What to wear on the feet? Well, firstly it looked like plenty of hard or fresh wet snow on the tops requiring warm dry boots and decent crampons which spells out plastic climbing boots. But then again there was to be some river travel with multiple crossings which is incompatible with plastic boots. But I had an old pair of tatty inners that I could bear to use on the river crossings in the plastics. So they got put in the car as well. We checked the NZ transit road conditions on the Saturday morning and got the all-clear for the Lindis and the Southern Lakes so left the chains behind.

 

The menu at the Fairlie corner café/bar was a delight featuring 50% gluten free items including the day’s special. There I bought 3 Fat Albert chorizo sausages as they were GF, from free range piggies and nitrate-free for the princely sum of $3 each. When it comes to food, I’m definitely high maintenance and the outdoor appetite becomes very capricious. We hied off towards Lake Hawea with Frank now on his red line of previously untraveled roads, avoiding the fleshpots of Wanaka.

 

Above the bushline it was mainly clear of snow where we were going so now I was wishing I’d just brought my leather boots and little Korean 6 point crampons for any remnant hard stuff on the gently undulating ridgeline that runs parallel with the lake. The spare inner boots were traded for my very light quick drying mesh plimsolls. The picturesque rocky lakeside spurs ran steeply into the lake in contrast as though the terrain had been tilted sharply at some stage of its orogenesis. We parked up and began the multiple zigzag through lambing ovines to a saddle 400m above a scrubby broad broom infested gully. I was pleased to see this gentle start only took us 40 minutes.

 

From here on the ridge was gnarled at times though not intimidating at least to those travelling uphill. We carried on at a steady pace expecting the ascent to take no more than 3 hours which would get us to the hut before we needed to turn on the headlamps. The DoC sign gave us a range of 4-5 hours but with a bit of graupel floating round we weren’t intending to stop much to admire the spectacular scenery in the golden light of evening. Fortunately the weather eased so we could take in the splendour of the blue lightly rippled lake and verdant pastures beyond as we climbed. After 2 hours I was starting to feel a bit tired and hoped the saddle in the distance was our destination rather than the top of our ridge. Frank counseled me that it was only another 150m to go but to my delight what I’d spotted as an animal trail was the track sidling out to the saddle. The countryside was very pastoral with golden tussocks and 4WD tracks winding in the distance. We climbed over the stile and I could see the roof of the new hut beckoning as it was pretty chilly in our single layers we’d worn toiling up the ridge.

 

Frank lingered and took very pretty photos of the more dramatic views to the east. I continued to the empty hut. Someone had battened up the sleeping platform windows with airing mattresses, preventing sunlight from warming up this section of the hut so I flattened them immediately. The hut had ingenious ventilating systems for the continental climate weather extremes of Central Otago summers. I actually felt as though I was on the first rung of the spiral staircase into hypothermia and piled on everything I had, possum/merino arm warmers, sleeping bag as a kilt, the lot. Frank said it looked like a nappy but I don’t have to see what I look like when I’m tramping so who cares for the aesthetics of appearance. Comfort is the only god I worship in the mountains when it comes to sartorial options.

 

I rustled up a quick meal of Back Country Cuisine cottage pie with instant mashed spud and an hour after we’d arrived converted my nappy into the sleeping bag as my feet were cooling down even though the hut was well-insulated. We had a cosy sleep though so they soon warmed up with the additional quilts of the down jackets inside my 550g Go-Lite bag.

 

The next day began cloudless as forecasted with the hut warming to the rays of sunshine trapped by the extensive double-glazed windows. The capacious balcony faced east and I thought we’d be in for a hot day, ruing my transition top which is a very light soft shell garment. However there was a cool breeze at our backs along the ridge. The contrast between grazed and conservation land was painfully evident with the scorched earth effect of absent spaniards etc. on one side of the fenceline. We re-entered the Hawea Conservation land and travelled along a very pretty tussocked, slabby ridgeline. As we approached Breast Hill we saw the silhouette of a fellow traveler admiring the vistas. In parts the remaining small patches of snow were hard – no problem for the edges of my plastics or for Frank following on. We met up with our traveler, a lone young Teuton it sounded like, having a peak experience in his solitude. I felt a bit embarrassed at our comparative distances so far covered but we only had a 4 hour walk ahead on this magnificent day to the next hut so were enjoying our leisure after the week’s grind as wage-slaves.

