Stage 3 - Hard Yakka in the Central Alps

Whooh, I knew that this stage was going to be the hard part, and true to form it delivered!

A big thank you goes out to Mark McCaughan for joining me from the Rakaia to Mount Cook. You made life a hell of a lot easier for me by being around dude, and helped make some of the trickier sections possible when I might have had to pull plug on them if I was by myself. Cheers!

A big shout goes out to Rob Porteous for heroically trying to forge his way up the mighty Rakaia in his trusty Surf to make sure the my food drop (and Mark) got in. I owe you big time. Thanks dude!

Right, here's what went down:

After a fun rest day on 21 January where I hooked up with Sarah, the Uno Queen (from the States), and James the pizza guru (from England) at the Backpackers, it was time to hit the trail again.

22 January - The forecast did not look flash, with a heavy rain warning going out for the Otira evening that evening. I hummed and hahed about whether I should just go back down the road to Klondyke Corner and trog all the way up the Waimak to Carrington, or stick with Plan A, and head over Avalanche Peak and down the Crow. The weather in the village was still good, but I could see the cloud boiling around Arthur's Pass itself. I decided to damn the torpedoes and go for it, so threw the pack on and headed up the hill. Sarah and James hadn't got up when I left, so I couldn't say goodbye, but I had a big day ahead of me, and couldn't wait around.

The new Torre felt good after spending so much time suffering the rubbing from my old pack over the previous weeks, and I was feeling strong despite the full pack and I made great time up to the bushline where I passed a couple on a day trip up the Peak. I was still going strong as I moved up the ridge to where it joins Scott's Track just below the summit, and I stopped and had a snack, and put on my jacket, as the wind was picking up.

By the time I reached the summit of Avalanche peak the wind had become really gusty, and it was hard to stand up, let alone set up a self timed photo, so I just headed down and along the ridgeline to the big scree slope that leads down to the Crow Valley. The wind became really strong, and at time I was walking on a 45 degree angle along the ridge. Other times I had to stop and wait for the gust to subside before moving on. In the end I was forced off the ridgeline, down onto the lee slopes above Arthur's Pass and followed these around until I got to the top of the scree slope. I dropped down this as fast as I could to get out of the worst of the wind, and this worked well most of the way, but occasionally the odd gust would make down lower into the Valley.

By the time I reached the valley floor it had started to rain a bit, so I made my way as quickly as I could down to Crow Hut and had lunch. Nothing changed while I ate, so it was out back into the rain again once I had finished. Fortunately I was out of the worst of the wind now, as as I dropped lower in altitude down the valley the rain started to ease.

By the time I made it down to the Waimak, the weather had improved, but there was a lot of low, steely cloud hanging about, and it was looking murderous up the valley towards Carrington. I crossed the Waimak just up from the Crow, and started up the huge floodplane. Suddenly out of the blue, I tripped and stumbled forward. The weight of my pack sent me sprawling over my poles and crashing to the ground. I landed on top of several large rocks and banged my right leg just below my knee quite badly. I popped my pack off and jumped up in pain. There was a big dent just below my knee, but everything seemed to be okay. I hopped around and swore a bit before picking up my pack and moving on. I figured if I just kept moving it wouldn't give my leg time to seize up, but I moved with a bit of a limp for some time afterwards. I really tore into myself for not paying attention to where I was going, as it could have easily become an injury that could have ended my trip.

I moved up the valley and crossed the Waimak again, then followed up the endless flood plains before picking up the flood track for a short way. After that it was just more gravel bashing up more flood plain into the ever increasing rain, and a short distance through bush before I happily arrived at Carrington Hut. I had the place to myself, and felt like I was rattling around in it a bit, as it is a huge hut. I got the fire going and draped all my wet clothes around it and got about getting dinner and hot drinks going. Just as I finished dinner and started on my diary, a figure appeared at the doorway. It turned out to be three guys from Invercargill who were planning to do the Three Pass trip. They were happy to see the fire on and a billy of hot water on the boil, and soon settled in for the night. I was having some trouble deciding which route I should take the next day, as it was raining quite steadily by this stage, and I wasn't sure how had the White River was going to be, let alone Burnett Stream an the crossing of the Wilberforce, but decided to just make up my mind in the morning. had a late night - went to bed at 10.30!

23 January - The rain had cleared overnight, and the hills were clearing rapidly when I got up the next morning, but my instinct told me that I should go to Plan B and go over Harman and Whitehorn Passes, and do the route I knew rather than head over White Col.

I reached the White River and found it up and discoloured. I couldn't use the Clough Cableway, as it was out of order AGAIN, so after some searching about I found a spot where the river broke into three braids and went for it. The river was fast, but none of the braids was deep, and I got across without too many worries. I was once again very glad to be using poles, as they make solo river crossing A LOT easier. I headed up the mossy boulder field towards the Taipoiti and got great views up to Barker Hut and White Col along the way. Travel up the gorge of the Taipoiti was generally pretty good, though there were a couple of hairy river crossings across this steep jumbly wee river. I finally made it to Harman Pass just after 11am. The Pass was under cloud, which was hanging about the Western side of the pass. I could see some distance up towards Whitehorn once I got to Ariel Tarns, but then the cloud caught up with me again and I was soon walking in low visibility again. I got on the snow below Whitehorn and walked up this to a scree slope, which I climbed onto, seems I figured it would lead me into the Pass in the low viz. This it did, though the cloud lifted just before I got to the pass. I got the great views of the Cronin icefall and everything, and set about having lunch. The cloud rolled back in just as i set about getting my camera out to take a self portrait, which annoyed me a bit, but hey, what can you do?

There was no snow on the Cronin Stream side of the Pass, so I proceeded to bashed down the scree slopes that led down to the stream. The travel down Cronin Stream is mainly on scree and boulders, and goes on just a little too long for most peoples liking. This time was no different. When I got to the point where I had to cross from the true left to the true right of the river, I found that the river was running very high, and there was a distinct lack of good places to cross. I spent about half an hour looking up and down the stream before I found one that I was happy to try. The first bit was swift, but not too deep, but the second bit was waist deep, and threatened to push me off mt feet. Fortunately it wasn't wide and I muscled my way across and boulder bashed down to where the track starts again just before the river gorges.

From here I made my way down to Park Morpeth Hut and happily dumped my pack at the newly renovated huts door. I had time to dry my gear out, do the radio sched on the hut set, and have tea before the Invercargill guys arrived at about 8pm. Again I got to bed late, but not before seeing the awesome comet that was in the sky at that time - what an awesome sight! It made Haley's Comet look like the letdown it was all those years ago, with a tail that stretched across half the night sky. Cool!

