We wanted to push to Pakituhi hut today, or at least I did, but that was immediately hampered by the fact that we woke up two hours late. The trek to Pakituhi would’ve been a long enough day via Breast Hill, so losing two hours was pretty damning to our plans. Nevertheless, we left and figured we’d see how we felt when we got to Stody’s hut.
The journey to Stody’s hut, was filled with river crossings and sidling. The river itself, rich in minerals, was a strange colour for water, bluish slaty grey yet transparent at the same time. Enhancing the colour was a steely clay which it washed over, the marks of the flowing water left defined on the sides of the river bed, the patterns of which only broken by our footprints. There must have been about fifteen crossings to deal with, each varying in difficulty. Some you could skip across gracefully along the tops of the rocks poking out of the water, others took a leap of faith, jumping from one large rock to another while the water rushed beneath, the last few were through a more mature waterway with less rocks and more flow, the only way across was to wade through. The river was never far out of sight though as the sidling more often than not gave you a birds eye view of the thrashing grey liquid below. It looked a bit like the end scene in Terminator II where the T1000 gets shot into the molten metal in the steel works, just less arms and faces.
After our last crossing we began to climb to Top Timaru junction. We knew it would be a tough climb from there to Stody’s for the track notes foretold us the night before. The trail just went up and up like a perpetual stair case – the neverending storey. Lauren took frequent breaks to chat to the birds about which way to go. Pretty sure she was losing her mind, I kept going.
Reaching Stodys about half five meant we were staying there for the night. With mice running around the place when we got there myself and Lauren decided to sleep in our tent. In the hut was an issue of Wilderness magazine which had a few things in it that I’d heard about over the trail, the Bibliman track in Australia being one.
About to fall asleep I could hear some animals galloping around under outside. I vocally wondered what it was. Maybe it’s deer or goats I thought to myself, but a half asleep Lauren figured that it was probably Lizzie going to the toilet. It was then I figured that it was probably best that we didn’t push to Pakituhi hut that day.
Trek3000 