Breast hill - Camp btw Timaru & Stodys

21km 9 hrs

This morning my toe was showing signs of the infecting coming to a head so I lanced it and felt some immediate relief once it was drained. I then bandaged it up with a silicone toe sock to keep it from being pressed on before we left. It had a much better day today than it had in ages.

The climb to Martha's saddle was pretty immediate but the gradient was pretty reasonable. We chased the clouds up the mountain and by the time we crossed it was fine on one side and nearly fine on the other.

Coming down the other side to top Timaru hut was pretty good as well, being a bulldozed track. The only real feature was the tributaries to the river in the valley all showed signs of relatively recent catastrophic rain events that had caused great gouges to be cut where they run or massive piles of stones to have been deposited. One particular tributary was the color di l of cement and the beautiful clear stream became murky immediately.

After the hut the going slowed right down as the path sidled along steep banks. The murky river needed to be crossed again and again. We had thought we might make it to the junction before the next hut before we looked for a campsite but after about 6km of hard afternoon slog we found a clearing next to a clear tributary and called it a day.Leggi altro