 

Frank lingered at the summit to take more photos while I enjoyed the stile and schist flagstones as a comfortable backrest and seat where I could shelter. We turned the corner and headed east until an incised angle in the tussock indicated an unpredicted mountain stream trickling into a swampy region which was marked on the map. We selected the north facing slope sheltered by the 4WD track cutting into a small rise and enjoyed our sunny lunch stop for an hour parked up on tussocks by this attractive runnel.

 

The 4WD track descended in a stream of dark porridge created by frost heave. Frank’s boots weren’t up to the task so he took to the tussocks on a parallel path but my plastics were ideal for stomping down through the mush. I wasn’t so keen on the uphill stuff albeit via firmer ground and kept my eye out for the spur showing where our 4WD track deviated to drop down to the bushline and Stody’s hut. It wasn’t long before my wish was granted and we began following a civilized benching down to a gully where the track was finally cut off by a narrow section of erosion. I leapt into the soft steep soil and bounded across to terra firma in my indomitably edging plastics. Frank wasn’t taking any chances and placed his feet with considered precision. The expanses of unseamed leather make his boots more soft and flexible than the smaller scale of my identical model (which I’d left at home). The absence of footsteps told us most people avoided the gully and traversed above it.

 

The hut looked welcoming in the late afternoon sun sitting on the edge of the bush. I noticed abundant cut dry boughs of beech with plenty of leaves to make a rapid fire for boiling water. DoC had got rid of the hummocky bunks with their ancient dusty mattresses and installed 2x4 person sleeping platforms. A recent hut entry lamented this. Maybe the passage of time distorts memory into inexplicable sentiment. I set to and got a billy on for cuppas then we sat outside for a couple of hours in the sunshine reading, propped up with beech trees as backrests. Dinner was produced and as we were finishing it off a sudden brown creature silhouetted the doorframe, startling me as it emitted an unrecognizable noise.

 

This was the night’s hutmate who gave his name as Paul but the double-barreled surname identified him as the wistful sentimentalist lamenting the missing mattresses. We had a good chat and Frank got his chance to convert my pathetic cooking fire into a proper one with the pile of wood he sawn up. Paul didn’t need it as he was soon ensconced in his very warm bag and Frank spurned the 2 additional wooden logs I’d jacked up as fireside stools in favour of the edge of the platform. Paul asked if I had a warm bag and I said no so he suggested I treat myself to one but I said I had 2 of them at home and liked to travel light but didn’t mention my down jacket quilts trick.

 

Despite the emphatic pronouncement of the absence of rodents, I was disturbed in the night by rustling activity so suspended my billy on a rope strung across the hut for that purpose. Paul promptly got up and smacked into the billy sending it crashing to the floor! Apologies all round. He was up early but we left him uncrowded to prepare his breakfast, pack up and leave before we rose. When I got up I was very surprised to see the ground covered in a thin layer of snow with tiny flakes swirling lightly around the hut.

 

I spent about an hour mucking around cooking pancakes on the fire. I was initially perturbed at the persistent lumps until I realized they represented the dehydrated apple within the commercial mix. The result was delicious but next time I’ll use more butter plus make the mixture runnier. I collected more firewood for the wood shelter then we took to the sidling track above the bushline. As we descended down the spur to the river track the minimal precipitation changed to very light spit. Comments in the hut book had warned us about the steepness and firmness of the track. It was no match of the mighty edging power of my plastics and Frank had nothing to complain about except a sarcastic comment about dreading to meet the worst of the track. Shortly after this he dislodged a large log which trundled down towards me but was fortuitously halted by my uphill ice axe placement. My walking pole wouldn’t have been up to the task! It stayed on my pack all weekend.

