Twenty Steps and Breathe

From Upper Travers Hut, the trail abandoned any pretence of gentleness and simply went up.

There was no easing into it, no gradual warm-up through rolling terrain to prepare the body for what was being asked. The track climbed directly from the hut clearing toward Travers Saddle, 1,787 metres above sea level, and it did so with a steepness that turned walking into something closer to climbing. The forest fell away quickly, the beech trees thinning and shrinking until they were little more than twisted shrubs clinging to the mountainside, and then they were gone entirely, replaced by tussock and rock and the vast, exposed openness of the alpine zone.

Anth's legs were at their limit. Not approaching it, not flirting with it, but pressed hard against the boundary of what they could do. Every step upward required a negotiation between will and muscle, a conscious decision to lift, place, push, and repeat that left no room for anything else. The lactic acid burned through thighs and calves with a persistence that rest stops could dull but not extinguish. We stopped every twenty metres or so to catch our breath, these small pauses becoming a rhythm of their own, twenty steps and stop, hands on knees, lungs heaving in the thinner mountain air, heart hammering against ribs, and then twenty more. The Abel Tasman, with its coastal hills that had once seemed challenging, had not in any way prepared Anth for this. Those hills belonged to a different vocabulary entirely. This was the trail speaking in its native tongue, and the dialect was vertical.

But the views. The views more than made up for every burning muscle and every ragged breath.

As the altitude increased, the world below unfolded in a panorama of staggering beauty. The Travers Valley stretched back the way we had come, a deep green corridor of beech forest bisected by the silver thread of the river we had followed for two days, its course visible now in its entirety from this height, winding between the mountains like a vein carrying the lifeblood of the landscape. The peaks of Nelson Lakes National Park rose on every side, their ridgelines sharp against a sky so blue it seemed to vibrate, snow still clinging to the shadowed southern faces in patches of brilliant white that caught the sun and threw it back. To the north, the ranges rolled away in wave after wave of diminishing blue, each ridge paler than the last until the most distant ones dissolved into the sky entirely. And ahead, the saddle itself was visible now, that narrow dip in the ridgeline where the mountains parted just enough to allow passage from one valley to the next, a gateway between worlds that had been drawing trampers through for generations.

Torrin stayed close, as he always did on the climbs, letting Anth set the pace, offering quiet words during the rest stops that carried more strength than their simplicity suggested. Nearly there. You are doing amazing. Look at that view. He pointed out landmarks in the distance, identified peaks, gave us things to look at that were not the trail immediately ahead, small acts of distraction that lifted the mind out of the body's complaints and reminded us why we were here. The bond between us on these steep sections had deepened into something that went beyond father and son, beyond hiking partners. It was trust made physical, patience made into footsteps, love expressed in the willingness to move at the speed of the one who needs it most.

Eventually, mercifully, the ground began to flatten. The gradient eased, the tussock levelled out, and we stepped onto the broad, windswept col of Travers Saddle. We had made it. The saddle sits at the junction of two worlds, the Travers Valley behind and the Sabine Valley ahead, and standing on that exposed ridge with the wind pushing against us and the mountains spread out in every direction, the sense of achievement was physical, a warmth that radiated from somewhere deeper than tired muscles could reach. We dropped our packs and sat down for lunch, eating in the company of that immense view, letting the food and the rest and the sheer improbability of being here seep into bodies that had earned every calorie and every moment of stillness.

But what goes up must come down, and the descent into the Sabine Valley would be every bit as demanding as the climb had been. We pulled on our neoprene knee sleeves, those faithful allies that had proven their worth on the Cascade Track days earlier, and began the long journey downward. The western side of Travers Saddle drops steeply through alpine tussock and scree before plunging into the forest below, and once again every foot placement demanded concentration. Our knees absorbed the impact of each downward step, the poles took what weight they could, and the brain maintained its exhausting vigilance over terrain that punished inattention. Loose rock shifted underfoot, scree slid beneath boot soles, and the gradient was relentless in its insistence that gravity would be the dominant force of the afternoon.

As we descended into the treeline, the rocks gave way to roots, that familiar exchange of one treacherous surface for another that the beech forests of the South Island specialise in. The gnarled root systems of silver beech spread across the trail like a web designed to catch tired feet, wet and polished and offering no grip to boots that were already sliding on the steep ground. The going was slow and careful, each step a decision, each root assessed for stability before weight was committed. The forest closed around us, dense and green and dripping with moisture, the light filtering through the canopy in that soft, diffused glow that makes the bush feel like the inside of something living.

Somewhere along the descent, we passed a couple of solo female hikers heading northbound, nobo, climbing toward the saddle we had just crossed. They were breathing hard but smiling, that particular expression of determined joy that thru-hikers wear on the big climbs, and we stopped to exchange the brief, essential information that hikers share when they meet on trail. How is the track ahead? What are the conditions like? They told us about a feature further down the valley that we should watch for, a bottomless canyon spanned by a bridge, where the river had carved so deep into the rock that the bottom was invisible. Their eyes widened as they described it, and we thanked them and continued on, the promise of something extraordinary pulling us forward through the tired kilometres.

The trail wound deeper into the Sabine Valley, following the river as it cut its way through the beech forest, and then we came upon it. The canyon. A narrow, vertical chasm carved into the bedrock by the Sabine River over millennia of patient, relentless erosion. The bridge crossed over it, a simple structure of wood and wire that spanned the gap between the rock walls, and we stopped in the middle and looked down.

Bottomless was the right word. The walls of the canyon dropped away beneath us in sheer, dark faces of polished rock, narrowing as they descended until the gap between them was barely wide enough for the water to pass through. And somewhere far below, invisible in the darkness, the river roared. The sound came up from the depths like the voice of the earth itself, a deep, resonant thunder that vibrated through the bridge timbers and into the soles of our boots, amplified by the narrow stone walls into something felt as much as heard. The water that produced that sound was hidden entirely, swallowed by the darkness of the chasm, and the effect was both mesmerising and unsettling. To stand above a river you can hear but cannot see, to feel its power transmitted through stone and air and timber, is to understand something about the forces that shape landscapes over timescales the human mind can barely comprehend. We stood on that bridge for a long time, looking down into the dark, listening to the roar, feeling very small and very alive.

The final stretch to West Sabine Hut passed through quiet forest, the trail gentler now, the valley floor levelling out as the river widened and slowed beside us. The hut appeared through the trees in the late afternoon light, a shelter sitting in a clearing near the river, surrounded by beech forest and backed by the mountains we had crossed that morning. .

There were nine of us in total that night, a small, intimate group of trampers gathered from both directions, some having crossed the saddle as we had, others heading the opposite way and staging for their own attempt in the morning. The hut felt companionable in a way that only small numbers allow, conversations flowing easily between strangers who share the common language of tired legs and trail stories, the gas burners hissing as dinners were prepared, the warmth of the hut slowly replacing the chill of the mountain air that had followed us down from the saddle. There is something particular about the atmosphere of a backcountry hut when the numbers are right, not so few that the space feels lonely, not so many that it loses its intimacy, but just enough for the kind of easy, unforced connection that the mountains seem to encourage. Stories were exchanged about the trail in both directions, conditions compared, advice offered with the generosity of people who understand that out here, information shared freely might be the difference between a good day and a dangerous one.Read more