By Ruth
Distance: 11 km
If yesterday was a cold day, last night was the appropriate night to follow: it was freezing. I was bundled in all my thermals and still woke up at 2:30 am, too cold to go back to sleep. After a while I took Elliot’s fleece jacket (mine was in use as part of my pillow) and that helped a lot. Elliot was okay because his sleeping bag has been too warm for him every other night so far on this trip, so below freezing was apparently the correct temperature! Anyway in the morning we slept in a bit, then took a while to extract ourselves from our cozy cocoons. When we did get out of the tent we saw it was covered in frost.
We went into the hut to get warm and eat breakfast and it was very chaotic in there. The large group of SOBOs were very loud and boisterous. Before they started walking some of them had a push-up competition, followed by blasting music and smoking on the hut’s porch. It was a relief when they all got going and left us to take down our tent in the peace and quiet. It was also a relief knowing that since we are now NOBOs, we won’t run into that group on trail ever again.
Today’s walk was beautiful. It was not too long, but very taxing. We had to climb and then drop from two 1200 meter high ridges. The first climb was longer but less steep. I enjoyed the feeling of walking along high above the valley floor, even if it was a lot more work than walking along the valley floor would have been.
After that we dropped steeply into a river gully, and then began climbing back up the other side. It was a very steep, smooth trail, meaning every step put a lot of strain on our calves and heels. After a couple kilometres of that our legs were toast. So at the top we stopped for lunch, using a stile as a picnic bench. From there it was almost all downhill to the hut, except the last half a kilometre where we got walloped with two more unexpected steep climbs after a couple stream crossings. Needless to say we were very happy to arrive at the hut. Originally we weren’t sure if we were going to stay at this hut or go on to the next one, but after getting a later start we decided just to stop at this one and do a bit of a bigger day tomorrow. That definitely turned out to be the right call.
The rest of the afternoon we read and knitted in the hut. There are only three other people staying here tonight so it is a very pleasant contrast to last night. The weather also heated up considerably as the day went on, so it’s shaping up to be both a warmer and a quieter night, just what we need.