24 January - The day dawned clear in the East, and cloudy in the West, just as the Canterbury Mountain Radio forecast had predicted. I was away from the hut by about 8.20, and soon crossed the Wilberforce to the true right. The river was quite manageable here in the headwaters, and I was soon sauntering down cross river gravels and wide open tussock flats. The going was quite pleasant - more so than I expected travel in a Canterbury river valley could be. The scenery was definitely becoming more alpine, with big glacier carved bluffs in places, and high snowy peaks in the background. I made good time down the river and had morning tea at Urquharts Hut, then headed down an old 4WD track to the Unknown River junction. The Unknown was up a bit, and flowing quite fast, though it was still clear, but I managed to find a good crossing with a gravel bar in the middle, and pushed my way through. From here the travel was a mixture of gravel flats, large tussock and matagouri flats, and the odd sidestream.

At one point I was forced to travel right on the edge of the river under gravel banks, and had to do a short bush bash where the river cut in around Logan's Mistake, but after that I managed to pick up an old vehicle track, which I managed to follow all the way to Moa Hut, where I had lunch. After lunch I headed up Moa Stream and arrived at the Moa Stream Hut at about 3.30. This is a very tidy little hut, hidden away in a little clearing up from the river. The hutbook goes back to 1996, and i saw the Lara Wilcocks' and Lisa lee Johnson's names were some of the first in the book! I also found out that the Mana Wahine girls had been here on the 20th, and were heading up Burnett Stream and over White Col, so I had missed meeting them, which was a shame. I was looking forward to seeing them at some point.

I spent the afternoon basking and drying gear again, and did the radio sched again. I got a message to say Rob Porteous was bringing my food drop plus three people up to the Rakaia on Saturday, which was good to hear - all I had to do was get there on time!

25 January - I was up and away by about 8.30, and followed up the true right of Moa Stream. The travel was largely rock hopping, but I was forced into the thick, scrubby bush on a couple of occasions to get around sections of the stream that were flowing into the bank.

I reached the head of the valley by morning tea, and pushed on up the prominent tussock spur that leads up to the pass over into Boundary Creek. This is a good route, though a bit of a grunt, and I made good time time up through the steep tussock and rock shelves to the snow patch below the pass. I noticed a lone Chamois watching me from the slope above, before it decided I had come close enough and decided to run off across the snow and up the bluffs to the right of the pass before stopping again and watching me grovel up the scree just below the snow. Once I got to the snow, I donned ice axe and crampons and zig zagged up to the pass itself. By this stage I was getting great views back into the Wilberforce and over to Mount Murchison.

I reached pretty much bang on lunch time, so decided to stop and have it on the Moa Stream side, as there was a bit of a wind picking up on the Boundary Creek side. I had a quick squiz through, and got a reasonable view of Mount Arrowsmith and Observation Col, but there was a bit of afternoon cloud building in the South and West. I was busily munching away on lunch when this guy pops over the pass. I was just as surprised to see him as he was to see me, but we started chatting. He said that there were six others coming up behind him, and that they'd come up from Canyon Creek that morning after crossing Mathias Pass the previous day. The other arrived, and it soon became apparent that none of them had expected to run into snow on the pass, and that none of them were carrying ice gear. They stood about planning how best they were going to get down this obstacle, as there is no other way down, and I left them to it.

I descended good scree slopes down into Boundary Basin and picked up the traverse line at 1400 metres, as Boundary Creek has two impassable gorges in it. I traversed around to a grassy knoll, then slowly angled across and down to the last stream running into Boundary Creek before it reaches the North Mathias. The going was straightforward, through scree, tussock, and then short alpine scrub.

The side creek on the other hand was hideous, with several waterfalls that I had to bypass by taking to thick scrub, first on the true right, and then on the true left at the bottom. The way around the bottom waterfall was the trickiest bit, and I almost committed to a hairy drop down a steep bank that I couldn't reverse if things went pear shaped, before talking myself into finding another route further right, which turned out to be the better way down. One consolation was at least I was going down this heinous stuff, and not fighting my way up it!

I stumbled out onto the North Mathias some time later and disturbed another lone Chamois, then trundled down valley and found a good place to cross the river, which I did via three braids. From there I picked up an old vehicle track that led across Blacksmith Point almost to the West Mathias, and then once I had crossed that, made a beeline to Centennial Cabin, which I reached at around 6pm. Centennial Cabin is a rodent and sandfly infested three bunk station hut, but I was glad to see it. I did a Sellcall with Danilo via the mountain radio that night to make sure that Rob Porteous, Nina, Rob Lawrence and Mark were still coming up the Rakaia, and then collapsed into bed sometime after dark.

26 January - I woke up at 6.45am to a cloud filled valley, and that heavy damp feeling you get with a low cloud ceiling. I headed up the West Mathias over a couple of massive gravel fans, then took to some tussock for a while, but this started to lead me away from the river and I ended up quite high, so dropped down a moderate scree/scrub slope to get back next to the river the bit at the bottom was a bit rubbly and steep, so I took care to try and not disturb things too much, but just as I was fully on it, the whole thing fell in on itself. I was knocked off balance and spun around as the slide sent me downhill. I lost one of my poles under the slide, and one big rock rolled down over everything else and hit me in exactly the same spot I'd fallen on the other day in the Waimak - OUCH! I swore and danced around a bit in pain, then proceeded to try and excavate my pole from the slide before hobbling on up the river bank cursing my luck, which in hindsight was probably good, as things could easily have turned out a LOT worse from that incident. Fortunately, there was a fair bit of wading to do after this bit, and i think the cold of the river helped keep the swelling in my knee down.

I made it to some flats and crossed these to get to the South Mathias. I was keen to stop by the biv on the far side of the river to see if there was any handy route info in the hut book, but when I arrived at the South Mathias I found that the bridge had gone. On closer inspection I saw that it had been completely blown out by some flood, and that all that was left were some remnant cable on the attachment points on either side of the river, so visiting the biv was out of the question.

I headed up the true right of the South Mathias, largely over boulders and along the occasional flood channel. By this stage the cloud was burning off, and by the time I got to a corner in the river about half way up the valley i started to get a look into the head of the valley. What I saw concerned me, as it didn't match what I'd seen on the map. I saw what I initially thought was Observation Col, but the terrain beneath it didn't fit! What the hell is that remnant glacier doing there? And where is the prominent sidestream you have to go up? I can see one, but boy it looks gnarly!

