Day 19: Angelus Hut to Sabine Hut
This is an update from my journey across the South Island with my little blue boat. Which is actually a packraft. With a lot of hiking between the water.
Having gone up the mountain, today I just came back down. Those 1000 hard-earned metres of elevation to reach Angelus Hut were traded for 1200 metres the other way, to reach the shores of Lake Rotoroa.
There’s definitely some bedding in going on. I’m a year out of practice, having not lugged this boat very far at all in the past 11 months. So match unfitness - tick. Add to that, I also don’t really know where anything goes. Packing up, I quickly become confused about where a certain gear or food item lives. A well-oiled machine I am not.
That said, I still made it safely down the mountain today. I remembered where my left and right feet were enough times to make that happen. There were even times when I didn’t know where one of my feet was, as it had fallen through the snow and needed retrieving before the journey could continue.
From Angelus Hut I took the Mt Cedric Route. Immediately from the lake, this one climbs up and out of the basin. Smatterings of snow soon became thickly laid on custard blankets, many of them unavoidable to stay on the marked route. I trudged on up, taking a long break on a rock island, surrounded by snow sea.
Once up on the ridge, an incredible view north to Tasman and Kahurangi National Park became visible. I perched on a rock and enjoyed the sunshine for a 20 minutes, trying to figure out if the big sheet of snow I could see on the next ridge was part of the route and whether or not I could avoid it. I decided to stay with it and found most of the snow was solid enough to walk on.
I sidled round a mountain and joined another ridge for the descent. Suddenly a very loud crack ran out. I turned 180 to see what it was just in time to witness a boulder slide cross the patch of snow I was still on, perhaps five metres behind me. Most were little shraps, but there was one biggie that would have hurt if it hit me. Lucky dog.
The rest of the ridge descent was stunning, as the whole of Lake Rotoroa gradually slid into frame. Its clear blue water really stood out against the mountain rock and tussock and on a hot day like today, all I was longing for was to drink it all.
As I reached the bushline, I realised I was super thirsty. All the water I’d collected at Angelus was long gone and I hadn’t visited any of the tarns I’d seen way down below the track. The descent then ramped up a notch and began demanding a level of concentration that I was not hydrologically equipped for. This made for hot work, not helped by a poor showing on the brain front.
Still, I made it down to the water’s edge, where Sabine Hut sits just metres from the lake shore. I sat in the hut and rehydrated, as various hikers went and came. My plan for an extra trip over the lake to D’Urville Hut was off.
Camping beside the lake is home tonight, I will fall asleep to the sound of the water lapping and fish jumping. Now, where do I put all that water?