A Dangerous Business

Date: 1st March 2024

Start: Martin’s Hut (km 2932.4)

End: Colac Bay Holiday Park (km 2948.9)

Distance Travelled: 16.5 km

Total Distance Completed: 2799.2 km

Song Currently Stuck in Head: Fire by Peking Duk

Muddiness on the Pirongia Mud Scale: 2/5

One final day through the mud, that’s all I have to do before reaching the flatness of the south coast. How hard can it be? Well, it was a bit of a mental struggle to get going in the morning. I knew I was already through the worst of it, but I didn’t know exactly how much better this final stint would be. Is it a smidgen better where the mud is only shin deep, or a lot better where it’s only surface level? Eventually I hauled on my ever lighter pack and got going. The truth, as is often the case, was somewhere in between. There were large sections completely void of mud but also areas where it was a bit soupy. I did my best to avoid anything that looked deeper than my shoes which at times was agonisingly slow. Constant reminders to myself that I didn’t have far to go today helped keep me present in the forest.

Sam, Riley, and Laura were still waking up when I left so I decided to go solo, chuck on some motivational audio (i.e.: music and podcasts), and just go for it. Two short stints was all that was needed to get to the road, both around 5 km in length. The first took just under 2 hours, arriving at Turnbull’s Hut, another historic structure in the forest from the gold mining era. It’s in a worse state than Martin’s Hut so I don’t recommend staying here, but it is worth stopping for a break on your way into/out of the forest for one reason: trail magic.

A TA alumni (@aworldinorange) from the local area has lugged up three eskies to the hut and filled them with drinks and snacks for hikers to take from, very similar to the trail magic I experienced in the Dome Forest. A Coke and chocolate bar hit the spot, helping motivate me to press on to the end. It also helped that from here to the road and the mud is much less severe, never more than ankle deep.

One slightly depressing thing about the forest is the lack of birds. From what I saw there isn’t much in the way of predator controls around the track so I only saw and heard a handful of birds since leaving Merriview Hut. I can’t put too much of the blame on DOC for that, they’re an organisation with a massive scope but a tiny budget. It’s no wonder that some tracks and huts don’t receive the maintenance they desperately need, with much of that work being taken up by volunteer organisations like the Backcountry Trust. The ever increasing popularity of Te Araroa is going to put even more strain on DOC and these orgs and I don’t envy the people in charge of figuring out how to handle the increasing demand on New Zealand’s trails.

Anyway, back to the mud. Actually, the mud had completely dried up as the trail connected with a much nicer track following the Ports Water Race towards the trailhead. These water races were vital for the Chinese gold miners who came here in the later 1800s searching for the shiny rocks that were found around here. Today, they made for vital relief from the mud, offering me with a solid 1 km of nice trail to walk on before reaching the carpark marking the end of the Longwood Forest.

An hour road walk was all that was needed to get me to the coast at Colac Bay.

Calling it a town would be a stretch. It’s a small gathering of baches and a tavern/holiday park. It did feel pretty rundown, a lot of stuff had “Out of Order” signs on them and I couldn’t get the washing machine to work, forcing me to handwash my clothes and hoping they’d dry before the sun went down (in the brief moments where the sun did show out of the clouds). At least it was cheap, as were the fish and chips from the tavern I had for dinner. Sam, Riley, and Laura arrived later that day, joined by Sophie at dinnertime. Because of a cold and foot pain she decided to skip the Longwood Forest and hitch around to here via Invercargill. It’s been nice hiking with them, if only for a short time. Tomorrow I’ll be back with the gang at Oreti Beach so we can finish the trail together. I still can’t wrap my head around how I’ve managed to stick with one group of people for so long. The fears that plagued me at Birchwood about them ditching me and finishing a day early were completely unfounded. We’ve agreed since Wanaka that the 3rd of March would be the day we all finish on and we’re sticking to that plan.