The weather is still way too warm for what I would consider normal which sort of confirms that it’s going to rain again. I’m really not looking forward to more rain at this time as it will surely bugger up the parts of the track directly ahead.
I was out the door of the old farm house at 6:50 and the initial walking was along the grassy valley floor and slowly heading up towards The Kiwi Saddle and Lake Sumner on the other side. The track entered the light forest and pretty well stayed inside it wandering around and up and down as it slowly headed around the end of the lake. Eventually it left the forest and headed straight across the valley floor past all the cows towards the footbridge over the Hurunui River. The footbridge was definitely one of the longer ones and the river below had the beautiful blue tinge to it.
A little after the swing bridge I came to the Hurunui Hut and two New Zealander fellows who stayed the night and were heading out for a late start. They had a rifle and fishing rod between them and were having a few days out with the possibility of doing some hunting and fishing. Their weather forecast was today/tomorrow ok and at least two days of heavy rain after that, it was a few days old though.
Rain unfortunately is going to totally screw up the coming Deception Valley track as most of it follows the water course and is very prone to the rain. I thought I might push on a fair bit today so as to keep the options open in relation to maybe getting to the top of the Deception Track if the weather holds out.
So I pushed onto the Hurunui Hut number 3 where I sat inside and had a lovely lunch. It had started to lightly spit rain whilst I was eating lunch. It was a short break and I continued on for the day aiming to go up and over the Harper Pass.
I came across one of the few remaining three wire bridges in New Zealand spanning across the Cameron Stteam and I had to give it a try to see how different and difficult they are to cross, it turned out to be pretty easy, but I had to be very careful with the concentration as one foot wrong could see you falling through to the stream below. It would have been far quicker to ford the stream normally though in this case. A little further along was Cameron Hut which was occupied; I didn’t stop in and sailed straight past eager to get over the Harper Pass.
The track slowly followed the Hurunui river slowly upwards, but it was pretty easy walking. The river was still flowing solidly and about 500m before the saddle itself, the track turned away from it and climbed a bit more steeply. Light intermittent rain still persisted, yet I had some good views down the Taramakau River Valley. The descent on this side was rocky and scree in stark contrast to the muddy and boggy climb on the Hurunui side.
There was a long swing bridge over the Taramakau in order to get you across the river to the left hand side while descending in times of high river flows. The Locke Stream Hut is on this side as well, unfortunately a huge scree slip has made the present situation easier to cross over and back once more to get downstream to the hut.
On arrival at the hut the fireplace was going, but unfortunately it’s one of had older type open fire places which burn a lot of wood and put out minimal heat. Naturally there is also lucky to be any dry wood around as well, due to the selfishness nature of many. The trampers are two French couples doing a section of the Te Araroa from Ship Cove to Arthurs Pass (not doing the Deception-Minga Track though). I’m planning on a little sleep in and watching the weather a little in the morning prior to deciding an action plan. I could potentially sit out the rain in this hut for a few days as I have plenty of food.
Nigel Christmas - Hiking Blog 