Today – 28km from Careys Hut to Kiwi Burn hut

Total- 2734.8km

After an eventful night sleep due to one of the hut occupants extreme snoring, woke up to a half empty hut and chilled out. I love staying in my sleeping bag as long as possible these days, eating breke there, especially if its colder.

Eventually, it was time to go. Around 9.30ish it was raincoat and pack cover on, and off we went, saying bye to a few others who we knew we would see pretty soon.

The first 10km were 4WD track to the Mavora Lakes campground, a nice spot by the lake.

The going was easy but we weren’t rushing,the rain stopped and it was a cruisy walk.

Harrison [US/Kiwi] came up behind us and started having a chat, hes super fast and we walked with him a while before he zoomed ahead.

Had a break at the campsite and good chats with the others, they are a group with Fabrice [Aussie] , Harrison [ US/Kiwi], Valeria [Austria],Myriam [France] and Paul [France].

All the rain gear came out. Heres Fabrice and Myriam modeling the latest fashion.

After cheese and snacks, everyone continued into the beech forest, and we were in a hiking caravan for 15minutes before we all spread out at our own paces. And the rain started. It started coming down pretty heavy, but it was hot , too hot for a raincoat in the muggy forest, so it was getting wet time.

Everyone was listening to music, and I was loving the forest, so green and awesome with the rain. Smashed the 14km in the forest to the swingbridge junction. From here we said goodbye to the rest of the group, it was still trying to rain, but they were having lunch and continuing about 15km further to camp.

We definately were heading to Kiwi Burn hut, despite it being about a km off trail, as we were keen to get warm and dry after walking in the rain. Also, it made sense to do two days of roughly 28km rather than a big one and a short one , and camp in the wet rain.

The last 3km to the hut were quick, it was weird walking in such a nice flat forest, we are so used to climbing mountains.

And the rain decided to soak us in the last 20mins as we made our way to the hut, there was some creeks and boggy terrain underfoot so it was wet all around.

Arriving at Kiwi Burn was awesome. Dry clothes, shelter, no one else at the hut yet.

Paul [Fr] arrived about an hour later, just as we were finishing lunch, which we thought he might. Not convinced with pushing further or camping in the wet, we reckoned he made a good choice.

Two frenchmen starting the fire

And then we got the fire going, made hot chocolate, and started drying all the clothes out.

We spent the rest of the evening and had a late night eating loads of food and playing cards, an almighty competition arose from this game Paul taught us, Golf.

It was a perfect hut evening, fire, warm, dry, food and hot drinks, and cards. And it stopped raining.

Just another great day on the TA.