A Dangerous Business

Date: 30th January 2024

Start: Deception River (km 2181.1)

End: Greyneys Shelter (km 2202.7)

Distance Travelled: 21.6 km

Total Distance Completed: 2040.4 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Firm Foundation by Maverick City

River Crossings: good grief, at least 25

Outwardly I may have just looked like a tired hiker, but inwardly I’m screaming as loudly as I can. It’s 5am, the sun won’t be up for another 90 minutes, but here I am boiling water for a coffee in my dew soaked tent.

Why am I putting myself through this? Well, it’s Team Camera’s fault. For some reason that hasn’t been explained to me, we’re going all the way over Goat Pass in one day instead of staying at the hut up there overnight. Furthermore, there is a pretty mountain lake roughly 1 hour from said hut and they want to check it out. As does Oli. With the promise of countless river crossings and a rough track to get up to the pass, I didn’t fancy doing them alone. As a consequence, I have to go with them, leaving when they did at 6:30am.

I must’ve had dry feet for all of 5 minutes before we had our first crossing of the Deception. The water instantly numbed my feet, forcing me to stumble over the rocks on the bank until I could produce enough heat to warm them up again. Being in a valley surrounded by tall mountains meant we probably wouldn’t get any sunlight for over an hour. The only way we’re gonna stay warm is by moving.

Apart from a few brief moments where there was a nicely laid out trail along a grassy bit of riverbank, for the most part we just had to pick our way upstream based on the few markers we could see. This primarily constituted of waking on the rocky banks which was slow going; one bad step and my ankle/s would be gobbled up. As predicted, many times the arrows pointed to a spot on the opposite bank, requiring a river crossing. The one silver lining we had we that the advice we’d been given about this river and its many crossings (in that the 2nd one – the last crossing yesterday – was the worst and if it was doable the rest of the river would be too) was accurate.

Don’t get me wrong, I still had to be fully concentrated when doing each crossing, it’s just that I no longer had to rely on Matt or Oli helping me across the frigid but crystal clear waters. All the time this was happening, I kept looking back down the valley and just admired our progress (despite the slow pace) and the land where we stood. Speaking of things to admire, there is one creature that thrives on these fast moving rivers: the blue duck.

Yes, a pair of whio were just chilling on a rock near the trail, although neither seemed overly pleased at our presence. I know they’re rare birds but I’ve seen them a lot around the country. Maybe that’s a sign that the protective measures that DOC has put in place (e.g.: extensive trapping) are working as intended and are allowing New Zealand’s native birds like the whio to recover.

After close to 4.5 hard hours, we reached the first hut of the day and took a good snack break.

The sun was now out in force, beating down on us badly as we started the final push to Goat Pass. Just one problem: the valley was getting steeper and the rocks were getting bigger. We had to scramble over some pretty big boulders just to reach the next river crossing. It sounds hard (because it was), but I was having a blast through it all. It was so satisfying coming to a boulder, planning out the moves I’d need to do, and executing them to perfection.

Then the runners started showing up. Yes, you heard me right, people run this track. In fact, there an annual race that goes over this track. Sorry, did I mention that people were running past us through all the stuff I just mentioned? The record from the footbridge to the highway on the other side is 2 hours 40 minutes. Just let that sink in while I explain that the final 2.5 km to Goat Pass Hut contains many river crossings, numerous rock scrambles, and the final 600 m or so it just going up a waterfall. No big deal. Honestly, now that the sun’s out the river crossings were quite refreshing, but it didn’t make us go any faster, reaching the hut a bit before 1pm.

That was already pretty late in my books considering we still had to get off the pass and down the the highway 10 km away. But the others still pressed on with their side trip whilst I relaxed in the hut for an hour before I too set off down the mountain, wanting to get a head start on them through a hard descent was coming my way. Just not at first.

In fact the first 2 km or so was quite nice, all the way to Mingha Bivvy, a tiny hut that also seems to contain a fireplace.

Now it started to get hard and more like the tramping tracks we know and love further up north. More stream crossings, more washouts, more steep gradients. But it didn’t last, as soon I was back down at the river’s level and spent the rest of the walk beside it.

All the time I was questioning where the rest of the gang were. By my calculations on how long they spent at the lake and their predicted speed on the descents, they should’ve been right on top of me. Hmm, this could be a problem as Melly booked us into a hostel in Arthur’s Pass and therefore would’ve received all of the info on how to get in to the building after office hours. Hopefully they’re close behind having sent them a message when I got signal in the valley close to the highway.

I emerged onto the road at 6:45. A very quiet road. Much to my surprise, the fourth car that came past stopped and gave me a lift. I must be getting better at this whole hitchhiking thing. Granted I still can’t access the building once I get there, but one problem at a time. I sat down on a bench outside the hostel she 15 minutes later, a wild Oli showed up. That’s when I got the report. They had spent 40 minutes at the lake and then taken longer to get down than they thought, so it could be a pretty late arrival for them. Not great for the two of us, but thankfully Oli has eyes and saw that the kitchen door was open, so we went I side and got cooking. An hour later, an even more tired Melly and Matt showed up. We got the info for our room and had a busy evening sorting out various admin tasks, mostly related to posting stuff on social media. Right, no more early starts for a while, I need to sleep in and do a shorter day tomorrow. I’ve got the feeling I won’t be in the group for much longer.