 

We got to the junction and here left Te Araroa, heading downvalley until we met a genuine obstacle. I trotted in front along a narrow track that wouldn’t have put a goat to shame, then slowed down to gingerly edge past a small outcrop jutting just where the downhill consisted of a few metres of steep soft ground above a bluff. I thought I was being a bit pathetic to slow down for this until I realized that Frank with his 22kg pack overbalancing him backwards if he tried to clear the outcrop, was not prepared to give it a go.

 

What to do? Then I suggested I empty out my pack in the light rain and come back to fill it up with half his load. No response meant the green light so I found a little overhang on the goat track and stashed my load carefully item by item as it was not the place for anything to bounce off down the hill. I came back to Frank and he put a large bag of stuff in my pack and topped it up. I trotted off down the track until I found a dry spot and emptied out my load. By the time I’d come back he’d come past the crux and was considering smoothing out lumps along the track with his ice axe but managed to get on to more pleasant ground without needing to do this engineering work.

 

The track has had some work by DoC in the past but we’ve noticed from previous trips that disappointingly the DIY culture of track maintenance does not prevail this far south. We stopped for a brief lunch in an unprepossessing but dry sheltered spot in the beech forest

 

 

OK, so a stormy day with a freezing level of 500m, one bluebird day followed by 2 mediocre days of overcast with light precip. What’s a girl to do when she’s got 4 days off? We consulted the weather maps (Metservice and Snowforecast.com) and saw a bit of a rain shadow round the Southern Lakes. So what’s there that doesn’t involve some avalanche danger on the tops? This little circuit that summits at 1578m on Breast Hill that starts with a stiff 950m walk up via what one Te Araroa traveler has described as a “gnarly ridge” to a well-insulated recently constructed DoC hut.

 

Luckily Madpom has visited the huts so I got some good descriptions of facilities from tramper.co.nz. With the 2 open fires, I could take minimum fuel as it was either an 82g of gas in a canister or those 700g monster full ones from our gear cupboard. I chose my lightest bag as I’d be keeping cozy in the hut when out of the bag with my 2 downies, 3 hats and 2 layers on the legs. My basically 3 day pack ended up weighing 10kg and Frank’s was 22kg. The usual ratio…

 

What to wear on the feet? Well, firstly it looked like plenty of hard or fresh wet snow on the tops requiring warm dry boots and decent crampons which spells out plastic climbing boots. But then again there was to be some river travel with multiple crossings which is incompatible with plastic boots. But I had an old pair of tatty inners that I could bear to use on the river crossings in the plastics. So they got put in the car as well. We checked the NZ transit road conditions on the Saturday morning and got the all-clear for the Lindis and the Southern Lakes so left the chains behind.

 

The menu at the Fairlie corner café/bar was a delight featuring 50% gluten free items including the day’s special. There I bought 3 Fat Albert chorizo sausages as they were GF, from free range piggies and nitrate-free for the princely sum of $3 each. When it comes to food, I’m definitely high maintenance and the outdoor appetite becomes very capricious. We hied off towards Lake Hawea with Frank now on his red line of previously untraveled roads, avoiding the fleshpots of Wanaka.

 

Above the bushline it was mainly clear of snow where we were going so now I was wishing I’d just brought my leather boots and little Korean 6 point crampons for any remnant hard stuff on the gently undulating ridgeline that runs parallel with the lake. The spare inner boots were traded for my very light quick drying mesh plimsolls. The picturesque rocky lakeside spurs ran steeply into the lake in contrast as though the terrain had been tilted sharply at some stage of its orogenesis. We parked up and began the multiple zigzag through lambing ovines to a saddle 400m above a scrubby broad broom infested gully. I was pleased to see this gentle start only took us 40 minutes.