The valley wore on with more boulder and scree bashing, and just as I was starting to think I was indeed having to climb those ugly slopes in front of me, the valley parted, and the actual water course I had to ascend appeared. This looked MUCH better, and I was soon making my way up towards the snowy basin below the col. I stopped and had lunch just below the snowline, then headed up through the snowy basins and climbed the short, steep slope up to the col itself. I was expecting grand views from a place called Observation Col, but there weren't many, just back into the South Mathias, and over to the head of Cattle Stream. I didn't hang around too long, and headed off down easy snow slopes towards the gut that led down into Cattle Stream. I soon discovered the crux of the day - a set of slabby bluffs that cut right across the valley. How the hell was I going to get down those? They turned out to be not too bad, and I carefully downclimbed them via a series of small ledges. From there I made good time down old snow and rubble to Cattle Stream, bearing in mind that the gut I was descending was a potential shooting gallery.

Cattle Stream was easy, and I made my way down this largely on the true left via the river bank and flood plane lower down until I crossed over to the true right when I got close to Evans Hut. When I got to Evans Hut it was just before 7pm, and I'd noticed that the Rakaia valley was filling with cloud, and it was threatening to rain. I was unkeen to get caught on the wrong side of the river if it did rain properly overnight, so decided that I'd push on and cross the Rakaia now, as I was still feeling good, despite having a longish day already.

I strode down onto the floodplane and went to a channel in the river which I though looked crossable. The water was running quite swiftly, was milky white in colour, so I couldn't see where to put my feetand was freezing cold (Good old glacial river that it is).

I waded into the channel, but soon found it was going up to my middle thigh, and the current was trying to knock me over, so I turned around and backed out. I headed upstream a way and found another spot where the river was divided into three channels. The irst was swift, but shallow, and i got accross this easily. From here I waded upstream against the current a wee way before angling back towards the next exposed braid. The channel here was faster again and just over knee deep, but I forged my way through. The third channel was tougher again, being quite bouldery and slippery, but I leant into my poles and made it across. I thought that was it, and that I'd made it across the Rakaia, but a couple of hundred metres later I came across a fourth, much larger channel. Shit! I wandered up and down it for a way, then found a spotthat i thought might go, and ploughed on in. The current was really strong, and the river floor was slippery and boulder strewn, and I really had to lean into my poles and fight to get across. I gritted my teeth, and muttered under my breath "I AM going to get across - you are NOT going to bowl me over!" and I made it. Yay! By this time it was starting to rain lightly, so I put on my parka (as much to try and get warm after the crossing as to keep the rain off), and strode off towards to an object on the horizon that looked suspiciously like a hut.

The maps I had only went as far as Evans hut, which I had just passed, but I knew that there was a hut opposite Cattle Stream, though I couldn't remember whether it was Reischek or not. I headed towards the hutlike shape, but it turned out to be a large rock. Out came the GPS. It told me I was 200 metres away from Washbourne Hut, but i couldn't see it, so thought it must be hidden in the matagouri. I followed the GPS directions to where the hut was supposed to be, but when I got there, there was no hut. By this stage the rain was getting persistent, and i was quite cold from the river crossing. I made for a gap in the matagouri, and picked up a vehicle track, which I decided to follow downriver a way, and after about 15 minutes I stumbled across Washbourne Hut, some 600 metres away from where the GPS had said it would be! Washbourne Hut is a rundown old musterers hut that has had the birds let in and has a rodent problem, but at that point in time, it was the best damn hut in the country! I got inside, and changed into some warm, dry clothes, did the late radio sched, made tea and collapsed into bed around 10pm. It had been a long, adventurous day!

27 January - I was up at 6.45am, and was greeted with another heavily cloudy morning, but I didn't have far to go today, and by the time I had walked back up the vehicle track and along the open floodplane to Reischek Hut, the cloud was burning away from the head of the valley to reveal stunning views of the surrounding Alps. Reischek Hut is in a beautiful location, on the edge of a bushy outcrop opposite Louper Stream. I spent the rest of the day lazing around the hut and surrounds in the sun, reading my book and not doing terribly much in general, waiting for Rob and company to show up. As the day wore on and nobody showed, I started to get more concerned. I suddenly thought that Rob might have gone and drowned the truck or something, and hoped that wasn't the case. By the time evening came round I figured that they'd probably show up some time tomorrow - hopefully before the forecast rain, and if they didn't then I'd get on the blower and see what was going on.

28 January - I slept in. Got up, had breakfast, saw it was cloudy and windy, then went back to bed and slept some more before waking up and listening to my MP3 player for a while. Rob and Mark arrived on foot around lunchtime. They had had a real adventure trying to get up the valley the day before, and ended up leaving the truck at Manuka Point and walking in this morning. Apparently Nina and Rob Lawrence couldn't make it due to other commitments, so it was just Mark joining me from here through to Cook, though with the weather forecast promising to be not so good over the next few days, I had already decided to flag trying to get to the Gardens.

We caught up while I sorted through the fooddrop and weeded out the stuff I didn't need, then had some lunch and said goodbye to Rob, who was heading straight back down valley, so he could try and get home ton Dunedin tonight. I told him to follow the old vehicle track down past Washbourne Hut rather than take the way the boys had come up this morning, as that would save him considerable time.

It started raining steadily not long after Rob left the hut, and Mark and I spent the rest of the day mooching about, before having tea and hitting the hay around 9.30.

29 January - It dawned fine, but soon clouded over again, and began to rain shortly after we left Reischek at about 8.45am, after listening to the morning radio sched on the hut set.

We wandered up flats to a point where the river cut into a small bluff on our bank, and we picked up a rough, scrubby track that took us to just short of the bluff, which pissed me off, as we could have saved time by sidling the river bank to the bluff. We picked up the track over the small bluff and got through without any more hassles. We crossed more gravel flats and a side stream before reaching the start of the route over Mein's Knob, which would lead us in turn to Lyell Hut on the other side. It was raining consisently, and there was a cold wind coming off the glaciers at the head of the valley, so it was no place to linger.

We had to fight our way up through the scrubby, overgrown track to start with, but after a while it relented, and became easy to follow all the way to the top of Mein's Knob. The weather hadn't improved however, and by the time we'd reached the top we were soaked and freezing. i had lost the feeling in my hands too, which wasn't very nice.

