Day 107 - very fast water

Hamilton hut —-> Harper campsite 20km

I was very confused this morning - I’d woken up at 5.30am and it was already starting to get light. I thought I was going mad until I remembered daylight savings. I’d actually had an extra hour in bed and hadn’t even known it. Wonderful!

This meant my days would have to shift now, start earlier, finish earlier. And as I moved further south over the next month I’d have less and less daylight to walk in. I’d need to plan out the days accordingly as I didn’t fancy much walking in the dark.

I left the hut around 8am and headed back to the river to pick up a 4WD trail that would pretty much take me all the way my campsite for the night.

Straight away I was crossing the river multiple times - like yesterday the water was running fast, but it seemed higher today and much more powerful. I had to pick my crossings very carefully and went as slowly as I could. I so nearly lost my footing and got swooshed down the river, but my poles did an excellent job of keeping me grounded.

The 4WD track was seemingly non-existent in places, but people clearly drove down here - there was a hunter at Hamilton the night before who had driven in on a little golf buggy ATV type vehicle. I just couldn’t see how he’d be getting back without the river levels dropping.

Eventually the trail stuck to one side of the river as I walked through Glenthorne Station. Flanked by mountains either side, as I could finally make decent speed along the flats.

By 1pm I was out of the fields, and walking towards the road when a helicopter flew overhead and came to land just ahead of me. A group of American hunters were preparing to board and head off into the bush for a few nights.

I walked past the Harper River hydro station and 15 minutes later I was at the Harper campsite.

It was a bit far for me to continue on walking. The nearest campsite was another 28km away which I didn’t particularly fancy, so I pitched my tent and had lunch in the newly built camp shelter just as it started to rain.

I had no phone signal but had told Josh I’d text him when I got to the campsite so he knew I was on track for our meet in Methven. The TA trail notes were very specific about where you could get signal so I set off back towards the hydro station to hunt it doen. I must have wandered around for 90 minutes before giving up and heading back to the tent. Pretty annoyed and worried Josh would think I’d died or something I hid out in the tent for the afternoon and went to sleep early so I could be up at dawn the next day.