Day 46: Bealey motel to Arthur's Pass

We had a short walk today, the weather was not so great yesterday with snow coming down on us while we were coming over the tops. We'd elected to stop short at the Bealey motel yesterday, rather than get into Arthur's pass proper. As a result there were only about 6 or 7 official TA km's to do along the highway to get to the Klondyke corner/Greyney's shelter before we could hitch the last 7 km's into Arthur's pass.

The weather was quite pleasant today, but the Waimakariri was still slightly too high to attempt a foot crossing, so we jogged across the road bridge in between cars.

It didn't take long to complete our little road walk, and we started looking for a hitch into town. There was not a good hitch spot apparent so we elected to start walking into town while we found a spot. No spot appeared. We'd made about 5 km progress in toward town anyway, hopelessly putting out our thumb at cars approaching from behind, with no success. We were about to give up trying, having gotten so close on foot. But then we hit a straighter section, and some rain. We stuck out the thumb, and someone stopped for us. Something about rain makes hitching rather easy. It would constitute our new shortest hitch. We stopped for lunch at the Wobbly Kea before heading to The Sanctuary to collect our resupply box—and our accomodation for the night.

We divided up the box, and had a mosey about. Quite an interesting setup at The Sanctuary. Bill, the guy that runs the place, is obviously something of a handyman. He'd Macgyver'd up all manner of tinkerous oddities. Old radiators were prominent throughout the main building, which he'd obviously picked up from some old demo site. They were hooked up to a massive boiler in an adjacent shack, with a big diesel smoke stack coming out the top... a push button inside enabled water circulation for 2 hours at a time. The bath was out on an old deck that had been walled around, and completed with a glass roof for a view of the mountain skies at night. In the backyard was some old large diameter concrete pipe section that had walls and windows placed over its ends, to transform it into a 'concrete bungalow'. Bills main market is the TA, and this place was brimming with character.

The man himself made himself very useful providing all manner of support to trampers. He volunteers to maintain a part of the next section on the north's trail. He informed us that there was a massive washout on the true left of the Taramakau, and had made some signs with this info that he wanted us to nail up in Kiwi hut and Locke Stream hut to inform the south bounders as much so they could avoid crossing the large braided river multiple times. We were happy to help him with this.

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