Day 104 - icy river crossings
Locke Stream hut —-> Arthur’s Pass
19km walk + 21km hitch
We were all rugged up once again as we set off back towards civilisation.
We had a heap of rivers to cross today so we kept everything crossed that the snow from the mountains hadn’t started melting its way down into the valley yet. If it had - we’d find it incredibly hard to cross.
The first sign we were on the right track back to other humans (we’d only seen Dave the hunter plus one other hiker since leaving Boyle) were these stripy cows. Had someone had a go at them with paint stripper?!
The terrain was generally flat on well formed paths through the grass, mixed in with rock hopping alongside the rivers.
Annie and Grant kept us moving fast as we all paced it to keep warm.
As the rivers got deeper, thankfully the sky got clearer and it made the freezing river crossings that little bit easier.
The good thing about these wide open valleys is there are no shortage of places to plonk our chairs down.
After lunch we said goodbye to Annie & Grant - they were walking the flood route out to Morrisons footbridge, whereas we were tempting our luck with a 3km shortcut through the Otira river.
I felt very grateful to have been with Annie & Grant for the last few days - their experience in the backcountry was very reassuring and their positivity definitely got me through some moments where all I wanted to do was sit on the floor and cry!
We had no idea whether we’d be able to get through the Otira river or not… if we couldn’t we’d either be backtracking or floating down the river…
Thankfully it was only knee deep, medium speed - very doable and we crossed with no issues.
We now just had a final 500m to walk to the highway where we needed to hitch a ride to Arthur’s Pass.
We were both utterly exhausted… something about the cold and wetness of the last few days had really taken it out of us, but we put on big smiles for the hitch and stuck our thumbs out.
30 minutes later and we were on our way towards Arthur’s Pass in a campervan. I did my best to keep my stomach together as we hurtled up down and round the mountain highway.
As soon as we arrived in the village we booked a last minute room at the YHA and dashed around doing as many jobs as we could before everything shut. Arthur’s Pass appeared to be struggling massively with a lack of staff. The pub for example was only open between 4pm and 6pm and we could only order food until 5pm before it was takeaway only. It was Thursday night and all the motels in town were fully booked so there was clearly plenty of trade, just not the staff to service them.
Luckily, we got free charging with our meal - thanks the Wobbly Kea, so kind!
We did our most expensive food shop to date at the teeny store in town and then crashed out at the hotel, attempting to de-stress from the last minute rush to get everything done before we set back out tomorrow.
