Day 62: John Tait hut to St. Arnaud

An easy day downhill from John Tait hut to Lakehead hut, then a flat track around from there to St. Arnaud lay ahead of us. The trail followed Traver's River down to its inflow to Lake Rotoiti.

It was not long before we found Lakehead hut. Though Emma was unfortunate to first find an upset wasp that didn't think too highly of her. Nelson Lakes is known for three things above all else, its scenery, its sandflies,  and its wasps. The last is constantly being battled by the heroes at the Department of Conservation, but it has been warfare without resolve. Fipronil baits had just been set a handful of days ago, but the beech forest is still swarming with Germanic wasps. They wreck havoc on the natural honeydew cycle, impacting at a primary stage birds and insects who compete for this feed. Secondarily, when they swap from sugars to proteins they feed on insects further impacting the birds diet. Tertiarily, the effect of their greedy feeding upon the honeydew is that they reduce the amount of honeydew falling to enrich the soils by as much as 90 %, this impacts the things which grow... fungi, nutrient cycling, and ultimately impacting new beech growth and the death of the ecosystem entire. Left unchecked, the shape of the forest changes, and massive loss of biodiversity follows. Though all of this strife was not so keenly felt as Emma's immediate shock of a sting to her forearm.

After Lakehead hut the track brings you out along the shores of Rotoiti proper. A hive of activity was out on the lake for the long weekend. Coldwater hut can be viewed from the pier near Lakehead hut. It our experience there is no where more dense in sandflies than Coldwater hut.

We reached St. Arnaud around 16:00, and set off to pick up our dropbox for the Richmond ranges from the Alpine Lodge. A place that we'd spend considerable time at over the coming days. A south-bounder, Paul, who we had stayed with at Birchwood station a week into our journey had offered to let us use his Bach at St. Arnaud when we came through, so we were most happy to take him up on it. The generosity of strangers has been a real fixture of the journey. The bach was only a short walk there from the lodge, where we dropped off the box and returned to the lodge for dinner.

Pizza and a beer. A most welcome treat after a week in the bush. We would end up sampling nearly the entirety of their pizza menu over the coming days before departing for the Richmond's.

We returned to Paul's for a great night's sleep.

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