26th Dec - Boxing Day - Greenstone/Steele Creek Walk

Up at 6 to get ready for the walk. Made some turkey sandwiches and ran out to met Christoph. There were lots of possibilities regarding what walk to do. I really fancied doing the Routeburn and back on the Caples as a circular walk but the Routeburn started at a different place to the end of the Caples and we would have to hitch that bit late at night or early in the morning and we were not sure that we would have time to do that.

We ended up parking at the Greenstone/Caples car park as we had not been successful hitching to the Routeburn. We decided to do the whole Greenstone/Caples route in a very long day. It is flat but a lovely walk through the valleys - about 60km to do the whole loop. We headed off at 10. The plan changed when we had made really good time to get to the Greenstone private hut for lunch time. There is a linking path called the Steel Creek Path that goes up and over a saddle from the Greenstone to the Caples. There was a warning sign saying that you needed to have a high level of fitness and back country walking skills to do it. The Greenstone had been a bit boring and flat so we thought we would give the other one a go.

It turned out to be an awesome path but extremely hard work. The first half was ok along the river but the terrain was difficult through the forest. We then had to cross a river - which Christoph managed to do with style and grace by jumping from rock to rock and I manged to do by slipping off and walking through up to my knees. It did not matter too much as the next half of the walk was very tough through the bush and we ended up walking in the stream for many miles (0.5m deap ish) as it was easier than climbing over the shrubbery. The path was very well marked with poles and was not unsafe but there was no actual path through the vegetation. The shrubbery was about 0.5m high and so each step involved climbing over the plants. The route also climbed to 1500m from about 500m. It took a long time to make our way through. When we reached the top of the saddle we were well above the tree line and there was some snow on the ground.

The wind on the other side of the saddle was very strong. We had not realised that we had been so protected from the wind on the other side of the valley. Fortunately the path hugs the side of the mountain and we just descended slowly. The views were amazing but again it was hard going through the vegetation in the wind and rain. I do love hill climbing - it makes me very happy. The signs had said it would take us 8-10 hours and we had done it in 6h30 but it had been hard work.

By the time we got on to the Caples track it was late. We could have carried on walking but it was raining heavily and we would have finished off walking with head torches to get back to the car park. There was a hut on the Caples path which was totally empty and so we decided to stay there instead. It worked out really well actually. The information in the hut said that there is a severe weather warning for the last 12 hours and continuing for 24 hours. The weather had been bad but not too bad for walking but we decided that maybe the worse had not yet arrived and so it would be safer to stay in hut. It was actually very cosy once Christoph had lit a fire.