 

From here on the ridge was gnarled at times though not intimidating at least to those travelling uphill. We carried on at a steady pace expecting the ascent to take no more than 3 hours which would get us to the hut before we needed to turn on the headlamps. The DoC sign gave us a range of 4-5 hours but with a bit of graupel floating round we weren’t intending to stop much to admire the spectacular scenery in the golden light of evening. Fortunately the weather eased so we could take in the splendour of the blue lightly rippled lake and verdant pastures beyond as we climbed. After 2 hours I was starting to feel a bit tired and hoped the saddle in the distance was our destination rather than the top of our ridge. Frank counseled me that it was only another 150m to go but to my delight what I’d spotted as an animal trail was the track sidling out to the saddle. The countryside was very pastoral with golden tussocks and 4WD tracks winding in the distance. We climbed over the stile and I could see the roof of the new hut beckoning as it was pretty chilly in our single layers we’d worn toiling up the ridge.

 

Frank lingered and took very pretty photos of the more dramatic views to the east. I continued to the empty hut. Someone had battened up the sleeping platform windows with airing mattresses, preventing sunlight from warming up this section of the hut so I flattened them immediately. The hut had ingenious ventilating systems for the continental climate weather extremes of Central Otago summers. I actually felt as though I was on the first rung of the spiral staircase into hypothermia and piled on everything I had, possum/merino arm warmers, sleeping bag as a kilt, the lot. Frank said it looked like a nappy but I don’t have to see what I look like when I’m tramping so who cares for the aesthetics of appearance. Comfort is the only god I worship in the mountains when it comes to sartorial options.

 

I rustled up a quick meal of Back Country Cuisine cottage pie with instant mashed spud and an hour after we’d arrived converted my nappy into the sleeping bag as my feet were cooling down even though the hut was well-insulated. We had a cosy sleep though so they soon warmed up with the additional quilts of the down jackets inside my 550g Go-Lite bag.

 

The next day began cloudless as forecasted with the hut warming to the rays of sunshine trapped by the extensive double-glazed windows. The capacious balcony faced east and I thought we’d be in for a hot day, ruing my transition top which is a very light soft shell garment. However there was a cool breeze at our backs along the ridge. The contrast between grazed and conservation land was painfully evident with the scorched earth effect of absent spaniards etc. on one side of the fenceline. We re-entered the Hawea Conservation land and travelled along a very pretty tussocked, slabby ridgeline. As we approached Breast Hill we saw the silhouette of a fellow traveler admiring the vistas. In parts the remaining small patches of snow were hard – no problem for the edges of my plastics or for Frank following on. We met up with our traveler, a lone young Teuton it sounded like, having a peak experience in his solitude. I felt a bit embarrassed at our comparative distances so far covered but we only had a 4 hour walk ahead on this magnificent day to the next hut so were enjoying our leisure after the week’s grind as wage-slaves.

 

Frank lingered at the summit to take more photos while I enjoyed the stile and schist flagstones as a comfortable backrest and seat where I could shelter. We turned the corner and headed east until an incised angle in the tussock indicated an unpredicted mountain stream trickling into a swampy region which was marked on the map. We selected the north facing slope sheltered by the 4WD track cutting into a small rise and enjoyed our sunny lunch stop for an hour parked up on tussocks by this attractive runnel.

 

The 4WD track descended in a stream of dark porridge created by frost heave. Frank’s boots weren’t up to the task so he took to the tussocks on a parallel path but my plastics were ideal for stomping down through the mush. I wasn’t so keen on the uphill stuff albeit via firmer ground and kept my eye out for the spur showing where our 4WD track deviated to drop down to the bushline and Stody’s hut. It wasn’t long before my wish was granted and we began following a civilized benching down to a gully where the track was finally cut off by a narrow section of erosion. I leapt into the soft steep soil and bounded across to terra firma in my indomitably edging plastics. Frank wasn’t taking any chances and placed his feet with considered precision. The expanses of unseamed leather make his boots more soft and flexible than the smaller scale of my identical model (which I’d left at home). The absence of footsteps told us most people avoided the gully and traversed above it.

