Legs and Borders

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...

Navigating through the last long section of Te Araroa sobo continued. After a steady climb from the Lower Wairaki Hut, I've reached the last scenic ridge walk on TA. The weather was perfect for the procedure. On my way down I've met a group of Northbounders and got an intel about upcoming day - it was mainly farmland, the trail run on the 4wd road. I've reached the campsite on the other side of the hill at 9 am, here the easier track begun. Road was covered with animal excrements and.. corpses. I've never seen so many dead sheep in my life, it was a little bit disturbing. They all seemed to be dying by the fence line next to which the trail was running.  There was one shallow river crossing in this section, I had to do another one after I've followed the road too far and missed a turning point. Linton Farm involved a lot of redirections, owners did not want TA hikers to walk through certain points and the trail was twisting and tu...