Legs and Borders

Nice and easy day walking along the Harper river. Trail after an initial climb was quite flat and enjoyable. The whole day felt very "European", typical New Zealand bush had been replaced with forest, trail had switchbacks up and down the mountain and river crossings were really manageable. It was almost as if I wasn't hiking Te Araroa. Around midday I reached a well maintained Hamilton Hut and after a lunch break there I decided to push onwards to Harper river Campground. Trail from here on was running mainly along 4wd track, with very easy river crossings. I arrived at the campsite at 5pm. Only one more person was camping here tonight, it was Kat from Czech Republic, everyone else decided to push further 18 miles to lake Coleridge, which was quite impressive. Kat was in New Zealand on a one year working holiday visa, she was planning to extend it by another three months. She was doing a mixture of both working and travelli...

Challenging day walking up the Goats Pass, jumping the boulders and crossing the Deception river all the way to the top. Many river crossings happened today, and you would have thought that if you are walking up the river they get progressively easier. But not in this case. As it turned out Deception river doesn't have much space while flowing down from the Goats Pass, so it gets quite deep and the current is very strong. So much so that after a day of rain, this area is impassable. At the top of the pass there's a hut you can find here a CB radio where you can contact Doc about the river levels. Some people got stuck in this hut for three days during wet weather, waiting for the water level to drop. Many turned back and skipped this area completely. I was lucky enough to arrive here in good weather conditions and could climb this fairly challenging and quirky section of TA. Goats Pass is all about walking and climbing on boulders...