A Dangerous Business

Date: 29th February 2024

Start: Merriview Hut (km 2904.9)

End: Martin’s Hut (km 2932.4)

Distance Travelled: 27.5 km

Total Distance Completed: 2782.7 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Can’t Catch Me Now by Olivia Rodrigo

Muddiness on the Pirongia Mud Scale: easily 5/5

I felt weirdly optimistic when I got up this morning. The last time I was met with a super muddy section all I felt was dread, but now being this near the end of the trail I’m excited to get stuck into it. It also helps that I’ll be sticking with Sam, Riley, and Laura today, as having company through these tough sections has definitely helped me get this far on the trail. They seem to have the opposite attitude to mornings as my usual trail family, taking their time and starting late. We didn’t get going until 8:30 which didn’t bother me in the slightest. The first 8 km are all on gravel roads, initially leading through a forest of eucalyptus.

With that out of the way, we properly began the Longwood Forest which I would just like to say off the bat is absolutely gorgeous. It’s all native bush, the undergrowth covered in ferns and all of the trees fully lined with mosses. The ground… was as expected. The mud came immediately, initially no more than the heights of our shoes. Spirits were still high, helped by the playing of Howard Shore’s brilliant Lord of the Rings soundtrack.

When the entire forest track has mud like this or worse, the only way to enjoy it is to embrace the mud. Not literally, I wouldn’t recommend falling into it to give it a hug, but unless it’s ridiculously deep, it’s best to just wade into it, and that’s exactly what we did. There would be an opportunity to clean ourselves off at the hut tonight, so in the meantime we might as well get a bit dirty.

This first climb up to Bald Hill wasn’t actually all that bad, apart from one knee deep pool. The top opened up into tussock, an all too soon reminder of the bogs on the Takitimu.

From the summit we had great views back north towards the mountains we’d crossed in the last few days. We couldn’t see much looking south because it was blocked by a transmission tower of some description. I couldn’t tell you exactly what was being transmitted, but I can confirm it’s not a 2degrees mobile signal. All that humming and you can’t even give me a bar of service.

After lunch we zoomed down the hill on a 4WD track to an old quarry, which was really just a dusty, rocky flat bit of ground with the rusted, burnt out shell of a car that hadn’t moved from there in a good long while.

Now this is where the real fun began. The worst mud is in between this quarry and Martin’s Hut. First up was a climb to an unnamed summit. That bit was alright, a 2.5/5 on the Pirongia Mud Scale. Up the top we could now see further south, catching a glimpse of the south coast and Stewart Island.

The mud from here… yeah, I don’t have words to describe it. We were traversing a shallow depression between two peaks, so obviously any rain that falls up here will run into this part and create some immensely deep mud pools. All I could do was laugh as I witnessed Riley and Sam drop suddenly up to their waists in mud. Those pools I did avoid, the deepest I got to was my knees. This was on par with Pirongia, but there was more of it and we didn’t have the luxury of any pointless bits of boardwalk this time.

When we started climbing again to the Longwood trig point it got a bit better, key word there being “a bit”. No matter, I was having fun, more so when I reached the trig, marking exactly 100 km to go on Te Araroa, with the finish line visible on the horizon.

From here to Martin’s Hut there’s a 300 m descent over 3 km, still just as midday as before. Now that the ground wasn’t as flat, I started getting pretty frustrated, loud grunts escaping my mouth with every step downwards. Hut fever kicked in as I started getting impatient at my slow progress. I really should’ve known this bit would be slow, but I still managed to reach the hut in decent time.

And what a bit it was, retaining much of its 1905 character. There were holes in the walls and floor, part of the floor was just dirt, and barely any light came in through the one window. The ground outside was also muddy with very few places to pitch a tent. There was a small water tank but there were reports of people getting sick after drinking its contents so I opted to walk down a makeshift trail to a nearby stream.

So far the forest hasn’t thrown any surprises at me. I knew it would be very muddy and it was, and despite my lack of enjoyment with mud it was still a good experience. Tomorrow would bring more mud with it, but I knew after that would be two easy days to the finish. Just gotta toil through the soup for 10 more kilometres.