Takitimu - Dougies hut

11.5km 5 hrs

We were quite relaxed about getting up and moving this morning as we knew we had a short day and didn't want to get to the top of the hill too early as it was a foggy morning.

The climb was quite lovely up through the beautiful forest, though there continued to be little patches of mud throughout which just required us to be on our toes and either skirt our pick appropriate paths through them.

Once on the tops it was an absolutely cracking day. However despite getting there at 11am the lower clouds were still on the move. We decided to sit on the highest point and watch them recede in the hopes that we might be able to see all the way to bluff. After an hour (and all my snacks) we gave up and carried on.

About 300m later (and still quite high with plenty of views) we realised it was lunch time so we stopped for a munch.

Now the official notes don't mention Dougies hut which was only brought back into service this year, but it is mentioned in the far out app that Karen has so we went in search of it. It wasn't too difficult to find thankfully.

One we were all set up on the hut we returned to the river for a wash. Not 10m from the hut I rolled my ankle and ended up on my back like a stranded turtle. It took me a minute for the initial pain to dissipate enough for me to work out that nothing was too damaged - thank goodness. In fact by the time we got to the river there was no pain at all!

At the river I found a waterfall that I used as a super high pressure shower. It was marvelous!

Back at the hut I had all my clothes draped in the sun drying and attempted to read my book. Unfortunately the sandflys found me and would not be detered by the repellent . It got so bad that I retreated into the dark hut with my book.

One other mentionable feature of the hut was that the dunny had no walls. It was just a bucket on a pit away from the hut, so we had to announce to everyone when we needed to use it so no one stumbled onto us doing so.Leer más