Crocs Through the Valley

We left before the sun had made its appearance on the mountain tops, stepping out of Waiau Hut into the grey half-light of a valley still waiting for dawn. There is something particular about sunrise in the mountains that flat-landers never experience. On open plains or coastal horizons, dawn is a gradual affair, a slow brightening that eases the world from dark to light through a long, gentle spectrum of colour and shadow. In the mountains, it is different. The peaks hold the sun hostage behind their ridgelines, and the valleys remain in a cool, blue twilight long after the sky above has begun to glow. One moment we were walking in that muted, shadowless half-world where everything is the same tone of grey and depth perception plays tricks on tired eyes. The next, the sun cleared the mountain tops and the valley was flooded with light, sudden and complete, as though someone had thrown a switch. The tussock ignited from dull brown to blazing gold, the river caught fire with reflected light, and shadows that had not existed a moment before stretched long and sharp across the ground. It was dramatic and instantaneous, a daily miracle that the mountains stage without audience or applause, and we happened to be walking through it.

Twenty-six kilometres lay ahead. The longest day Anth had attempted since arriving in New Zealand, and by a considerable margin. But the valley was kind. The terrain was mostly flat, the trail following the river downstream through broad, open country where the walking was rhythmic and undemanding, the sort of ground that lets the body find its cadence and hold it for hours without the interruptions of steep climbs or technical descents. After the alpine crossings of Travers Saddle and the Waiau Pass, after the rock scrambles and the scree slopes and the twenty-metre rest stops, flat ground felt like a gift the trail had been saving for exactly the right moment.

Graham was still hiking with us, his steady, unhurried presence a constant through the days since Blue Lake. At seventy-seven, he matched the pace without complaint, his decades of mountain experience evident in the economy of his movement, never wasting energy, never rushing, simply covering ground with the quiet persistence of someone who understood that distance is conquered not by speed but by consistency. The three of us moved through the valley together, a small procession of packs and poles and purpose, the river our guide and the mountains our walls.

We passed just one nobo couple heading north through the valley, their packs heavy with the supplies needed for the section we were finishing. We stopped briefly to exchange trail information, that ritual of shared intelligence that hikers perform whenever they meet someone walking the opposite direction, and then they were gone, swallowed by the valley behind us. The trail was certainly coming to its season end. The great southbound wave of TA hikers that floods the South Island each summer was thinning now, the days growing shorter, the weather windows narrower, and the gaps between encounters with other trampers stretching longer. The trail was emptying, returning to the solitude that is its natural state for most of the year, and there was something both melancholy and beautiful about walking through it in these final weeks, as though we were among the last guests at a party that was quietly winding down.

The kilometres passed beneath us through the long morning and into the afternoon, the valley gradually widening, the river growing broader and lazier as it collected tributaries from the side valleys. We crossed several creeks along the way, those shin-deep fords where the water runs cold and fast over smooth stones and the choice is between wet boots or wet feet. Somewhere around the eighteen-kilometre mark, Anth made a decision that would have seemed absurd a week ago but felt entirely logical now. He took off his hiking boots and put on his crocs. The relief was immediate and almost euphoric, the weight and constriction of boots replaced by the lightness and freedom of foam soles and open air, the blisters and pressure points suddenly liberated from the relentless friction of leather and lace. Torrin, never one to be outdone and possessing feet that the trail had toughened into something approaching leather themselves, went one step further and simply went barefoot. Father and son, walking the final eight kilometres of a twenty-six-kilometre day through the New Zealand backcountry in crocs and bare feet respectively, splashing through creek crossings with the carefree abandon of children on a summer holiday. It was ridiculous and wonderful and exactly the kind of moment that long-distance hiking produces when the body is tired enough to abandon dignity and the spirit is light enough to laugh about it.

Anne Hut appeared in the late afternoon, sitting in its clearing with the quiet patience of a shelter that has been waiting all day for someone to arrive. It was empty when we got there, the bunks bare, the hut carrying that particular stillness of a space that has been unoccupied for hours, the air cool and undisturbed. We dropped our packs with the ceremonial finality of people who have walked twenty-six kilometres and intend to walk precisely zero more today. The bunks received our tired bodies with the same indifference they offered everyone, but to us they felt like the finest beds in the world.

Later, another couple arrived, filling the hut with fresh voices and the familiar sounds of packs being unpacked and stoves being lit. The small community of the evening assembled itself around the cooking area, and stories were shared in the easy, unhurried way that backcountry huts encourage, each person's day laid out alongside the others like maps compared over a shared table.

Outside, the valley settled into its evening colours, the mountains holding the last of the light long after the valley floor had fallen into shadow, their peaks glowing amber and pink against a sky that deepened from blue to indigo as the stars emerged one by one. Twenty-six kilometres. The longest day. And tomorrow, Boyle Flat Hut, the last shelter before Boyle Village, where this section that had asked more of us than anything we had imagined when Annie first dropped us at the Robert Ridge car park all those days ago would finally reach its end.Read more