The view from the top would be stunning on a clear day, as Mein's Knob is right on the confluence of the Lyell and Ramsey Glaciers and their respective lakes, but there was nothing to see today, so we just trudged on through and started our descent down towards Lyell Hut. The route guide specifically says not to try and drop straight down to the hut when it first comes into view, as there are steep bluffs and heinous scrub to contend with if you do, but rather traverse right and down a series of bouldery slopes until you reach the river, then follow up terraces until you reach the hut. We did this, but it was far from easy in the wet. The boulder fields were wet and greasy, and we had to move through them with great care, as a slip would prove nasty. Once we got down to the river, we spent some time pissing about trying to find ouor way along to the hut. A couple of markers confused the issue for a while until we found that they just led back up to the bottom boulder field, then it was just a case of sidling beside the river for a while until we came out onto the start of a flat where some bright spark had planted a large cairn with a corrugated iron sign saying Lyell Hut <. We rolled into the hut, relieved to have arrived after five hours in the rain from Reischek, and quickly got into warm, dry clothes to warm up before setting about putting on a brew and trying to get a fire going from the small supply of wood that was in the hut. The rain eventually stopped for a while, and we popped outside for a quick look. The cloud had pulled back enough to show us that it had snowed lightly up high, then we scuttled back inside when it started to rain again. it rained on and off for the rest of the afternoon, and we retreated to our pits, only to come out for tea and the sched, which promised a nice day the next day.

30 January - Fine day, yeah right! We had just about everything thrown at us on this day, but there wasn't much fine weather! We were away from Lyell Hut by 8.15am, after it having rained most of the night. There was a lot of cloud still hanging about, and in the brief breaks we could see that it had snowed to about 1400 metres overnight too. Still it was going to be a fine day, so off we went up the valley past the Lyell lake to the Lyell Glacier. To access this we had to drop down a moraine wall, go to the edge of the lake, traverse another moraine wall at lake level, and then scramble up onto the snout of the glacier, where we followed a bit of a gully along before climbing up onto the moraine covered top of the glacier. From here it was just a case of following the lowest angle, easiest moraine along and zig zagging as the terrain required. The travel was reasonable for moraine bashing, but our packs weighed heavy on our backs and we had to be careful not to overbalance as we jumped from rock to rock.

We reached the white ice at aboout 12.30, at which time the intermittent rain had become sleet. However it did clear enough for us to get a good view at the route up to McCoy Col, which looked pretty straight forward. I took a picture of it for navigational purposes, just in case we didn't get another clearance, and we headed on over to the base of the climb.

We found that there was quite a bit of new snow lying about on the ice, and the clooud started to lift a little, so even though we couldn't see much of what was above us, we got the feeling that we were surrounded by these huge walls of rock and ice. We stopped and had lunch at the base of the snow gully we needed to climb to get access to the slopes below McCoy Col, then plodded on up with Mark taking the lead. There had been about 10-15 cm of snow overnight, but turned out to be more help than hinderance. Mark insisted of staying out front, and we slowly, but surely made our way up to the Col. The slopes were never that steep, and the runout was reasonable, so things never felt exposed. It took us an hour to get up to the Col, and we stopped and took pictures, even though there wasn't much view to see.

We then headed off down the other side until we came to the first crevasse on the McCoy Glacier. I had a prod about with my ice axe and came up with that blue look in the snow and a feeling of a lot of air under it, so I quietly suggested that prehaps we might like to get the rope out. This was a good call, as we spent the next two hours weaving through partially covered slots as we descended the glacier. I was put out front, but it was mark who put a leg down a hole first. I went up to my knee shortly after, but apart from that we managed to get down to the white ice without incident. We took the rope off and we soon off the glacier and travelling down McCoy Stream.

The guidebook says to follow the true right, and it was all good until we ran into a section where the river ran into the true right, and the only way through was to clamber across a series of unstable scree shoots or cross the river. For some reason we chose the former, as while they looked ugly, they still looked doable. It was horrible. We should have descended the second shoot to the river, crossed at a safe looking spot, and recrossed further down, but instead we persevered with these steep, dangerous shoots. it took us over an hour, and a couple of close calls to get across them, and we felt exhausted by the time we got back down to the riverside again.

After that the travel eased, and the river opened out as we paased the Billy McCoy Stream and approached McCoy Hut. We arrived at the hut at about 8pm, set up the radio and listened to the late sched, which wasn't promising for the next few days. With the weather not looking so good for the next few days, we started talking about heading down to Erewhon and back up the Havelock as a real option, as the chances of getting over Fan Col looked minimal. After that we had tea, and finally crashed into bed about 11pm, very tired little puppies.

31 January - A pit day. It pissed down. The rivers were raging torrents by mid afternoon, with the rocks rolling down their beds. We could here it clearly from the hut. Mark practiced crevasse extraction and prussicking, and I lay on my bed passing on handy hints. Other than that, we just lay around, ate our rations and slept. The forecast was for better weather tomorrow, and we decided that we'd head for Erewhon if the rivers came down enough for us to cross them.

1 February - The weather was stunning, but the Frances and McCoy were still grey seething masses with rocks rolling down them, and there was no way we were going anywhere. We moped abot the hut, and went for the occasional walk to check on the river levels. We set up cairns at key spots to mark how the water levels were doing, and had some key rocks we kept an eye on to see if they would reemerge. By 5pm the water levels had dropped signifigantly, but the spped of the water was still too fast to contemplate safe crossing that day, so we sussed out a couple of potential crossing points and hoped we could get moving again the next day.

2 February - It rained a bit overnight again, but we woke to a fine, but slightly overcast morning. We were away by 7.15, as we wanted to get the crossings out of the way before the sun brought the rivers up again. Both the Frances and McCoy had only dropped a little more overnight, but more importantly, the river speeds had slowed up, though they were still on the swift side. We tried one crossing spot, but the river was too deep, wide and fast, so we retreated and headed up the McCoy a way to our next option.

This seemed more promising, as the river was split in three. The first braid we crossed individually, but I could tell Mark wasn't entirely happy about that, as it was still swift, so we linked for the next braidand got across thatwithout to many worries, though the river bed was quite uneven, and was forcing me off balance, as I was on the upriver side. We cocked the third channel up completely, and soon found ourselves in deep, uneven, swift water with not much chance of retreating easily, so we kept moving forward. I was getting forced more and more off balance by all the rocks we were passing over, and was slowly getting my feet pushed out out from under me by the force of the current, and about a metre out from the far bank my feet finally got pushed out from under me. I screamed out and fell sideways and forwards, taking Mark with me. Somehow we managed to grab at the bank and Mark was able to get back onto his feet and grab me while I clung to a boulder on the bank. I had hit my left leg quite hard, and had that horrible dead leg sensation you get when something hits you in the thigh, but much worse.

I dragged myself up onto the bank while Mark took a photo of me, and wrung my clothes out I had gone almost completely in, except for my right arm, and was cold, soaked, and more than a little freaked. We didn't hang around long, as I just wanted to get away from there, and get moving so I could dry out and try and stop my leg from seizing. I was walking with a real limp, but just kept pushing on.

