a bridge so I bush back to find the orange markers again. I wasn't far off them at all!

The swing bridges are starting to get a bit more fun and gnarly. We had our first three wire river crossing today. It's a swing bridge but you just walk on one wire like a tight rope that really wobbles but at least you've got two handholds to do it but still you would want to do it in high wind or fall off. On the map app (FarOut) we use, you can post comments on various points of interest along the trail. I've followed some guy rate all the swing bridges on trail and finally he gave this one a 12/10 with a 'now that's what I call a bridge'.

We continued in the bush and then in the river for an hour and passed Cameron Hut. It was this really small, old run down hut that had all the makings of a hiking horror movie. Unlike Cameron Hut, Harper Bivvy was one of the cutest bivs I've come across. It was brightly painted and just had 2 beds inside. Conny said it reminded her of... and then asked Chris what the English words for 'Schneewittchen und die Sieben zwirge'. He didn't know and so Conny described little people and so I presumed it was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs but then it's been so long since I've read any fairy tales that I started to over think it and maybe it wasn't snow white and I'd combined two fairy tales into one. Chris said that's probably right because snow white must be referring to her coloured skin. I thought it was that she was in the snow and of course they laughed and said definitely not. And I clearly don't know my fairy tales.

There were a few slips today that we had to climb up in about and go around, but the best part was walking up to the headwaters of the Hurunui and climbing up to get over Harpers Pass. Here we left the Hurunui behind and we're on the downhill to Arthur's Pass.

I was just back in my element again today. It was just like my most favorite scenery. When you climb up and are back up in the alpine region looking at the mountain tops again. The species of plants changed so quickly too. There were older darker trees covered in hanging lichen but also daisies that were like big white gerberas and more palm type of trees. The track was quite overgrown in places, so it was a lot of bush bashing today through head height ferns and reed plants. I was covered in seeds and my legs got very cut up, again.

Looking down the valley at the pass I knew we must be in for a very decent descent. It was back to straight downhill steep rock hopping but more contained in a gouged out 1-2m wide chasm type path. Thankfully the Richmond Ranges and Waiau Pass have prepared me very well and now I love it. It was like being in a gauntlet today of just all these different unders and overs through and across, all these different challenges.

It was just fantastic because it's not often, you get to test your body, or get your body to do all these different sort of activities and things as an adult. I am still not a fan of having a crawl under logs with a backpack because it still hurts my knees bending down so low. Only twice have I come across a tree that's fallen and been stuck at my head height. Today had one of them!

The downhill was made even more slippery by some of the the reed plants and palms that have dropped their dead leaves. So that was fun having that ontop of already loose gravel. But I made it down to the riverbed again and followed that down to lock stream hut where we all met up again and had lunch there.

We got to go through this valley today and walk through it. It was like the whole entire mountainside in valley just had enough and collapsed. It was just a wash of landslides from either side. it's such fascinating scenery and I wondered when all of this had come down. It's really cool to look back up the valley and it's just a wall of dirt. Chris, Conny and I lost the markers again so made our own path along the river downstream before seeing a point in the cliff where we could climb up and reconnect to the track. This seem to be a repeated theme today as not long after lunch as we entered the open river plain we lost sign of the markers yet again but rather than caring we trompped through the high grass for a kilometre or so until seeing an orange pole. We did see a lot of orange and red rocks that I must look up as to what causes the colouring.

It was just an adventurous day. Probably one of my favorite days so far just because it's had a little bit of everything.

A little bit of every different scenery and every different type of activity and so much fun. We are now staying at Kiwi Hut. There was a bit of debate as to whether we go a bit further because we got here at quarter to four which is kind of unheard of in the last couple of weeks of our hikes. Especially with still so much daylight left. We were tossing up whether to continue another 14km down the the Morrison swing bridge and camp there so that it takes a few kms off tomorrow. In the end Conny decided to continue on and camp and Laura, Chris and I are staying here in the hut. Hoping to hear or even better see some Kiwi tonight!

We've all had an early dinner and have been quizzing each other on favourite songs, movies, bands etc. As well as fairy tales. Might just have to read up on some when I get back into phone service or Ive at least been told by Chris to download the Grimm Brothers books.

Ren x