Legs and Borders

"Writing is the most fun anyone can have by themselves" Terry Pratchett Last TA special has been completed. Ten hours of walking through a relentless, knee+ deep mud. It took twenty minutes to wash my feet, socks and shoes in the stream at the end of it. Weather in the morning was miserable. It was raining all night and things inside my tent were getting damp. I begun walking in the thick fog with head torch on. Mud started immediately on the downhill here and it was straight to the main course. I had to bushwalk around the biggest puddles as the mud would go over my waist if I tried to tackle it. I tried to keep it at knee deep level and duck to the side when possible. Trail was going mainly through the forest but there was also few tussock sections and they could be deceptive. They looked shallow and innocent but were also quite deep. I tripped and landed on my knees twice going through them. Additionally I scored a butt and a face landing, sliding d...

Nice and easy day leading to a fairly difficult section tomorrow. My tent was soaking wet in the morning and got immediately drenched after I set it up in the evening. Morning was sunny but the exterior of my MSR got soaked from condensation and dew, I had to hang it outside the backpack to dry. I went down from the Woodlaw hill and carried on walking along the last farmland on the TA. It turned out that previously closed Island Bush Track was opened again and I didn't have to detour around it, logging operations must have stopped few weeks ago. It saved me good 3 kilometres of walking. I arrived at the Merriview Hut at midday and managed to get rid of rubbish as the private hut had a bin (extremely rare sight in NZ), after a lunch break I carried on into the dreaded Longwood Forest. My plan was to cut the distance to Colac Bay as much as possible, initially I planned to stop at Bald Hill, the mud on the ascent here was bad but it wasn't anyt...