Over the Waiau Pass

The three of us set off from Blue Lake Hut into a morning that seemed to understand the significance of what lay ahead. The trail climbed gently at first through the beech forest before opening out to reveal Lake Constance below, a stunning alpine tarn cradled in its basin of rock and tussock, its waters reflecting the surrounding peaks with a mirror-like stillness that made the mountains appear twice as tall. The views were extraordinary, the kind that demand you stop walking and simply stand, letting the scale of what surrounds you recalibrate everything you thought you knew about beauty. Lake Constance sits above Blue Lake in the same interconnected system, its waters slowly filtering through the glacial moraine over years before emerging as the supernaturally clear water we had marvelled at the day before. Knowing that, seeing the source and understanding the journey the water takes, added a layer of wonder to an already breathtaking scene.

We continued on, and then the Waiau Pass revealed itself.

The bottom of the pass rose before us in a steep wall of rock and scree and tussock, climbing toward a notch in the ridgeline high above that seemed, from this angle, almost impossibly far away. It was intimidating, there was no pretending otherwise. We stood at the base and looked up, each of us conducting our own private assessment of what was being asked, and the mountain looked back with the patient indifference of something that has watched thousands of hikers stand in this exact spot and feel this exact uncertainty. We stopped for snacks, fuelling bodies that would need every calorie in the hours ahead, and mentally prepared ourselves for the climb. Graham was quiet and focused. Torrin was calm and ready. Anth breathed deeply and told his legs what was coming.

We started up.

Just after the climb began, Anth sat down on a rock to retie a shoelace, one of those mundane, unremarkable trail moments that should have lasted ten seconds and been forgotten. But the rock moved. It shifted beneath his weight without warning, tipping sideways and taking Anth with it. He fell, catching himself awkwardly, and in the scramble his hand struck the rock with the full force of the impact concentrated on his little finger. The same little finger where the nail matrix had been damaged years ago, an old injury that had left the nail bed permanently sensitive, a place where even mild pressure could send sharp signals of complaint. This was not mild pressure. Pain exploded through the finger and up through his hand, that white-hot, nauseating kind that fills the entire body for a moment and makes the world go bright at the edges. He sat on the treacherous rock and cradled his hand and breathed through it, waiting for the initial wave to recede into something manageable.

Some ibuprofen and a few minutes of still, focused breathing while the pain settled from a scream to a shout. Torrin waited beside Anth without fuss, offering water and quiet reassurance, understanding that what was needed most in that moment was simply time. As we sat there regrouping, a female sobo tramper appeared above us on the pass, descending. Her pace was astonishing. She was not technically running, but the speed at which she moved down that slope made it appear as though she was, her feet finding the rocks with an instinctive precision that turned the treacherous terrain into something effortless. What we knew would take us at least a couple of hours to climb, she covered in the descent in roughly thirty minutes. It was poetry to watch. Pure, fluid poetry. The kind of movement that makes you realise the gap between what the human body is capable of and what most of us ask of it. We watched her disappear down the valley with something close to awe, and then we turned back to the mountain and began our own very different ascent.

The climb was slow and careful. Every step was chosen, tested, committed to. The terrain was loose rock and scree interspersed with sections of more solid ground, and the gradient was unrelenting, the kind of steep that forces you into a rhythm of small steps and frequent pauses because the alternative is simply stopping altogether. Anth was pushed to new limits, both physically and mentally. Physically, because the legs that had been given a zero day to recover were now being asked to do the hardest thing they had done since Travers Saddle, and the throbbing finger added a constant undercurrent of pain to every handhold and pole placement. Mentally, because the exposure and the steepness and the loose footing conspired to create moments where the mind wanted to say no, where the voice inside suggested that perhaps this was too much, perhaps this was beyond what could reasonably be asked. But Torrin was there, steady and patient, and the twenty-metre rhythm they had established on Travers Saddle returned, those small increments of progress that turn an impossible climb into a series of possible steps.

