Day 50: Goat Pass hut to Deception river camp

After 3 nights spent in Goat Pass hut, it was now or never to get down the Deception as waiting any longer would mean our food supplies would be insufficient to get through the section. The weather was not optimal, with drizzle forecast for the day. The drizzle was more like showers. We began in trying to get down to Upper Deception hut. This was a 3 km section that for the most part had you physically in the headwaters of the Deception river, following it along an often steep drop off downward. Bouldering, clinging to rocks walking in near freezing waters had our feet numb in no time. This small section would take us a painfully slow 3 hours to complete. It was another 15 km to get down to the Morrison foot bridge at the bottom of the Deception river.

The first 3 km sent us clambering down mini waterfalls as the river slowly began to build in volume and become a proper river further down the valley. This was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because as the river got larger it meant that the track actually became a track adjacent to the river more and more, rather than a freezing creek walk. But it was a curse in that the spots at which you needed to cross became trickier and trickier.

This did not make ideal conditions to have our phones out where they would get wet. So once again, one of the more interesting parts of the Te Araroa needed to go without photos to document it. Needless to say, that while this were a challenging day, the scenery was second to few. Waterfalls adourned the sides of the snow topped mountains. Puffs of steam billowed up in places above the forested valley walls, where there is geothermal activity beneath their canopies. Along the way there were Kea to be spotted, and the water has been given the green tick by the very finicky Whio, who were present to quack it their home. A where's Whio is captured below.

The river continued to build in volume until the point that it became too precarious for Emma to cross unaided. I had to scout out several locations to find a safe crossing at a few points. One I went across, dropped my pack, and came back for Emma to carry her bag across for her.

The trail never really became easy underfoot. It was often either in the river, across the river, or through barely cut track clawing at you. Otherwise it was along old riverbed stones, or up sidling avalanche pathways. It was all made more difficult by the high river flows, and our downhill direction making the footholds all the more slippery in the rain. At one crossing it was so deep that there were no way across without having to hold your pack above your head to keep it dry, fortunately we happened across some runners at this point that caught our packs on the other side, and we were able to leap assisted by them over the top of a precarious waterfall. All of this took time. A lot of time. In the end it was getting dark and we decided to camp for the night after I failed to find a river crossing point that I was confident in our both making it across, some 3.5 km short of the foot bridge. The river should tame overnight.

It took awhile to find a suitable tent spot, and we had to do some gardening with the trowel to get rid of some thistle to make a large enough space to get the tent down. We were pegging it in by headlamp light. We had hoped to get to kiwi hut today, an absolute pipe dream, we fell 15 km short after a long days work. This part of the track is quite serious. Heaps of SOBOs are skipping it, but it's definitely worthwhile returning for.

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