Day 81 - into the wild
Pelorus Bridge —> Middy Creek hut 23km
After absolutely zero tantrums about the weight of our packs, we set off on a misty morning from Pelorus Bridge.
The trailhead for the Pelorus River Track was a 14km road walk away, but with ten days worth of food on our back it felt like double that. I’d carried 9 days with a full gear set up… surely 10 days minus the tent that Josh now carried was lighter?! It didn’t feel like it….
The roads were gravel and aside from a few groups of NOBOs trudging wearily past us, we had them to ourselves.
We reached the start of the track around 11.30am and eagerly headed in. No cars, electricity or roads for the next 8-10 days.
The trail was predominantly in the forest and travelled along a bouncy leafy track. Our first real taste of South Island forest and it felt much more welcoming than the north island - taller, grander but more open, warmer somehow.
The track (as described by Josh) was exactly what an AI would show you if you typed in “forest river path”. Quite beautiful.
We stopped for lunch at Emerald pools, a gorgeous little section of the river. It became apparent that every time we stopped, the sandflies would have a party around us, so we chomped down our food and scarpered pretty quickly.
The afternoon seemed to take forever, up and down up and down through the forest and across one swingbridge after another.
The ferns were like nothing I’d seen before - we were surrounded.
We arrived at Captain Creek hut around 3.30pm, both absolutely pooped. We could have very easily plonked our bags down and not left until the morning, but the two people already in the hut and the insane amount of sandflies swarming us spurred us on. Two hours later we arrived at Middy Creek hut.
It was a fairly new hut, very clean inside and wonderfully, there was no one else here. We wandered down to the river and washed ourselves and our clothes as best we could in the water. There was definitely a pool deep enough to swim in, but the sun was just off the water making any slight temptation fade away.
We were making dinner when we spotted someone setting up a tent outside. This was Ziggi from California - he’d done a huge day walking NOBO from Slaty hut (we’d planned to be there in two full days from now…). It was his last night on the TA having ran out of time to finish the whole South Island. We told him that there was more than enough room in the hut but he was keen to camp on his last night, to enjoy the stars one last time. Our first night in the Richmonds with a hut to ourselves, what a treat.
