Three Hitches to Methven

Backtracking the short distance from Hamilton Hut to the main trail, we rejoined the TA and headed south. The temperature had dropped noticeably during the night, autumn tightening its grip on the Canterbury high country, and our pace was brisk from the start, bodies generating warmth through movement because the air was no longer willing to provide it. Within fifteen minutes we had left the forest behind and passed the DOC crew's 4WD parked on the track, the clean-up team presumably still asleep or preparing for their own day's work in the huts we were leaving behind.

The trail became a 4WD track, two rutted lines pressed into the earth by the occasional vehicle that ventured this far into the backcountry, barely visible in places where the grass had reclaimed the ground between the wheel marks. This track crossed back and forth over the creek with a frequency that quickly became the defining character of the day. At the start, we tried the alternate paths that previous hikers had worn into the bank, those hopeful detours around the water that thru-hikers create in the optimistic belief that dry feet are still possible. They were not. The detours were overgrown and often ended at the water's edge anyway, requiring the same crossing they had been designed to avoid but with added bush-bashing for the privilege. In the end, it was simply easier to walk straight through. Shoes wet, feet cold, onwards. The creek crossings were not deep or dangerous, just persistent and unavoidable, the trail and the water sharing the same corridor down the valley with neither willing to yield to the other.

The DOC crew passed us on their way out, their 4WD bouncing along the track with the casual confidence of a vehicle that knew this road, and we stepped aside to let them through, exchanging waves before they disappeared in a cloud of dust and engine noise. And then the valley was quiet again, just the sound of the creek and our footsteps and the steady rhythm of two hikers working their way south.

This back and forth down the valley, crossing the river, continued for almost the remaining eighteen or so kilometres of the section. It was repetitive in the way that only river-valley walking can be, the scenery shifting slowly, the creek appearing and reappearing with the reliability of a recurring character in a long novel, the mountains on either side maintaining their distance while the valley floor unspooled beneath our feet. But there was a meditative quality to it too, the kind of walking that asks nothing of the mind and lets it wander while the body does the mechanical work of putting one foot in front of the other across ground that changes just enough to prevent true monotony.

In the opposite direction, we passed 4WDs heading into the valley, hunters most likely, their vehicles loaded with the gear and provisions of people planning to spend days in the backcountry pursuing deer and chamois and tahr through the mountains above. We also passed a group of school-aged backpackers moving under the guidance of group leaders, young faces carrying packs that looked almost as big as they were, their energy and chatter a bright contrast to the quiet determination of the two middle-aged and young-adult hikers they encountered coming the other way. There were hunters on foot as well, heading in with rifles and that focused, purposeful stride of people who know exactly where they are going and why.

Finally, we arrived at Harper Road. A camping spot marked the junction where the trail met the dirt road, the kind of basic, informal site where most TA hikers stopped for the night, pitching tents on the flat ground and preparing for the road walk ahead. We decided to try our luck hitching into Methven, with camping here as the fallback if the road proved as quiet as it looked. And it looked very quiet. A remote dirt road in the Canterbury high country, connecting vast sheep stations to the wider world, was not the kind of place where traffic was measured in anything more than vehicles per hour, if that.

But the trail has a way of providing when provision seems least likely. We had been sitting down for barely ten minutes when a work ute pulled up and a fellow named Tim stepped out. He worked on the property that surrounded us, a station that spanned twenty thousand hectares of high country, running merino sheep whose wool supplied brands like Icebreaker and Lululemon. Twenty thousand hectares. The scale of Canterbury farming is difficult to comprehend until you are standing in the middle of it, surrounded by an expanse of land that stretches to the mountains in every direction and belongs to a single operation. Tim was generous with both his time and his knowledge of the country, and before driving us out to Harper Road, he gave us an impromptu tour that included a view of Lake Coleridge from the property, the lake sitting in its basin of tussock and rock, a vast body of water that serves as both a scenic wonder and a hydroelectric reservoir. It was an unexpected gift, a window into a way of life that most trail hikers pass through without ever truly seeing, the working landscape beneath the walking landscape.

Tim dropped us on Harper Road, and while he had saved us a significant stretch of road walking, the distance to Methven was still formidable. We headed down the dirt road with our thumbs ready, but the cars that passed were few and none of them stopped. The afternoon wore on, the shadows lengthened, and the prospect of cowboy camping on the roadside began to shift from theoretical fallback to likely reality.

Then a small car pulled over. Three young Chinese students studying primary school teaching, who had been visiting Lake Coleridge for the day, offered us a ride with the immediate, unhesitating warmth of people for whom picking up hitchhikers was simply the obvious thing to do. We piled in with our packs, the car suddenly very full, and the road that had been passing so slowly beneath our feet now flew past the windows. They were heading to Christchurch and dropped us where the road to Methven branched off, another huge stretch of the journey consumed by the kindness of strangers.

Windwhistle. Nothing more than an old service station and a crossroads, the kind of place that exists on a map primarily as a name attached to a junction rather than anything resembling a town. Again it was getting dark. Again no one was stopping. The traffic was thin and the drivers who did pass showed no inclination to add two trail-dirty hikers to their evening. We stood at the crossroads and watched the light drain from the sky and resigned ourselves to the fact that we might have to walk and camp on the side of the road, one of those unglamorous realities of thru-hiking that never makes it into the promotional photographs.

Just as the resignation was settling into something approaching acceptance, another small car stopped. Joe. A man with a wicked sense of humour who had just dropped his son at the airport and was heading home. He listened to where we needed to go, calculated that it was well out of his way, and took us there anyway. All the way into Methven, the conversation filling the car with laughter as the dark Canterbury Plains slid past the windows and the kilometres to town disappeared. Three hitches, three acts of generosity from people who had no obligation to stop but did, and the road that had seemed impossibly long when we stood at Harper Road was behind us.

Methven. A small town on the edge of the Canterbury Plains, best known as the gateway to Mount Hutt ski field, sitting in the agricultural flatlands with the Southern Alps rising to the west like a wall between worlds. We grabbed a room above the Blue Pub for two nights, that perfect trail-town combination of accommodation and cold beer under the same roof. The room was simple but it had a bed and a shower and walls that did not let in the wind, and after weeks of hut bunks and sleeping bags, it felt like luxury of the highest order.

The next day, Anth managed to buy some replacement Injinji toe socks, those beloved items of trail footwear that separate each toe individually and reduce the blisters and friction that conventional socks allow. The pair lost somewhere in the accommodation shuffle of Hanmer Springs had been sorely missed, and their replacement felt like restoring a vital piece of equipment to the kit.

We debated about the next section, the stretch of trail between the braided rivers of the Rakaia and the Rangitata. The logistics of getting to the trailhead were complicated, the kind of remote access problem that plagues certain sections of the TA where the trail passes through country that is far from any town or public transport. Skipping it was discussed, the pragmatic option for hikers whose time and energy were finite resources that needed to be spent wisely. But in the end, neither of us wanted to leave another gap in the trail. We had already skipped Deception Gorge, and the accumulation of missed sections was beginning to weigh on the conscience in the way that only matters to people who have set themselves a goal and measure their integrity by how closely they hold to it. We reached out to someone who runs TA hikers to remote trailheads, the kind of shuttle service that exists because enough people walk this trail each year to make it viable, and the plan was made. We were keen to get back on trail, and the braided rivers were waiting.Read more