We passed where the McCoy and Frances join to become the Clyde, and followed the valley on the true left down past Watchdog Peak and Watchdog Hut to Armada Bluff, then from there down to Black Bluff, which is aptly named. As we approached the Lawrence River it became apparent that the Clyde was flowing accross valley to join the Lawrence and then flow down the hard left of the valley, where we wanted to go. This concerned us, as with the rivers still being up, and our experience earlier in the morning, neither of us was overly keen on doing to many more river crossings that day.

We found the Lawrence to be just as high as the Clyde, and spent some time trying to find a good crossing. We tried one place, but again the river was too high, swift and deep for us to cross, and I could feel myself being pushed over again, which freaked me out a bit. On top of that, when we started to retreat, the pole that Mark had stashed on my pack fell out the bottom of its compression strap and starting acting as a rudder, twisting me around in the wrong direction. I started to freak a bit, but Mark managed to grab it and we made it back to shore. After that we became really picky about where we were going to cross, and ended up walking almost 2km up the Lawrence before we found a suitable crossing point on a gravel bar. This time everything went like clockwork, and we went with the current in knee deep water, which was SO much easier. After that we were forced to head across country for a way to make our way back to where we were originally heading.

On the way back we got a good view of the valley from the terraces we were sidling and realised that we may have cocked up the crossing, as the river was cutting right in hard again the true left of the valley, and there was a lot of steep ground to contend with. The only other option seemed to be multiple crossings of the Clyde and Lawrence down to Erewhon. We stopped and had lunch where the Clyde hit the true left bank, and decided to just stay on this side and deal with the steep terrain. In the end it turned out okay. After a bit of scrambling, we picked up a series of animal trails that led us above all the nasty stuff and down to where the river flowed away from the bank again (Go where the locals go, that's what I always say!), and from there we stumbled down to the pine trees behind Erewhon and had a well deserved break.

We arrived at Erewhon quite worn out, and decided to drop by the homestead to ask about the best place to cross the Clyde and Havelock the next day. We met the station manager's father just outside the homestead, as he was heading off to pick up some pine cones on his tractor, but he was just visiting, ad couldn't help us, so pointed us over to the homestead and told us to ask the "Boss lady", so we did. She confirmed that the best crossing was still the same as in the guidebook description we had, and when we asked her if it was okay to camp down there by the river she said sure, then looked at us again, and then said "Actually you don't have to camp, I'll just put you up in the shearers quarters behind you for the night, and here have some beer, you look like you've had a hard day, and oh, you'll probably be wanting a change from all that tramping food you're eating, so here, take thse sausages - they're homemade, but should be alright, and have some bread too - you must be starving."

We were just totally blown away. I tried to offer her money for the accomodation, but she refused, and said we would probably be best to get away early the next day, as the rivers were all up, and had been for most of summer. We headed over to the shearers quarters and dumped our gear, then headed down the road to check out the start of our route for the next day, but it was too far, so we came back, showered, shaved, drank beer and ate sausages and bread for tea, feeling much happier than we had when we arrived at the Station. What a great way to finish up up an otherwise shit day! Real oldstyle country hospitality is not dead - Thanks SO much Christine, you made a couple of weary trampers very happy!

3 February - We were up at six, and had more sausages and bread for breakfast before tidying up and hitting the road around 7.40 after chatting with some guy who was signing into the Station intentions book, as he was just about to fly into the Gardens. We followed the road down to the vehicle track that led to the Clyde. The river looked good. it was clear and not running too fast, so we crossed the first channel individually and followed the vehicle track to the next crossing, which was a bit bigger, but we saw a good gravel bar just downstream, and linked up and crossed that without any hassles. Two more channels followed in similar fashion and we were across the Clyde. This was SO much easier than yesterday. We were finding good crossing, and going with the current, and everything went like clockwork - Yay! We crossed the Havelock shortly after via two channels, and again everything went without a hitch, and we were soon wandering up the valley on a vehicle track that led bang-smack up the middle.

The travel was nice and easy, and almost (Can I say this about a Canterbury valley?) pleasent - especially after our mini epic down the Clyde. We lost the vehicle track for a while and wandered up the river shingles, then up a series of gravel fans before picking up the vehicle track again further up the valley. We stopped by the Findley's Face Hut, but found it had been removed, then headed up to Mistake Flat and had lunch on the corner of the Forbes River.

The Forbes was dispatched in about an hour and a halfs gravel bashhing and boulder hopping, and we arrived at the neat little Forbes Biv around 3pm. The biv a neat little two person dog box in a stunning location, with views up to D'Archiac behind it and all the way back down to the Havelock in the other direction. Apparently in the old days, you could see the biv all the way down at mistake Flat, but the scrub around it has grown a bit since then, and you can only see downvalley via the track leading up to it. We spent the est of the day lazing around in the sun and reading the old hutbook, which was full of interesting tales from the hunters and climbers that pass through this place. A nice easy day for a change - what bliss. : )

4 February - Another big day over Twilight Col. We boulder bashed on up the South Forbes from the biv and made the South Forbes Glacier by morning tea, where we refilled our water bladders and took to the steep scree slopes that we had to climb to get up to Twilight Col - almost 1000 metres of choss! The South Forbes icefall and Mount D'Archiac loomed overhead, and were quite impressive to behold, but the scree slopes soon took up all our attention.

We startedby angling up to the base of a large gully on large scree, but once we got a view up it, we decided the "Ugly Factor" was too high in that one and sidled across to the next one, which came down beside a solid red sandstone outcrop. We made slow, but steady progress up this gut until we came up against its manky headwall. Ass there was no easy way onto the solid red outcrop, we were forced to climb the chossy gully headwall, and this was bloody horrible, but we made it through with only a couple of minor dramas. After that we headed up on reasonably solid shelves and tussock to the snow patch below the col. From here we donned our ice gear and swapped leads up the steepening snowslopes to a gully that led up onto the col itself.

We were greeted with a brief glimpse of Mount Cook before it hid behind a veil of afternoon cloud that was hanging around the Tasman and Murchison valleys. The view back north however was superb, and I could see back along the route I had taken from Arthur's Pass. For the first time I realised that I was only a few days away from being halfway on this Southern Odyssey of mine, and that I'd come a long way already. It was a neat feeling of achievement.

We had lunch on the col, then descended down the snowslopes of the butcher glacier into Separation Stream, where the long, arduous moraine bash down past the Separation Glacier, then Separation Stream began. We stayed on the true left most of the way down until bluffs forced us to cross over to the true right, but after that the valley widened and flattened out, and we were spat out into the Godley Valley. Everything about the Godley Valley screams big - in fact I'd forgotten just how big this place is, but it was cool to be back, and I felt quite energized by arriving here again.

