Waiau - Waiau Forks Informal Campsite

16.5km 8hrs all of the weathers (including snow! )

Today was the day that I had been quietly worrying about for most of the trip. I'd watched the mountain safety video and pshyched myself out a bit. The morning at blue lakes hut was the coldest it's been so far and there was a fresh dump of snow on the hills we could see below the clouds.

Nevertheless we got up super early, packed up and hit the trail munching our breakfast of Musli bars and no doze to ward off the caffeine headaches. Paul sent us an update on the weather conditions after we left indicating that it was only going to get better and ther the wind forecast was 30kmh winds with gusts up tp 65km as opposed to the warden whose forecast was of up to 100kmh wind. Pretty sure that's the 24hr forecast because it got quite wild during the night .

We were watching the sunshine chasing us up lake constance but never quite catching up. There was a bit of rain and the wind was still quite blustery all the way so we had a couple of catchups with each other to make sure we were all happy to go over. Luckily we were all on the same page.

From the valley floor by lake constance it was about 800m almost straight up. Mostly over rocks and though tussock but for at least one heart stopping section we were in scree that slid down every step. About 200m from the top it fooled us by taking a more flat path and as we were in the cloud by then we didn't see that there was more to come.

The last push to the top was through a smattering of snow that had not yet melted and ice covered plants. When we reached the top I was expecting the wind to be worse s it was coming from the south but as we created the pass it just dropped away.

The part I was most dreading was the climb down the rocks on the other side but as the climbs were really short and the angle not too steep they really weren't anything to worry about. There was just a lot of it! Knees and ankles were both a bit sore by the time we reached the valley, and even then we continued in our downward trajectory until we reached the waiau forks campsite. Mercifully free of the sandflys that the trail notes warned us of.

The weather had been clearing almost as soon as we made the crossing so by the time we had our tents set up it was a beautiful sunny afternoon for lazing by the river.

The tent was a great success. Despite it being finger numbingly cold in the morning I had the most toasty sleep.Read more