South Island halfway point!

Tuesday 14.03.2023

• Te Araroa kilometres done: 2370.7km
• Official kms: 15.4km
• Garmin kms: 16.49km
• Total time: 5:50
• Calories burned: 2635
• Body battery: 8/10
• Accommodation: Royal hut
• Tent nights tally: 18
• Zero days had so far: 24

https://givealittle.co.nz/fundraiser/walking-te-araroa-3000km-for-the-key-to-life

Track me live here:

https://aus-share.explore.garmin.com/curtiss

My alarm went off a 6am, I pushed snooze. Even though I went to sleep around 8pm I felt I could sleep a lot longer this morning. I checked my watch to see the temperature, it is 2 degrees in the hut brrr.

I managed to crawl out of bed at 6:10 & go about my morning routine. Berry & Hannah left at 7:15, I was about 30 minutes later.

Another cold start, I’m glad Antonia brought my beanie & gloves back this weekend, I felt like I needed these this morning.

Todays trail started with a 500 metre climb over a distance of 2.7km to reach a saddle. This took me a little over an hour to do, I’m starting to get use to the ups now, my knees don’t like the downs so I feel faster climbing than descending.

The views from the saddle were beautiful, I stopped for a minute to take some photo’s & videos before descending the scree slope, this would have been fun to scree run, unfortunately the scree was frozen from this morning’s frost so there was no give.

After about 6km an just over 2 hours in I sat down for a 10 minute break to have a muesli bar & apply sunscreen, yeah the sun finally showed up & it had some heat in it!

From here it was 4km to Stone hut where i decided I would stop for an early lunch today. The track through the tussock was quite hard to find a lot of the time this morning & I had trouble finding the next orange pole often, but I finally made it to Stone hut just on 11:20am.

What a beautiful spot & a really nice hut, unfortunately I need to get more distance today so had a 30 minute lunch break before setting off again.

From here it’s only 6km to Royal hut & should be under 2 hours. It was an easy trail following Bush stream all the way up until reaching the hut in just under 1 hour & 45 minutes. It was actually 1:45pm.

Berry & Hannah were the only ones here & they were just about to leave after having their lunch & a swim in the river.

After they left I took the opportunity for a bath without togs myself, it was so refreshing. I also hand washed some clothes & hung to dry in this nice heat & took advantage of the sun to fully charge all my devices using my solar battery bank.

I’m at the halfway point for the South Island & I started it 37 days ago. If I’m to keep this momentum i would be finishing in 37 days on the 20th of April, my aim though if I can do it would be to finish on the either Saturday the 15th or Saturday the 22nd of April.

Let’s see how the next 30+ days go……