Hurunui Hut - Locke Stream Hut

Today I finally came to a realisation that would shape the way I hike in the future. Coming out of Hurunui Hut, I felt a desperate need to be by myself. Any noise at all rang in my ears, I felt completely listless despite having had breakfast and a snack, I’d been gaining weight instead of losing it since St Arnaud, my body felt so heavy instead of fit. Objectively speaking, the sunrise was lovely, golden valleys and the lot. But I just wanted to cry. After an hour of walking in a dark beech forest, air so humid you could cut it out in squares, brushing off a dozen spiderwebs (downside to being the first hiker of the day), I stopped in the middle of the path and cried. I’m normally an extremely wet crier, after the first sob the floodgates just open. But now I cried like a whiny baby, hardly pressing out a single tear but dry sobbing in frustration.

I wasn’t hungry or unfit. I was tired. Every night I was constantly kept awake by noises or discomforts. I was a parent of this newborn trail, and it was messing me up bigtime. I had been overeating to compensate for my low energy when I should just have been sleeping more. Now I sat quietly pondering this new realisation while Toby took a dip in the hot springs (I was too freaked out by the amoeba warning sign, my brain was fried enough already without microorganisms invading it). What could I do? Sleep longer in the mornings, I guess. Nap during lunch. But other than that… there was nothing to do but get on with it. But precious sleep! Never before had I realised what a precrious commodity sleep was, neither the body nor the mined can repair themselves without it. Every hill now felt like an insurmountable Everest, my feet felt like lead and my head was filled with cotton. We’d been on the trail now for almost a month. My clothes stank no matter what, energy bars were slowly losing their appeal, and my feet were slowly growing wider under the packweight.

Around lunchtime (even though we’d technically had our lunch already in the spacious Hurunui No 3 Hut), after crossing an iconic slackline bridge, the trail crept upwards through golden beech forest alongside Hurunui River. We took off our packs and sank into the shallow pools in silence. I washed all my clothes and laid them out to dry in the sun. Ate the remaining chunks of Whittaker chocolate. Sat on a white stone in the pale sunlight, hugging my chunky legs and looked north towards where we’d come from. Today my legs had carried me 500 km from Ship Cove. 504 to be exact. I thought back to the Richmond Ranges and Nelson Lakes, spectacular vistas and cozy evenings with Team Swiss and freeze dried Coq au vin. For an hour we sat pondering, Toby offering massaged to lift my spirits. This stretch just wasn’t for me. To this day I don’t quite know what it was about this week, but the colour just seemed drained from the landscape somehow. Nature that should have been beautiful seemed lacklustre. Adventurous scrambles were just annoying. Even the sun seemed to shine with less gusto.

We crawled up an overgrown trail towards Harper Pass, the only real point of altitude on the whole stretch. White rocks lay strewn in the river, you could easily forego an ankle here - thank goodness for trekking poles. Harper Pass itself was underwhelming, covered in scrub below the treeline. I peed in the bushes and we marched on. The way down was a hot mess of trickling water and mud, loose rocks and an incredibly steep path. It was so humid inside the forest that we were dripping.

Through a gap in the trees we could see miles ahead into the lush Harper Valley where we would camp for the night and follow the riverbed tomorrow. Once down at the valley floor, we had a near-death experience trying to slide down the dried-out banks of the now tiny river. Our camp for the day seemed to float just ahead for hours. Locke Stream Hut was pretty much what our navigation app described: in its original state. It was a huge red hut, but built with a corrugated iron roof and the floors were cracking. Sandflies were swarming inside, the heat was stifling, and we quickly escaped to the grassy banks of the river. We couldn’t be bothered to make dinner or set up two tents, so we both squeezed into Toby’s tarptent for what would become a very moist night. Don’t camp next to rivers, duly noted.