Day 121: Mesopotamia station to Crooked Spur hut

After a relaxing couple of days in the countryside near the town of Timaru, it was time to get back to the trail. Steve, the trail angel with whom I’d been staying very kindly offered to drive me to he trailhead. We also arranged to collect Cecile in Geraldine on the way since we had to collect my bounce box there anyways. Meeting Cecile and getting the bounce box went fine, but unfortunately the post office in Geraldine didn’t have any labels to mail the box onwards. It seems that anything coming out of Auckland is delayed so they’re waiting for new labels. Steve kindly agreed to mail from another town, but since he’s also going to meet up with Cecile and I in a few days at the end of this section and drive us into Lake Tekapo, we figured the easiest would be for him to bring my box to Lake Tekapo then. On the way out of Geraldine, we saw another hiker and stopped to offer a lift. it turned out to be Kyle, who I’ve seen a couple of time before and who was overjoyed to get a lift so easily since the hitch to the trailhead is supposed to be near impossible as it’s a dead end road. An hour or so later, we were there and I was back in trail. Although I had felt really antsy to get back on trail, I was much less keen when I actually started walking. The track was along a river bed with multiple river crossings and very few trail markers.

It did eventually improve for me once we left the river bed and started to climb up.

It took Cecile and I almost 4 hours to get to the first hut, Crooked Spur, where we’ll spend the night. It’s very old and holy, but it seems that most of the holes are filled with something since it started to rain in the evening, but there were thankfully only a few drips coming in.

It’s also cold since there’s no fire wood, so I’m glad that I switched to warmer fleece leggings for this section. I’m unsure about the new shoes at this point, somehow my feet got quite numb in them, making me wonder if they’re just not wide enough and that my toes don’t have enough room to move around in them. Otherwise, my Achilles didn’t complain too much so the shoes do seem good on that front.

Day 122: Crooked Spur hut to Stone hut

The rain was pouring down when I woke up so I stayed in bed as long as I could, until I finally answered nature’s call. There was snow falling not to far up from the hut and then all of a sudden it was snowing at the hut too.

I got back into bed after breakfast! I read and listened to podcasts and then had lunch, but it was still raining and sleeting out. Finally at 2:30, it stopped preciptating and I decided that I wanted to move and set off to the next hut. It was a climb up to a 1500m saddle and as I climbed, the trail became more and more snowy until I was walking through 5-10 cm of snow.

Surprisingly my feet stayed warm despite my shoes being drenched. There wasn’t any wind and the snow was dampening all the sound so it was very peaceful and very enjoyable. I walk/skied down the other side of the pass. Then it was an undulating trail all the way to Stone hut.

When I had left Crooked Spur, not one else seemed to be planning to leave, but Cecile showed up at Stone hut shortly after I arrived and then Max did too. There were also 4 people here who had zeroed at the hut. Again there’s no fire place and it’s supposed to be a chilly night so I made myself a hot water bottle.