Nelson Lakes

More Pictures!
We have just gotten back out of the woods from one last big hike in Nelson Lakes National park.  This one is in the Northern part of the south Island, and probably one of the coolest hikes we've done.  Even though the mountains are quite a bit smaller than they are further south, we were in a really sweet area.  I think part of it is that we hiked up on top of a ridge for the entire first day.  It is interesting how all the main walks in most places kinda follow the same pattern: Hike through beech forest, go up and over some saddle and be in an alpine tussock area for a while, then drop back down low and hike along a river in a different valley.  It is a pretty great equation for an exciting walk, but after doing a whole bunch of those, it was really nice to do something a bit different.  The first day of the hike was up to the top of Mt. Robert and then along this Robert ridge all day.  We were quite exposed up there, so it was sweet that we had such a beautiful day.  As you can see, the scenery there was amazing.

We got a late start that first day, but it actually worked out beautifully well that the sun was setting as we were coming up to the last part of the hike before we got to Angelus hut.  The location of the hut was beautiful, surrounded by big mountains and right next to a big lake as calm as glass.

The next day we dropped into a valley and hiked around into another valley to get to the Hopeless Hut.  This was a tiny 6 bunk hut that we shared with some very strange hunter guy.  Arguably the weirdest guy we met so far who grunted a lot and did not seem to be all quite there.  It was a bit of a relief once we got going the next morning and I no longer had to worry about our safety.  That day was a chill one where we ended up at a hut right on a lake with a couple other hunters.  These guys were quite a bit more friendly and also they had a saw and axe so we got a raging fire going.  It is quite surprising what a fire does to lift your spirits, as we were all warm and sociable.  It was in fact probably the warmest night I've had since leaving the Coromandel, also with going to bed at about 11 one of the latest.  I think that it is amazingly possible to get far too much sleep as your legs actually hurt after lying down for about 10+ hours each night.  So going to bed at 11 and getting up at 7 actually felt really good.

Now as we realized that we are going to go over the amount of k's that we agreed to put on this vehicle, we've decided to start heading back to the Coromandel a couple days early.  This way we'll get a little bit of time to really relax and decompress before gearing up to prepare for the upcoming winter program at Earthwise Valley.