Te Araroa Day 83, Cora Lynn Rd. to Harper Village Campsite

Starting km: 2208
Finishing km: 2251
km covered today: 43

The day's walk began around 08:30, but the day began well before that back in Christchurch.

Sarah's dad Chris had said he was interested in joining me to walk a section of Te Araroa, and this one seemed to fit the bill perfectly. It was near home for him (or as near as TA gets), I was in town and could thus head back to the trail with him, and it was in the neighbourhood of Arthur's Pass where he'd done a lot of climbing in his younger days.

The walk began with a plod up through pine forest before finally emerging above the bush line for a short section with great views of the mountains up the Waimakariri valley and around Arthur's Pass.

It was during this section that Chris pointed out the little pink snow totara berries that I picked a handful of and scarfed down all at once. They tasted kind of like watermelon. And actually had a kind of similar texture too.

After a nice sidle along the open hillside and past (above) Lagoon Saddle, it was back into the bush. But native forest this time, clinging to the sides of the Harper Valley.

Despite the odd complaint about the amount of up and down to avoid bluffs, etc. this part of the trail went by very quickly. We even skipped our first potential lunch spot in favour of checking out the palatial Hamilton Hut. (Palatial may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it was a very nice hut in a lovely location.)

Up until Hamilton, we'd been on the popular Cass-Lagoon Saddle circuit and had met a few people walking that track as well as several northbound TA hikers. The trail past Hamilton got a bit tougher. There was no more up and down (indeed the trail was an almost flat 4WD track) but it made up for it with lots and lots of river crossings.

The trail markers made suggestions of where to cross and after a few instances where we thought we knew better we generally crossed in the vicinity they suggested (looking up and downstream for the easiest crossing points.) Some of the crossings took a bit of attention, but none of them was really difficult and Chris and I crossed them all solo.

On and on they went. Every time we thought we were almost done with them the trail provided another opportunity to get our feet wet. Done all the crossings of the Harper River? That's okay, you can cross some  streams. Or, later, the Avoca River.

This is where the drama for the day comes in. The Avoca was running fast and looking a bit milky, making it tough to see the bottom. We walked up and down looking for the best crossing point and eventually stepped in.

I was almost all the way across when I had an unplanned dip in the river. I don't even really remember how it happened. One moment I was a few steps away from being across, the next I was on my bum in the river, being swept down for 4 or 5 metres before I could find my feet again.  Chris, who had started crossing a bit after me made it across fine.  I think I'll take this as a warning not to get too overconfident.   It could have been a lot worse. Later that evening we met a family of two  parents and three kids ranging from 11 to 17 who had all been swept in to the same river, losing a mobile phone and a wedding band amongst other things and getting a bit bashed up on the riverbed in the process.

Even after the Avoca the trail still wouldn't let our feet dry out, with plenty of small, wide streams and large puddles along the farm track that formed the final few km.

It's fortunate that the trail down the valley was so pretty, with rugged mountains flanking us and in behind.

Fortunate because by the time we'd covered 35km or so we'd both had about walking of the hot, sunny afternoon and the strong wind.  Chris slowed down a bit in this section, so it was with delight that we saw, off in the distance, Chris' wife Julie and her car.

She met us at the trail end and drove us to the campsite (which is not on the actual TA route, so I wasn't obliged to walk there.) And even better, on arriving, she produced a big dinner of baked mac and cheese, salad, apple juice, wine and cherry pie. I consumed utterly ridiculous quantities of all of these before packing up some leftovers for bonus trail food the next day.

After dinner Chris and Julie said farewell (they still had to go pick up Chris' car before heading home).

I'll finish by saying thanks to Chris. It was a pleasure walking with him for the day. And pretty impressive that he kept up the pace and did a good solid number of kilometres in the bargain!