We crossed Separation Stream one last time, and saw a person wandering off down the valley in the distance, so went after him. We spotted a couple of four wheel drives parked down at the roadend too. The person turned out to be one half of a couple who were in the process of travelling the South Island on mountain bikes via all its back roads. They had come up here for a looksee, and were going to stay here another day to go for an explore before moving on to Mount Cook. I share my story with them too, and they were mightily impressed. The two trucks belonged to a party who had headed up to Godley Hut they said. They also mentioned that there was another grop camped further downstream, but they didn't know what they were up too. It seemed that the Godley was a busy place! We headed down valley a wee way, then stopped to do the radio sched, seems it was 7.30, and we were on safe ground.

Once we had done that we headed off towards Red Hut again, and soon came upon the next camp. There was a group of four wheel drives parked up wagon style, with a bunch of people milling about over a bunch of cookers. As we approached. one of them spotted us and broke away from the group. He came towards us, and his first words were "Have a beer on Macpac, guys" and held out a couple of Heinekins. How could we refuse? We took our beers and sauntered into the wagon ring, and started yarning. The group turned out to be the Macpac design team, who were up here for the long weekend "Testing our new range of Down Jackets", and generally having a good explore around the valley. We wound up spending about an hour standing around talking gear, and they were interested to hear how their product was handling the trip I was doing. In the end Mark had to drag me away, and we shot off down to Red Stag Hut, which is a funky little four bunk NZDA hut with a separate bunkroom and kitchen, and a funky outdoor picnic table for eating on. We had a late dinner and collapsed into bed happy with our days efforts.

5 February - We were up and away by 7.30am, and had little difficulty crossing the Godley via four channels of varying size. We walked downvalley a wee way, then turned the corner into Rutherford Stream, which was our access point for Armadillo Saddle. Rutherford Stream is tight, and steep, with very little terracing or flat spots. In winter it fills with avalanche debris, and is the starting point for the "Symphony on Skis" (A marvelous ski touring trip from the Godley to Fox Glacier via the four big glaciers in the area). In summer it is basically endless scree slopes. It is cut by two gorges, which we had to teeter around the side of on some pretty dodgy scree slopes, that were either loose and free running (a good thing), or more frequently well packed and slippery (definitely a BAD thing). This ate up a lot of time and energy, and on top of that, the day was scorching hot.

We managed to get through the gorges and scree up onto some remnant avalanche debri, and were then greeted with a line of slabby bluffs cut with waterfalls. By this time is was lunch, so we stopped in the shade of some large boulders and scrutinised the line of bluffs for possible routes. We came up with two options - one on the right of the biggest waterfall, which was a series of slabby ledges (My pick) and one further around on the left that zig zagged up some rock ledges and a tussock gut (Mark's pick). We started out for the grassy gut, but had to cross the stream and go further than if we just headed up to the slabby ledges, so ended up going straight up the ledges.

As I thought, they turned out to be straightforward, and leant back far more once we were on them than they looked from below. We were soon in the upper basin, and had another route challenge presented us. He had the choice of a narrow snow gut that led through to the open snowslopes above, or the choice of two bands of slabby bluffs to either side of the gut. We figured the snow would be soft and just plain hard work, and the bluffs to the left were too chossy and steep looking, so decided to head up the series of ledges on the right hand set of bluffs.

These bluffs were steeper than the last lot, but the ledge systems were good, and the climbing was involving, but not difficult, though a fall would have been lethal. As we got higher, the rock deteriorated in quality, but was still fine to scramble up. We reached the top of the rock and donned ice axe and crampons to do the final rising traverse back left to the saddle. The snow slopes were steep, but the snow was soft enough to kick good bucket steps in. I led out and got into that focused rythm that you get when you need to be getting somewhere tricky in a hurry. I ploughed my way up and across to the pass, and when I turned around once I'd got there, was suprised to see that I'd left Mark some distance behind. He arrived shortly after, and we popped through to the Murchison side of the Saddle for a well deserved break. It was now 4.30, and we still had a long way to go to get down from the pass and up to Murchison Hut for the night.

It was here that I rued forgetting to bring the route description for Armadillo Saddle. All I could remember was snippits of conversations with people who had crossed it on skis in winter, but I couldn't remember whether we had to go right and find a ledge through the bluffs under the pass, then drop easier terrain in the Harper Glacier, or head left and down and find a weakness in the bluffs under Mount Conrad. As it was getting late, I started to fret a bit about what course of action to take, but first we had to get down off the pass and onto the benches below us.

We descended down a steep, loose gut onto scree slopes below Armadillo Saddle, then dropped down some snow to where things flattened off. From here we couldn't see much of what was going on below, so after some brainstorming, decided to swing right and drop down onto the next set of ledges, then if no options presented themselves, we'd follow the ledge left until something did appear. It soon became apparent that there was no way through to the Harper Glacier on the right, and that the bluffs were massive in scale. We traversed above them as we swung back towards Mount Conrad, and my heart sank when I looked down these immense cliffs, as there was clearly no way through. However, we persevered, and the terrain relented. After some time traversing we came to a spur, then once we crossed the top of it we came to a steep tussock face that was quite descendable. These led to a bench, which then dropped down a steep, ugly looking moraine wall to the lateral moraine of the Murchison Glacier. We dropped down to the bench, and found a steep, loose gut that looked like it was worth a shot at downclimbing. it looked ugly, but once we got in it, it actually went well, and we finally clambered down onto the lateral moraine on the Murchison at 7.30pm, tired as buggery.

I said to Mark that if we found a flat spot on the glacier, we should probably stop and camp, as it was looking more and more unlikely that we were going to make Murchison Hut, and he agreed. We moraine bashed across to the edge of the white ice, and by this time it was after 8pm. I really wanted to get a message out to Danilo to say we were two days out from arriving from Mount Cook, so I suggested we stop and do the late radio sched. We hadn't found any flat spots to camp either, so I also suggested that if we were going to push on up the glacier, then we should probably stop and have dinner, then push on, so we stopped and set up the radio aerial and put on the stove to heat some water for our Backcountry Cuisine meals. I managed to get the message out that Mark and I were almost at Mount Cook, and that I needed a new carbide tip for one of my Leki poles, and that I wanted Danilo to bring up some feta cheese and basil pesto, but the operator just could understand basil pesto, even after I spelt it out for him, so I just let it be.

There was a cold wind blowing down the glacier, and Mark and I were soon rugged up in our storm gear while we waited for our dinner to rehydrate. We gobbled it down greedily, then packed up our stuff and roped up for glacier travel and put on our head torches. By this stage it was 9.30, and we were rapidly losing the light.

