Day 44: Hamilton hut zero day

A day off in Hamilton hut. We'd known there were 50 mm of rain forecast today, with temperatures reaching a high of around 2 °C, and snow down to 1100 m. The two younger fellas who had stayed with us last night were however bouyed to see some morning sunlight, so packed up and left. The rain began as they were leaving and it would not stop for the rest of the day. We were quite content with our plan to take a tactical day off here at this nice, serviced, hut. I hope they made it through safe. The worst of their river crossings would have been their last ones and with the volume of rain that would have fallen by the time that they would make it there, they would possibly have been uncrossable.

Quite a sprinkling of fresh snow only a couple hundred meters above our hut later in the day was further evidence of a decision well made. The pass coming through into Arthur's gets up to around 1300 m.

We used the mountain radio to contact the DOC office to get an up-to-date weather forecast for tomorrow. We'll need a 5 or 6 hour window to make it over to the other side. They were quite helpful in providing this for us. Otherwise we spent the majority of the day curled up in our bags reading.

Summary: