By Ruth
Distance: 25 km
Today was a massive day. We finished the Pelorus River track section of the Richmonds and started up into the mountains.
First thing in the morning we left the lovely Pelorus River and began climbing. It was meant to be three hours of uphill to the next hut but we made it there in just over two. And that hut somehow had flush toilets! At a hut! What will you think of next, New Zealand?
After that it was a long stretch of up and down through some lovely forest (with a few muddy patches, it must be mentioned) with some views over the surrounding mountains. Eventually we began going down and reached the next hut where we had a late lunch. I was very hungry by then! We also saw our friends we’ve been hiking with over the last few days for the last time as they are heading out to Nelson to resupply today and may not catch back up with us until St. Arnaud. They are a great group and I think it was good for us to spend some trail time with them, so it was sad to say goodbye. Who knows though, they may still catch us!
After lunch it was another hour to the next hut, where we were planning to stay tonight. However, we changed our plans because of the weather forecast. We were originally going to summit the peak of Mount Rintoull (the highest point in this section) in two days time, but it looks like some heavy rain will be coming in then. So we decided to keep going to the next hut today, and try to summit the peak tomorrow when the weather is still supposed to be beautiful.
We made the decision to keep going at 3:45pm, and the trail notes suggested 4 hours to the next hut. It was 6km with 900m elevation gain to get there. It would not be our first choice to push like this; in fact after our mini-crisis before Wellington we’d decided not to do days like this if we could help it. But with the weather window closing, it felt like it made sense.
The rest of the day was tough going. The trail was beautiful but steep and unrelenting, and with 9 hours of hiking already under our belts for the day, we were pretty wrecked when we reached the hut just over 3 hours later.
The great thing when we arrived was a stunning view, and also only two other people in the hut! So we have bunks yet again. The two others are NOBOs (Northbound, i.e. doing the trail in the opposite direction to us), so we got some details from them on what the upcoming few days for us look like. It sounds like doing the summit tomorrow is doable but will be another tough day, so we’ll see how it goes. We packed enough food to wait out bad weather like this, so we can always decide to do that instead.