 

The hut looked welcoming in the late afternoon sun sitting on the edge of the bush. I noticed abundant cut dry boughs of beech with plenty of leaves to make a rapid fire for boiling water. DoC had got rid of the hummocky bunks with their ancient dusty mattresses and installed 2x4 person sleeping platforms. A recent hut entry lamented this. Maybe the passage of time distorts memory into inexplicable sentiment. I set to and got a billy on for cuppas then we sat outside for a couple of hours in the sunshine reading, propped up with beech trees as backrests. Dinner was produced and as we were finishing it off a sudden brown creature silhouetted the doorframe, startling me as it emitted an unrecognizable noise.

 

This was the night’s hutmate who gave his name as Paul but the double-barreled surname identified him as the wistful sentimentalist lamenting the missing mattresses. We had a good chat and Frank got his chance to convert my pathetic cooking fire into a proper one with the pile of wood he sawn up. Paul didn’t need it as he was soon ensconced in his very warm bag and Frank spurned the 2 additional wooden logs I’d jacked up as fireside stools in favour of the edge of the platform. Paul asked if I had a warm bag and I said no so he suggested I treat myself to one but I said I had 2 of them at home and liked to travel light but didn’t mention my down jacket quilts trick.

 

Despite the emphatic pronouncement of the absence of rodents, I was disturbed in the night by rustling activity so suspended my billy on a rope strung across the hut for that purpose. Paul promptly got up and smacked into the billy sending it crashing to the floor! Apologies all round. He was up early but we left him uncrowded to prepare his breakfast, pack up and leave before we rose. When I got up I was very surprised to see the ground covered in a thin layer of snow with tiny flakes swirling lightly around the hut.

 

I spent about an hour mucking around cooking pancakes on the fire. I was initially perturbed at the persistent lumps until I realized they represented the dehydrated apple within the commercial mix. The result was delicious but next time I’ll use more butter plus make the mixture runnier. I collected more firewood for the wood shelter then we took to the sidling track above the bushline. As we descended down the spur to the river track the minimal precipitation changed to very light spit. Comments in the hut book had warned us about the steepness and firmness of the track. It was no match of the mighty edging power of my plastics and Frank had nothing to complain about except a sarcastic comment about dreading to meet the worst of the track. Shortly after this he dislodged a large log which trundled down towards me but was fortuitously halted by my uphill ice axe placement. My walking pole wouldn’t have been up to the task! It stayed on my pack all weekend.

 

We got to the junction and here left Te Araroa, heading downvalley until we met a genuine obstacle. I trotted in front along a narrow track that wouldn’t have put a goat to shame, then slowed down to gingerly edge past a small outcrop jutting just where the downhill consisted of a few metres of steep soft ground above a bluff. I thought I was being a bit pathetic to slow down for this until I realized that Frank with his 22kg pack overbalancing him backwards if he tried to clear the outcrop, was not prepared to give it a go.

 

What to do? Then I suggested I empty out my pack in the light rain and come back to fill it up with half his load. No response meant the green light so I found a little overhang on the goat track and stashed my load carefully item by item as it was not the place for anything to bounce off down the hill. I came back to Frank and he put a large bag of stuff in my pack and topped it up. I trotted off down the track until I found a dry spot and emptied out my load. By the time I’d come back he’d come past the crux and was considering smoothing out lumps along the track with his ice axe but managed to get on to more pleasant ground without needing to do this engineering work.

 

The track has had some work by DoC in the past but we’ve noticed from previous trips that disappointingly the DIY culture of track maintenance does not prevail this far south. We stopped for a brief lunch in an unprepossessing but dry sheltered spot in the beech forest.