We headed up the white ice in the fading light, jumping runnels and the occasional melt pool. We were soon forced to switch our headlamps on and or world was soon reduced to the small area in front of us that we could see with our light. Mark was in front, and was only a silohette most of the time who would call out occasionally whenever we reached a slot we had to jump, or when he required a bit of slack or taughtness in the rope. The gentle runnels gradually became bigger, and soon we were jumping the occasional crevasse. The moon hadn't come up over the Divide, so the night was quite dark. After a long while of weaving back and forth, the terrain flattened out, though we were now jumping more crevasses or crossing snow bridges. The wind had dropped, and the night was actually quite warm.

I checked my watch at one stage and it was 11pm. I realised that it was probably going to be some time before we were even in a position to be able to find the way off the glacier, let alone climb the 200 metres up onto the spur that Murchison hut is on. The glacier had flattened out, and there weren't many slots around, so I stopped and called out to Mark. "This is crazy. Its 11 o'clock, and we aren't likely to be able to find the hut any time soon. We'll probably end up by going all night if we do try and get there. Its flat here, lets just set up the tent and get some sleep now. We can think about getting to the hut tomorrow if we still feel the need to." There was a brief silence, then "Yeah, thats a good idea. lets do it." came back out of the darkness.

We set up the tent and secured our loose stuff, just in case the wind came up again, then climbed into our pits. By the time I had zipped myself into my bivy bag it was almost midnight. It had been the longest, hardest day of the trip so far, but with luck the rest of the way to Mount Cook would be a bit more straight forward.

6 February - It was something of a restless night for us both. We both slept in fits and spurts. I was lying on a bit of a divit and kept sliding off my Thermarest. The night wasn't cold, but just before dawn the temperature dived, and I pulled the drawcord on my sleeping bag tight to stop the cold getting in. We were up with the sun, and had soon packed the tent away, though we spent some time melting snow for water. Our surroundings were stunning. Huge glaciated peaks loomed high above us with the sun slowly cresting over them. It was spectacular.

We roped up again and were away up the glacier by about 8.30. The going was straightforward, and the gradient nice and easy. We approached the first icefall, and wondered how the hell we were going to get through that jumble of frozen blocks, but again the perspective was deceptive, and an easy way opened up on the true left where the glacier flowed more smoothly. We wound our way slowly uphill, jumping slots as needed. The sun started make its presence felt, and things started to swelter.

We turned up the next hill a little too early and came out into the start of a jumbled section of crevasses, but were able to easily find our way back onto easier ground. We trudged up two more tiers before coming up beneath the Tasman headwall. We had spotted a couple of options further down, but as our angle changed and we got closer under the headwall the options were soon whittle down to one which led up slightly to the left of Tasman Saddle. There was one bit that looked like it might be slotted, but we were hoping that there would be a snowbridge across it. If there wasn't we'd be in trouble!

Mark led up the first steep slope in the softening snow, then got to the lip of the first big schrund and broke left along its lip. The next shelf was reached by Mark climbing across a snowbridge up onto a ledge, then I followed him onto the ledge, put in a snowstake and belaying him while he tenuously stood on another snowbridge and hacked a type of steep staircase up onto the next shelf, then once he was up on the shelf he wacked in his snowstake and belayed me across the second, dodgy bridge and up onto the shelf. This proved to be the crux on the headwall, and after that I led out across the shelf, across another small slot, up another snowslope to another large schrund, which I bypassed on the left, then we angled up to the right again to finally reach Tasman Saddle.

We had almost done it. We were almost at Mount Cook! We were now on the highest point of my trip on a beautiful, crystal clear day with the Southern Alps all about us. We could see over to Mount D'Archiac, and Twilight Col where we had been just two days ago, and the peaks of the Havelock, Clyde and Rakaia stretching away to the North, and the big 3000 metre peaks above the Tasman Glacier dissappearing away to the South. I was ecstatic! I was almost halfway on this South Odyssey of mine. It had been hard work so far, but by god it had been worth it!

We stopped and had lunch on the rocks beside the saddle, and watched a group of climbers coming down off Mount Aylmer, then packed up and headed down the Tasman via the lower icefall. The travel started out easy enough, but as we got lower the soft snow and slots started giving us some routefinding fun, leading us to a couple of dead ends before we found a conveluted route through on the true left of the glacier. Mark must have put his leg down a slot on at least ten occasions by the time we found our way through the lower icefall, as the snow had grown quite soft in the midday sun and the snow bridges weren't holding together as well as they would have if we'd gone through first thing in the morning.

Just as we got out onto easier ground, as ski plane came in to land in front of us, and a bunch of tourists jumped out and started taking photos of the surrounding mountains. The pilot hailed us over, teling us to hang around the plane for a bit, as another plane was just about to land, and he didn't want us to get run over! We came over and had a bit of a chat with him, then a couple of Japanese tourists rocked up and asked if they could have their photos taken with us. This was all a little bizzare, especially when you've been out in the hills for as long as I had, but we smiled and got our pictures taken, then waited for the second ski plane to land before heading off down the glacier again. The pilot we had been talking to, said as we left, "You poor barstards, I don't envy you walking out. It's a pity I'm full, or I'd have given you a lift."

We took a wee break further down the ice, and the first plane took off and buzzed us as he went past. We waved, then got up and trudged down the slowly flattening glacier to the start of the white ice. When we reached Darwin Corner we had to walk through a section where the surface ice and snow and ice had melted to form a type of ice swamp. We waded through ths, then came out onto the solid white ice. To our suprise, it wasn't flat, but all runnelled and full of wee streams which had the feel of hydroslides. We unroped and headed on down towards De La Beche Corner, where we planned to climb up the moraine wall and stay at De La Beche Hut that night. The runneled ice didn't let up and we spent some time following ice ridges and jumping riverlets. As we got closer to De La Beche Corner, we started to debate the best route along to the hut. The glacier had two strips of lateral moraine running down it, which divided the white ice into three channels. I was keen to follow the true left channel we were on down to the corner, and then cross to the corner, but Mark was keen to skip over the lateral moraine and angle across to the corner. I reluctantly agreed to give it a go, as alot of this lower part of the glacier had changed, so the travel may have improved on thhe true right side.

It hadn't, althouogh getting across the lateral moraine was straightforward enough. The problem lay in the fact that the true right of the glacier was a jumbled mess of crevasses and boulders that had fallen off De La Beche Ridge. We wasted a lot of time getting across this last section of ice and fighting our way down through the jumble of boulders that lay beside the glacier here.