Graham, at seventy-seven, climbed with a measured, methodical pace that spoke of decades of mountain experience, his breathing controlled, his foot placements deliberate, his progress unhurried but constant. He did it well, remarkably well, and watching him move upward with such quiet competence was its own kind of inspiration. For Torrin, the pass was a breeze, his trail-hardened legs carrying him up with an ease that he wore lightly, never allowing the gap between his ability and Anth's struggle to become anything other than an opportunity to encourage.

And then the ground levelled and we crested the pass.

The Waiau Pass. 1,870 metres above sea level. The highest point on this section of the trail, and the second of the two great alpine crossings that had been waiting for us since we left St Arnaud. We stood on top and the views were extraordinary. The world opened in every direction, mountains and valleys and distant ranges stretching away to horizons that seemed to belong to a different, larger planet. Behind us, the way we had come, the Nelson Lakes region spread out in a tapestry of blue lakes and green valleys and grey-white peaks. Ahead, the trail descended into the Waiau Valley, a new landscape waiting to be walked, new forest and new rivers leading south toward Boyle Village and the end of this section. The wind pushed against us on the exposed saddle, cold and clean and carrying the scent of snow from the higher peaks, and we stood in it and let it wash over us, feeling the achievement settle into our bones alongside the exhaustion.

We stopped for lunch on the pass, eating with the slow, grateful deliberateness of people who have earned every mouthful. The food tasted better up here, as trail food always does when consumed at altitude after a hard climb, the simple calories transformed by effort and elevation into something approaching feast.

Then the descent. We pulled on our knee sleeves and began the slow, careful journey down the southern side of the Waiau Pass. The rocks on this side were different from the loose scree of the northern approach. They were solid, embedded in the mountainside, but arranged in steep, blocky formations that required us to essentially rock-climb down in places, lowering ourselves from ledge to ledge, finding handholds and footholds in the stone, packs pulling at our balance with every move. It was technical and demanding, the kind of terrain where concentration cannot lapse for a single moment, where every limb placement matters and the consequence of a mistake is measured in more than bruises. The throbbing in Anth's finger made every handhold a negotiation with pain, but the rock was solid and trustworthy beneath his grip, and step by step, ledge by ledge, the altitude surrendered.

The descent eventually gentled as we dropped below the bushline and into the valley, the trail winding through forest and alongside the upper reaches of the river that would lead us south. Our destination was Waiau Forks, an informal camping spot where the river branched, not a DOC hut with bunks and a gas stove but a simple clearing in the bush with a fire pit and enough flat ground to pitch a tent. After the alpine grandeur of the pass, there was something appealing about the rawness of it, the stripped-back simplicity of camping at a place that offered nothing but ground and sky and the sound of the river.

We found the spot and set up camp, and since there was a fire pit, we got a fire going. The wood was dry enough to catch quickly, and soon the flames were crackling and popping in the gathering dusk, throwing warm light across the clearing and our tired faces. There is something primal and deeply comforting about a campfire after a hard day on the trail, the way it draws you in and holds you, the way the warmth seeps into muscles that have been clenched against cold and effort for hours, the way the flickering light makes the surrounding darkness feel less like a void and more like a blanket. We sat close to it and cooked and ate and watched the flames and said very little, because the day had said enough.

As the darkness deepened and the stars began to appear above the clearing, two nobo hikers arrived, emerging from the trail with head torches cutting through the gloom, their packs heavy and their faces carrying the particular expression of people who have been walking longer than they planned. They joined us by the fire, and the small camp grew a little warmer for their presence, another of those trail encounters where strangers become companions simply by sharing the same patch of ground at the end of a long day.

Anth sat by the fire and let the realisation settle over him quietly, without fanfare, like the warmth of the flames themselves. The Waiau Pass was behind us. The second hardest section of the Te Araroa, conquered. Not with grace, not with the fluid poetry of the NOBO runner on the scree slope, but with determination and ibuprofen and twenty-metre increments and a son who never once let his father believe he could not do it. That was enough. That was more than enough.Read more