🙂 Fantastic walk, naughty Keas!
🙁 Lots of snow! 🙂
The hike starts through a wonderful, wet and mossy forest – HUGE Ferns everywhere.
Then is started to get a bit more snow…
We walked higher and higher with more and more snow – huge icicles looked like stalactites!
Trent did very well… as we approached Luxmore Hut we were in waist deep snow! Paul and I got stuck at one point! Trent described the hut as a HUGE MANSION! You can see why! It has 54 bunk beds but we had small cosy room at the bottom end.
We were the first people to stay there since 18th July and prior to that May Built a fire in the pot belly stove and enjoyed hot tea, pasta and tuna and soup – yum! Read to Trent, did school. This part of the walk had taken us 5hours despite deep snow – according to the guide it should have taken 6 so we felt quite proud of ourselves 🙂 We had run out of battery to video and film for the camera! We slept like logs in our cosy sleeping bags.
We were woken really early by very noisy Kea birds tapping on the window! Trent went to fill a bowl with snow for water and the birds stole it from him!! They followed us to the toilet begging – very smart birds! Once we started to eat our porridge there were 10 birds!
The snow started to come down down in droves! Completed the return walk in 3 hours as we literally ran down!
Collapsed in van and enjoyed a desperately needed hot chocolate and sugared popcorn! Found a campsite with a lovely owner. Had a wonderful hot shower and made creamy chicken for dinner. Great sleep after great walking!
Go to: New Zealand
