(written on the 9th and 11th)
Well today was unexpected. 🙃
…but I’ll get there.
I slept in a little bit, grateful for the cooler weather here at the base of the mountains and the clouds that shielded my van from the rays of the morning Sun.
I veged out for a little bit after getting up, checking the news and whatnot and then working on my journal catch-up efforts a bit.
I wrote and posted one entry this morning. Not much… but something. 😅
I’m grateful to have the screens on my windows, because there are so. many. sandflies. here. 😅
I don’t have the most sandflies on the window screen that I’ve ever seen, I don’t think (I think that record goes to a morning on a gravel pullout off Highway 6), but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the second most. 😅
Anyway, I put on some sunscreen and decided to brave the sand flies and walk through the field toward the braided river.
Gratefully, after the first heavy onslaught of sandflies immediately after leaving my van, there were very few as I walked out onto the rock of the river bed itself (no shade, and a little windier [lack of wind and shade summon the enemy 🙃]).
I wandered slowly up the braided riverbeds, taking some pictures here and there, pausing to just chill on the rocks sometimes, and waving to the jet boats that periodically whizzed by (despite a fair way away from civilization, jet boats full of tourists still come flying up the shallow river deep into the heart of the mountains… a little annoying, like the helicopters on high mountain tops, but I’ve been one of those helicopter passengers, and there are people who physically can’t get where I can go, so it’s an impossibility for some people without those tourist services, however loud and off putting they might be for me. 😅).
Funny, as I wave to the jet boats, I see the irony of my wanting to be seen while not wanting them there. 😆
I think I’m growing more and more surprised at how often I catch myself doing something with a “look at me” motive.
I don’t think I’d be able to handle being a celebrity, not with my current level of mental health, anyway. I would revel in the attention, but only when I wanted it, and I’m pretty sure there would be loads of times I’d just want the freedom of anonymity.
🐿️
As I walked, I realized that this was the river that the nudist gentleman I met at Rawhiti Cave had recommended I take the jet boat ride up!
That was a fun realization, and I’m glad I hiked it instead of jet boated it. 😊
As I walked along, I came across some pretty awesome wet sand/powder formations. As best I can tell (from an experiment I did rubbing a particular kind of rock that’s quite abundant in the river bed with another rock), as the water rubs the rocks together, it pulverizes the rock into super fine powdery particles that get suspended in the water. The powder is so fine that it reminds me of the metallic swirl that you see in engine oil that’s got gajillions of tiny metal particles mixed in with the oil. As the water settles, the powdery materials settled down as the top layer over the sand, creating the beautiful silvery formations you see below.
I continued wandering up the river beds, taking pictures, avoiding the water, and beginning to play the “I wonder what’s around the bend” game. 🙃
Further and further I went, deeper and deeper into the mountains, snapping pictures, until eventually, I came to a spot where I was forced to cross the river if I wanted to keep going (or bush bash on the hillside above the river valley).
Or… wait…
I remembered the little tunnel cave at the bottom of the scramble way back on the west coast of the North Island on that big adventure day with Raphael when we’d gotten to the bottom of the steep scramble only to find ourselves seemingly trapped by a swamp.
That little tunnel cave was our salvation, and I wondered if maybe there was something similar here.
So I walked over to the area that from further away looked like the end of the road, and once again, I found, not a tunnel cave, but a gap behind the massive boulder that blocked the way.
So I continued on, finding other little gaps and ways to avoid the water before finally running out of little escapes.
The very last section involved needing to jump across rock outcroppings in the river that were just far enough and just covered enough in moss that I didn’t want to risk landing on a slippery spot and tumbling off into the water (I didn’t have my waterproof cell phone case with me).
There was a fallen tree right about at that spot, so I scrambled up the trunk to an open area in the woods, wondering if maybe that was a path. It wasn’t, but then I noticed another open area a little further up, so I scrambled up a little further, and what did I find?
A trail!
