Last of the summer sun

Easter (01-05 April) 2010

Sabine Valley, Nelson Lakes National Park

Team: Me, Mark, Karl, Craig, Mike, Barbara (with appearances by many other members of the club!)

Thursday

Thursday afternoon saw me finishing work early and wandering around the waterfront to meet my Dad, who had offered to drop Mark and I off at the ferry terminal for our sailing. Once sorted into the vans, we hung around for a while waiting to be loaded onto the ferry for the journey south.
Pretty much everyone in my group had brought their own dinner rather than buy on the ferry, and some of the food was pretty incredible! I had a Chicken Salad Sandwich and had brought half a banana cake (leftover from a leaving morning tea earlier in the week) to share, while Karl and Craig had fantastic looking bacon salad sandwiches! Yum! During the sailing, the ferry lost its computer service, and so for a while there was a massive queue for hot food because they couldnt serve anyone. Eventually they started letting people have the food for nothing since it was a dinner time sailing and a lot of people obviously had no other food with them!

Eventually we arrived in Picton and drove on to St Arnaud, our stop for the night. The campground there is lovely, and has HOT showers! (pay at the DoC office if not staying in the campsite already). It was actually quite warm considering how cold it had been at the road end a month earlier! I was prepared for it to be freezing, and instead we all actually commented on how warm we were, which was nice!
Friday

The other two club groups were heading off from St Arnaud directly, while we were heading around to Lake Rotoroa to start our tramp. Given that all the groups were ending up back at Rotoroa and we had two people willing to drive club vans, we took both vans around to the other lake on Friday morning to start our trip

There was another group on our water-taxi as well, who were walking in the D'Urville valley, so we dropped them off first at D'Urville Hut

Before heading over to Sabine Hut, where we would start from.

After an obligatory group photo before departing on our walk, it was time to get moving! The weather was lovely and warm, and we knew we didnt have too far to go (only about 5.5 hours or so) and so we took our time, stopping regularly for breaks, including at a really awesome bridge over a really deep gorge. We were only about 40 minutes from the hut, but damn we all wanted to go for a swim!
The walk up valley progressed largely as expected. There was still a lot of visible tree-fall from the really heavy snow of two winters ago, and some of this was quite tricky to navigate. There was also a lot more up and down than was visible on the map!
We stopped for lunch in a lovely little spot with a view over the river, just beyond a small stream crossing, which was about the first time we had to get our feet wet. Soon after this, at a really narrow piece of track, my pack made a bid for freedom towards the bank, and nearly took me with it. Soon after this I wound up in so much pain I could barely walk - it appeared I had pinged something in my back! Bummer!
We knew that we were more than halfway though, and so decided to continue on, because in this case, the Devil we didnt know was more appealing than the devil we did, and a rest day was available the next day anyway. I had to continue carrying all my own gear though, as no-one had enough space in their packs to take anything off me! (the joys of being on day one of four!)
By the time I got to the hut, I had been "on the move" for the better part of seven hours, and never before have I been quite so grateful to find a hut with bottom bunk space available!

Dinner that night was a scrummy pasta with veges and tomato pesto, followed by what should have been instant pudding, but we didnt bring enough milk powder, so it still wasnt really edible - we contented ourselves with eating marshmallows instead! After such a long-seeming day, we were all in bed by 9pm, which was great!

Saturday

Saturday morning Barbara and I relaxed for a day of rest. Me for my back, Barbara because she was on holiday and didnt feel like going anywhere! The boys all headed off to Blue Lake Hut for a daywalk, although Karl came back within about half an hour because he was getting pain in the back of his foot.

So our lazy day consisted of not going much further from the hut than the toilet, except Karl, who spent most of the day getting in and chopping more firewood for whoever was there next. Thoughtful chap, that Karl, must remember to tell his parents that at some stage...
Other parties eventually started to trickle in, including our intrepid boys and the Medium group who had come over the saddle, all arriving about 4.30pm.
After some obligatory shots of dinner preparation, it was time to eat at about 6.30. Our group had vegetarian rice risotto, followed by an awesome camp cheesecake. There were NO leftovers...

Eventually it was off to bed, not too late in the end because everyone was fairly tired.

Sunday

After a slightly lazy start, we were off towards Sabine Hut again by about 8.30am, figuring it would be nice to get there for a late lunch since the weather was meant to turn nasty at some stage that day. It was cloudy, and miserable looking.
Our times were substantially better getting to anywhere on the way back to Sabine than they had been on the way out, mainly because we were stopping less often because the weather wasnt so nice!
In the end, we managed to make it back to Sabine Hut dry (having seen only some very light drizzle) and in time for a late lunch at about 2pm.
The other group werent far behind us, and once they arrived, most people headed down into the lake for a dip. It wasnt too cold, but the bottom of the lake was covered in some awful gunk that was spread everywhere when anyone stood on it. Needless to say, most of us didnt stay in there very long!
A lazy afternoon in the hut followed, with many games of 500 played before a fairly early dinner due to daylight savings having changed that morning (it got really dark, really quickly!). We had vegetable couscous, followed by chocolate biscuits for dessert, and yet again what looked like heaps of food dissapeared rather quickly!
The personal fight was to stay up until 9pm, since it was dark at about 6. Most people managed, but pretty much everyone was in bed by 9.30pm.

Monday

Another lazy, nothing day. No one really felt like doing anything, so we sat around the hut and played cards, and cleaned up. Barbara and Mike went with Clintons group on an earlier water taxi so that the vans were evenly packed, and the rest of us waited for our pickup with Pauls group after lunch.
The weather turned cold as soon as we got to St Arnaud, and only half the showers actually had hot water in them, which sucked (I got a cold one!). From there, after a short stop at the shop to get cake and coffee, it was straight back to Picton and into the queue for the ferry. Dinner was a greasy and great Chicken burger and fries, HUGE.