It was here I turned up the pace a bit, as all I wanted to do was get up to the hut and finsh the day. I left Mark behind a bit and made my way down onto the smaller moraine, before starting to angle up the moraine wall when I though I saw a cairn above me which may have marked the route up to the hut. I got a call from Mark behind me "Did you see the markerr poles Aaron? I looked back at where mark was, then saw an iron standard attached to a spring mounted on a large boulder, then as I turned my head uphill I spotted another iron standard at the top of the moraine wall marking the exit point. I had only just gone past them in my mission to get to the corner, so it was good spotting by Mark that he saw them before I did.

I turned back right and angled up to the base of a rotten gully that was marked with cairns, then scrambled up this onto some ledges, then up to the top of the moraine wall, being careful not to knock anything off, as mark was climbing up below me. The hut and rock biv came into view, but i stopped and kept an eye on Mark as he came slowly up the moraine wall. He arrived where I was at 7.30pm looking a bit poked. We then rock hopped up the final 50 metres or so to the hut. It was great to be there, and we very quickly made ourselves at home for the night. I had been a good day, only slightly marred by a wee navigational hiccup. Tomorrow we would be at the fleshpots of Mount Cook Village!

To out suprise we couldn't find a toilet anywhere. it wasn't suprising that they'd taken out the infamous longdrop, but not to replace it with a flyout loo seems a bit slack. Relying on poo pots at this site seems to be an oversight, as half the parties that pass through this hut are coming from outside the park, and are unlikely to be carrying poo pots. Come on NZAC, I know that flyout loos are expensive, but I think that one is needed at the De La Beche hutsite.

7 February - Were had a slight sleep in, and were away back down the moraine wall around 9am. The route back across to the white ice took us about two hours, and was pretty easy, just following over a couple of smallish hillocks of lateral moraine. When we got back to the ice, we found that what used to be flat white ice had changed to runneled ice. We we no longer going to get the easy stroll down to the start of the moraine that we used to have.

It took us about another two hours to reach the start of the moraine. This too had changed beyond any recognition, and the old familiar route through the pressure ridges around the Hochstetter Icefall no longer existed. It was follow your nose and try and pick the easiest way through terrain. Fortunately, that is something I am particularly good at, and Mark gladly just followed me and let me make the decisions. The going was by no means easy, and I can't really describe the route I chose, but it seemed to follow the lines of least resistance in the glacier, though it took a while.

We eventually reached Garbage Gully, and ascended this up to the slumped shelf, and then up to Ball Shelter. Erosion has actually improved the climb up Garbage Gully, and we managed to bypass the old traverse, that was getting quite hairy the last time I had done it. They have moved the loo at Ball Shelter away from the edge too, as where it was has now fallen away.

We had a break at Ball Shelter, then pushed on down the track to towards Husky Flat. We ran into an English couple coming the other way, and then ran into Danilo further down the track. He had come up from Dunners that morning, and was out stretching his legs, and wanted to get up to the shelter, so we said we'd meet him at the Blue Lakes carpark and let him go on his way.

It was the usual drudgery walking down the Ball Road. We passed another tourist heading up to Ball Shelter for the night. He looked at us, and asked if we'd come from the shelter. I replied, "No I've come from Collingwood." and got a blank look in return. Mark and I wandered off smirking. We walked down to Lower Husky and were passed by a couple in a four wheel drive heading up the road. We hoped that they would be returning soon, so we could hijack the truck and drive out. Just before we were about to reach Celmisia Flat the truck came rumbling back down the road and stopped. The couple offered us a lift down to Blue Lakes, which we gladly accepted. They were from Ohau, but hadn't been up to Mount Cook in years. Apparently they used to do a lot of tramping and climbing around here when they were younger, and were interested to hear what we had been up to. Nice folk.

They dropped us off at Blue Lakes carpark, and we lazed around in the early evening sun waiting for Danilo to return from Ball Shelter. We were feeling quite pleased with our efforts. We had had a full-on ten days, had some great times and some hard ones too, but we'd done it, and here we were safely at Mount Cook. I was looking forward to having a couple of days off before hitting the Copland and the mighty Landsborough, but first we had some decent food to eat and some beer to drink. Danilo really came to the party there, as he had brought up a feast of pasta, pesto, salad and steak, topped off with lashings of strawberries and a huge chocolate cake that he had baked. Thanks dude, it was great : )

Danilo also sugested that I might like to get hold of Dan Allan, Rob Lawrence and Nina Conradi, as they were all keen to join me over the Copland if the dates fell right, and after a few texts and a couple of phone calls I had three people joining me for the Copland. Excellent!

Well I'm wrapt to have reached Mount Cook, but I know that the next stage through to Makarora is going to be just as tough in its own way. Here's hoping that the weather stays as good as I've had it sine the McCoy, and the West Coast is kind to me! Hopefully I'll be able to update my next stage at Makarora, otherwise it'll have to probably be Glenorchy or Te Anau. We'll see. I'll try and keep you posted when I update this next.

STAGE 3 BREAKDOWN

Day 25: Arthur's Pass Village - Avalanche Peak - Crow Valley - Waimakariri Valley - Carrington Hut
Day 26: Carrington Hut - White River - Taipoiti River - Harman Pass - Whitehorn Pass - Cronin Stream - Park Morpeth Hut
Day 27: Park Morpeth Hut - Wilberforce River - Moa Stream - Moa Stream Hut
Day 28: Moa Stream Hut - Moa Stream - Unnamed Saddle between Moa Stream and Boundary Creek - Boundary Creek - North Mathias - West Mathias - Centennial Cabin
Day 29: Centennial Cabin - West Mathias - South Mathias - Observation Col - Cattle Stream - Rakaia River - Washbourne Hut
Day 30: Washbourne Hut - Reischek Hut
Day 31: Rest day due to Mark and Rob P not arriving with food drop until midday : )
Day 32: Reischek Hut - Mein's Knob - Lyell Hut
Day 33: Lyell Hut - Lyell Glacier - McCoy Col - McCoy Glacier - McCoy River - McCoy Hut
Day 34: Pit day, McCoy Hut - bad weather, rivers up
Day 35: Pit day, McCoy Hut - beautiful weather, rivers still raging
Day 36: McCoy Hut - Clyde River - Erewhon Station
Day 37: Erewhon Station - Clyde River - Havelock River - Forbes River - Forbes Biv
Day 38: Forbes Biv - South Forbes River - Twilight Col - Separation Stream - Godley Valley - Red Stag Hut
Day 39: Red Stag Hut - Godley River - Rutherford Stream - Armadillo Saddle - Murchison Glacier
Day 40: Murchison Glacier - Tasman Saddle - Tasman Glacier - De la Beche Hut
Day 41: De la Beche Hut - Tasman Glacier - Ball Shelter - Ball Road - Unwin Hut
Day 42: Rest day, Unwin Hut
Day 43: Rest day, Unwin Hut