That was a relief, as I hadn’t looked forward to walking all the way back down the river the way I had come. 🙏
Still wanting to see what was around the next bend, however, instead of heading down the trail back toward my van, I continued upriver. 🙃
It wasn’t too long before I ran into two older couples coming back from their hike, having hiked up to a bridge that I guess was another couple miles up the river.
Hmmm… what to do. Should I keep going upriver? I hadn’t brought any water with me, and my phone battery was down to something like 12%, which meant that I wasn’t going to be able to take very many pictures, and in an emergency, a dead phone is useless.
Sooooo… I kept going. 🙃
I picked up my pace a little bit, not quite to the level of speed walking, but close, and periodically powered on my phone screen to check where I was in relation to the trail on Google Maps.
On and on I went, through lovely tall-tree rainforest that reminded me of the Ho Rain Forest. On and on I went, well past what had loaded on Maps before I lost service, wondering how far the bridge was… or if somehow I’d missed it?
Eventually, I came to a fairly long bridge over a side creek. But was that the bridge the older couple had referred to? I had pictured it being a swing bridge, one that crossed the main river channel, but I had already come so far that maybe this was it?
It seemed like an odd place to choose as a turnaround for a hike, but I guess when the trail goes on and on into the depths of the mountains, it’s as good as any?
Still, I wondered what was around the bend, so I kept going. 🙃
I followed the path to the river bed, and then I wandered along the river bed, up the bank, and through a large grassy field, an enormous bunny trying to avoid me (I continue to be amazed by the size of the rabbits out here. I guess they don’t really have much of any predators, so they just grow and grow? I think there are enough roadkill animals to keep the hawks fed without having to do much hunting. 🙃).
Finally, after going around one last bend, I called it good, having walked nearly six miles… without water. 🙃
😅
Can we say, Migraines R Us? 😬
I was feeling fine at that point, but definitely dehydrated… not to mention my cell phone battery was at something like five percent.
My biggest concern was the reduction in the number of pictures I could take, but with my phone set to extreme-battery-saver mode, I was milking it as much as possible.
It was absolutely beautiful, so I was sad to have to ration my picture taking, but oh well.
I really like this area, considering it in the upper echelon of places out in the mountains to just… sit and enjoy. ☺️
Sandflies, though, of course. 😅
When I got back to the bridge, I took a little bit of time to rest and to hang from the bridge in an effort to decompress and align my spine and some relief.
That felt good. If only I were strong enough to hang for an hour. 🙃
To save time on the way back, and for kicks, I decided to try and run a mile, but I only made it a little over half a mile before realizing my terribly slow 12-minute mile pace (that seemed so much faster than that 🙃), and ingiving up. 😆
Had I’ve been running in 8-minute mile pace, I probably would have kept going, but a 12-minute mile… that’s… laughable in my book, but that’s apparently my fitness level right now, if even that. 😅
It was probably better not to run, actually, as that increased my sweating, no doubt speeding up my worsening dehydration. 😅
The walk back was more of a direct course, so it went quicker than walk up, gratefully. I also realized, to my relief, that I had thought my campsite was much further down the river than it was. When I thought I was still super far away from getting back, I was actually quite close. 🙏
Periodically, I would stop to snap a few pictures, my battery level falling at each successive stop–five percent, then four, then three…
By the time I caught sight of my van, my battery was sitting at 1%.
Perfect timing. 😎
As I stepped onto the bridge that crosses the creek next to the campsite, I noticed that it was shrouded in warning tape. 🤔
Come to find out the trail I had been walking back on was actually closed because of slip damage. 😆
Oops.
There were a couple of places where trees had fallen that had blocked the path a bit, one of them quite large and awkward to climb over, but other than that, I hadn’t noticed anything.
Glad I went on the hike the way that I did, so I never saw the closed notification. 🙃
By the time I made it back to the then, I had walked a very unexpected 9.38 miles, which was close enough to 10 that despite my stiffness, soreness, and blisters that seemed to be coming on, I continued walking up and down and around the dirt road, back down onto the riverbed and then back to my van in order to reach the full 10 miles for the day.
After which I retreated into my van to avoid the sand flies, where I veged out, journaled a bit, and veged out some more before crashing for the night.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 