I’m sure Upper Travers Hut was neat and everything, but last night’s hut was pretty well situated. I mean come on. Fun fact: there’s a water taxi from the other end of the lake that would have picked me up and taken me to town if I wanted. This hut is basically a zero walking…

What a day. I’ve been anticipating this day for literally months. Worrying that it would be too hard for me to do, the weather too bad for me to even attempt. The trail notes make mention of crampons and ice axes and that made me super concerned. The first part of the day for me…

Such an easy easy easy easy day today. Came pretty close to just heading on past the hut, but I decided not to. Tomorrow is going to be a long, challenging day. I want to rest up and get an early start and that’ll be a lot easier in a hut than in my tent.…

Lovely day today. Got up early, rolled out after a decent breakfast, had a nice walk. Part of the way in to today was a pass, Anne Saddle, which I took quite a bit faster than I expected. I was quite surprised when I got to the top of the hill. Anne hut is super…

Pretty uneventful day. Bumped into Christian again but he was going to stay at Boyle village for the night, he’d been sick in Hanmer Springs and was still recovering. Met a couple of other northbounders and walked with them for a bit but they camped a bit farther down the trail and only briefly stopped…

Wet. Stinky. Sand flies. Those are today’s themes. I woke up this morning and it had been raining most of the night. It was still raining when I got out of bed, but stopped as I was packing up. There were still people sleeping in the kitchen (and I just remembered now I meant to…

Today was a trying day. It was going to be a long day no matter what, but some things added to the frustration. First off, there was a hot spring along the route which was highly recommended by a lot of people to go have a rest in. I totally could have used this. Sadly,…

Rats. No, really. Rats. They didn’t get into my food because I hung it up but they were all over the counter and table and everything else all night. Little turds everywhere. Gross. They also stole my bar of soap. I didn’t know rats ate soap. Now I do. I decided to just have a…

Another northbounder named Greg was at the hostel with me for the past couple of days. This morning we left and stood out by the road hoping to get a ride for a bit. Finally we got one, from a guy who was driving from Christchurch to Greymouth for a meeting! Eek! We knew our…