Top Timaru Hut - Pakituhi Hut via Stody’s Hut and Breast Hill

It was still dark when we stirred, never quite ready for a whopper day. Thinking back on days like this, I truly marvel at how much easier my existence would have been with the addition of coffee. Alas, no such wisdom penetrated my 22 year-old mind. The guy in the bottom bunk let rip an enormous fart. To that unceremonial starting signal, we set off before 06 AM into the dark beech forest. Straight away, the trail shot up and plunged down in a roller coaster ride of gnarly turns. The sun took hours to reach the bottom of the deep river valley where we endlessly crossed and recrossed the rocky beds of the fast-flowing Timaru River.

I had just salvaged a particularly hairy crossing with dry feet when I heard Toby laugh breathlessly behind me. He stood in a perfect split, sandwiched between two rocks, desperately stabbing around for solid ground with his poles.

“Well shit.”

I doubled over with laughter as Toby looked around wildly, as if expecting a solution to his conundrum that wouldn’t involve some gravity-defying feat of physics. He was well and truly stuck. At last he attempted a huge leap back to shore and landed square in the river with a tremendous splash. I screamed with laughter, nearly peeing my pants (again). While the river walking was rough going, nothing could have prepared us for what came next.

The climb from Timaru River up to Stody’s Hut was the most hideous ascent since the Richmond Ranges day 8 up to Starveall Hut. There was barely a trail, just an ankle-breaking jumble of roots and rocks which meant heaving myself up with each step, using my trekking poles as leverage and stopping to pant every few strides. It was another sweltering day despite the shade from the forest. I fervently listened to a Dan Savage podcast, but the juiciest relationship drama could not distract me from the strain in every muscle in my body. When at last I heaved myself out of the trees and into the clearing, I looked right into an outdoor toilet with a ginormous spider hanging down in the middle of the doorframe, and a shack that somehow had passed for a hut in the online Te Araroa trail notes.

Stody’s Hut was… an abomination. I actually cannot believe someone would spend a night in there unless there was a literal hurricane outside. Ashes spewed out across the floor from the fireplace, the wooden beams creaked desperately to hold the roof up, spiderwebs coated the corrugated iron walls. The latest hut book entry read “BEWARE OF THE GIANT RAT! IT ATE MY TOOTHBRUSH!”. Yeah, fuck that. Adios! We sat in an exhausted daze for nearly an hour, chewing through our 100th tortilla wrap with peanut butter and Nutella. Technically, we were barely over halfway. The top of Breast Hill, the final high point, was at nearly 1600m and 11 km away.

We were above treeline, but the climb ahead of us was still impossibly steep and high. It didn’t seem possible that we could still be climbing after six hours of uphill walking, and yet here we were. I gulped down electrolyte water but knew I wouldn’t be able to stay hydrated in this heat with this degree of incline.

One mechanical step in front of the other. Until suddenly, the terrain flattened out, and all my world was tussock and sky. I floated forwards, magnetically pulled by the trail itself and the silhouette of Toby far ahead. All the mountains we had crossed and would cross lay strewn around us. A little flock of sheep scattered away as we followed the massive white dirt track up towards the top of Breast Hill.

It was… Middle Earth. Stretched out ahead of us in an endless vista of the exact mountains every Lord of the Rings fan has seen on screen. Lake Hawea glistened like an enormous sapphire in the afternoon sun, flanked by patches of green and gold fields. Sky everywhere. And there, far in the distance, shooting up from a layer of cloud, lay the towering peak of Mount Aspiring. You will know it as The Lonely Mountain. The high, pointy peak, the three ridgelines forming a perfect pyramid. Unfathomably enormous, unfathomably iconic. We all sank down on the gritstone rocks, dumped our packs, and stared at the magnetic vista for an age. There was even a spot of cell reception and a white trigonometric point as on Edoras.

We had walked 900 km.  

As soon as I saw Pakituhi Hut, new and pristine in its fresh coat of eggshell paint, lying completely on its own in the golden tussock, I was consumed by the primal need to sit the fuck down. This second. I staggered down the hill with the only aim of ditching my pack – which suddenly felt like it weighed 100 kgs – and consuming something consisting entirely of sodium. The hut lay like a mirage that didn’t seem to get closer until I was upon it. I threw my pack down on the porch, tore it open, grabbed a pack of hot beef instant noodles, threw a cup of water into my pot, struck a match against the gas of my stove until a roaring blue flame sparked, and sat suffering for the minute it took for the water to boil. Toby and Patrick hadn’t even reached the hut as I drank the last of the red, divinely salty noodle broth. Actual heaven. My brain cells slowly started shuffling around enough for me to wash my face in the water tank (which had a dead bird in it – but who even cared at this point), throw my sleeping bag on a bottom bunk, and start cooking my real dinner.

What an insane day. The longest day of any hike I’d ever done, 13 hours including probably the toughest climb on the whole 1400 km trail. I was absolutely smashed, beyond physical reserves but also floored by the sheer beauty of New Zealand. My love for this place coated every strand of tussock as night fell.