Locke Stream Hut – Arthur’s Pass

I didn’t even want to open my eyes. Tiny water droplets clung to my eyelashes as I blinked into a blue sky… and a soaking wet meadow. I lay squeezed in between Toby and the tent mesh, my sleeping bag was wet from top to bottom. This was getting very, very old. With nothing to pack up except Toby’s tent, I sat waiting on a wooden bench propped up against the hut wall. Ahead lay a sunny morning, but a frightful path. Right down from the hut lay the rock-strewn Hurunui riverbanks. The trail notes said to follow the riverbed all day before climbing up to Goat Pass on the Deception-Mingha track.

Off we went. I donned my trail runners despite the ankle-twisting rocks, knowing that my boots were best saved for a day without 30+ river crossings. Hurunui River wasn’t fast or deep, but sometimes wide, and it snaked through the basin in such a twisted fashion that trying to stay dry would have meant miles extra tracing the riverbanks left and right. So we just plodded through. Every time we would cross, my shoes would fill with tiny pebbles, and I had to stop and shake them out continuously. Toby and I both wore La Sportiva runners, he had the Wildcats and I had the Akashas. For some reason, his shoes dried out in an hour and didn’t let in a single rock, while mine stubbornly remained heavy clogs. Someone upstairs has it in for me, I grumbled as a thin film of cloud settled over the sky. We crossed a heavenly patch of grass before the rocks engulfed us once more.

We stopped for brunch by a bone-white piece of driftwood. Sank down on creaky joints, rinsed out pebbly socks, sucked down a pb & Nutella tortilla. What was it about this place that felt so incredibly hostile? We were only tiny specks in the middle of the enormous river basin, tunnelled in by thorny-treed mountains. White rocks as far as the eye could see, white skies without cloud texture. It was like the world was drained of colour. The constant river crossings and the hardness of the rocks slowed our pace down to a crawl. Our GPS app told us the trail was in the forest on our left, but whenever we tried to leave the basin we would be met by thickets with thorns the length of our fingers, and no trail where the app promised one. For the first time, I understood how people go mad in the wild. The still air felt repressive, not a breath of wind caressed us, there was no end in sight to the endless rocks. Every blade of grass beyond the driftwood log was seared dead, it crunched beneath our feet just like the rocks.

Four hours in. Five. Six. I leaned into my trekking poles and buried my face into my fists to rub the salt crusts out. This felt so pointless. The Richmond Ranges had been challenging and hard - but hiking those wild mountains had still felt meaningful and rewarding. This felt like a valley of death, where nothing grew and ankles came to die. We pursued the hunt for the leftward trail with more vigour, we would soon have to turn upwards into the mountains. Huge clumps of silken cocoons clung to the thorny bushes – Toby was sure it was cricket homes, but I scanned the ground wildly for New Zealand’s horrifyingly large nurseyweb spiders. When we at last broke through the wall of thorns and waded through muddy puddles, we looked around the dense forest uncertainly. There was absolutely nothing, no sign of any trail. My felt felt like raisins after 30-40 river crossings.

-          You look go further in, I’ll follow the GPS track.

Toby turned his phone in all possible directions to see if the satellite signal was just lagging. You might think we were overly reliant on this app, but Guthooks is normally so precise that you can tell if you’re standing 1m off the trail. Neither my basic version or his topo download gave us any clue. I crawled beneath mossy branches, stabbed myself on countless dead twigs, waded through oceans of fallen leaves, but after over half an hour, the trail was still nowhere to be found. We were by all accounts right on top of it, but with no orange triangles in sight, we were lost. We had come to the end of the valley, our left turn was now or never. As the trees thinned out on our right and we were once again on the outskirts of the riverbed, we heard a sound so divine our ears practically pricked. Traffic.

Toby and I looked at each other. The sound of civilisation brought an indescribable sense of yearning. Behind us lay the dry emptiness and a trail we couldn’t find. Ahead, just across the Otira river, we could see shiny flashes of cars through the trees. Toby whispered, barely audible, the word that would end our purism.

-          Cheesecake.

To say we sprinted off wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration. The Otira river was deep and fast flowing, but we paced the banks like hyenas until we found a safe spot to ford. Toby catapulted me up the steep bank with such force that my thighs were bruised for days after. Once on the road, we stuck out thumbs the length of Pinocchio’s nose and got picked up right away by a group of backpackers who merrily squeezed us in the back seat. I smiled forcedly at the dreadlocked girl who basically had me on her lap. We stank SO bad. Everyone casually rolled down their windows, and the relief was palpable once they dropped us off at Arthur’s Pass. We had come in way too early for our reservation, so we picked up our resupply boxes and zoomed in on the scones at the local café. Arthur’s Pass is a tiny not-even-a-village on the border between the Canterbury and West Coast regions. Highway 73 connects Christchurch in the east with Greymouth in the west, and the thickly forested spot of civilisation is unnaturally busy for what it has to offer – two tiny hostels, a gas station, a restaurant, an iSite and zero views.

There was a DOC campground just outside the main cluster of buildings, and the weather forecast promised bucketloads of rain all night and the following day. Well well, looks like we made the right choice for abandoning the deep Deception river and alpine Goats Pass. My thoughts jumped to Patrick. We had no idea where he was – somewhere ahead, but he if he wasn’t here, he would be caught in the storm for sure. A handful of other TA hikers had escaped the trail too, and we all set up a cheerful hiker camp inside the high shelter. Our sleeping pads barely fit the narrow benches, but we felt safe inside as deep thunder rumbled overhead. Resupply was just preposterous at this stage: we had extra days of food from the last stretch, and I had overpacked massively for the tiny hopscotch stretch to Lake Coleridge Lodge where yet another box lay waiting. We set up market-style stands on the tables and let other hikers have their pick of our snacks.

Also, the time had come to say goodbye to my dearest companions, my Lowa Innox boots that had carried me so faithfully on the entire John Muir Trail and TA up until now. I had shipped myself new boots here because I knew these ones would come apart at the seams. They weren’t the slightest bit waterproof anymore with their 6+ holes. I couldn’t bear to throw them in the trash, so I placed them discreetly under my sleeping bench, just in case someone might want them. My new navy Lowas looked ready for the challenge. They fit like a glove right out of the box, and while I still felt smashed from this week’s exertions – I remained hopeful that Canterbury would treat us well.