Legs and Borders

Another interesting day on the trail, this time I went through Te Araroa's highest point. It started in wet fashion, fortunately it wasn't rain but the river crossings. Trail was following and climbing along the Bush Stream, there were many crossings and the water after overnight rain was quite high. I've arrived with my feet wet at the Crooked Spur Hut at 9am, took the shoes and socks off and had a breakfast. Vicki from New Zealand was in the hut waiting for her friend to arrive, she gave me weather update, it looked like we had a decent conditions for the next three days. I carried on walking to the Stone Hut and the Royal Hut, the trail started to follow the Bush Stream for the second time today. At this point I made a decision to camp somewhere around Stag Saddle, the highest point on Te Araroa, it didn't have to be the top itself as the weather here was supposed to drop to minus 3 degrees at ni...

Today was mainly walking in snow, trail reached rather disappointing highest PCT point in Oregon. Water issues continued, up to a point where (unless you wanted to melt the snow) people had to rely heavily on water caches. Day started with a pretty gentle ten mile walk after which the uphill section has started, it was nothing new and even despite the heavy snow for miles ahead from that point it wasn't anything out of ordinary. Weather was really good, it was warm but cloudy which helped with dehydration issues as the water availability was scarce. I encountered few very fat (presumably pregnant) toads along the way and took a photoshoot of one of them. It was so slow and clumsy that it gave up escaping after 30 seconds and allowed me to take any amount of photos necessary. There was a lot of day hikers on trail, everyone was getting lost in the snow asking for directions and being generally out of their comfort zone. I noticed that a lot of people is section hiking Oregon's P...