Day 10: Telford to Aparima Huts

We had a blustery night, and after a loud night awoke suddenly to one of our tents corners flapping freely in the gusts. A snapped cord between the corner and its peg. We scrambled into action to disassemble the fly before more damage could be done and got to packing up. The cordage on the tent was very very thin. I had thought to beef it up when upgrading the stakes, but every gram counts. We will however do so now. Thankfully the tent held through to 07:00 so we got nearly a full night's sleep. When having breakfast a SOBO came down to us, he'd camped higher up the hills, when we explained what had happened, he left us some cordage that he'd been using to hang his food bag, in case we needed it.

After breakfast, the day began with a rather steep and exposed 600 m climb up to our highest elevation yet of around 1000 m. From here we could see where we'd been, the Longwoods, Ōreti beach, all the way back to the mound of Bluff... If you squint then Emma is pointing to it.

The track then descended down through a bush track, to Lower Wairaki hut where we had lunch.

From Lower Wairaki, the track continued through bush which we made surprisingly slow time through. It was never particularly challenging, and seemingly innocuous... but it was never really easy. Little bits of mud, downed trees, obscured trail causing need for navigation, and that it was never flat; always up or down and sidling; all combined to produce circumstances in which we averaged only a little over 2 km an hour. A frustrating pace which made for a very long day. Finally we broke out into some easy flat tussock for the last couple of km, and made what would be our fastest km of the day at around 15 minutes or so.

Just before reaching the huts we crossed over the river on a swing bridge. Emma was unfortunate to find some exposed rusty metal and gouged her hand on it. Yet to show signs of tetanus, so we'll assume she's alright.

Then we reached the huts just after 19:00. In the foreground is the newer hut, with the older in the background. Each sleeps 6. Here we found Rae again (Fon's friend, who we first caught at Birchwood). She had taken two days from Telford camp, staying at lower Wairaki the previous night... Probably quite sensible as we ended up having a very long day, our longest yet.

Tomorrow it's off to Te Ānau to meet Rose.

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