Jill's Easter Walk in the Waitutu Forest
Getting out of your comfort zone is touted to boost confidence and open up your thinking horizons. Sounds good on paper but the reality can be demanding: boot camps, outward bound courses and extreme sports.
We hardly thought what started out as an Easter 'stroll' in the Waitutu Forest bordering Fiordland, would become one of those experiences. However I learnt good equipment can mean everything at these times.
The track is a mixture of the South Coast and Hump Ridge Tracks and graded easy. It mostly follows an old railway line which is relatively flat and straight ahead with few twists and turns.
The highlights of this walk are the Waitutu Forest and the wooden viaducts. The forest is made up of ancient podocarps (conifers) some several hundred years old and beech forest. It's so ancient that its’ trees and plants date back to the Jurassic period and were around when the Gondwana continent started to break up. That's special enough but what sets the Waitutu Forest apart and gives it global significance is the thirteen marine terraces it is made up of that graduate upward and inland. Each terrace is hundreds and thousands of years older than the previous which allows the evolution of these terraces to be traced over a relatively long time scale.
Four wooden viaducts provide access for walkers to cross ravines and are recognised as one of New Zealand’s foremost engineering feats. These viaducts were built in the early 1920’s to open up the forests to logging. The Percy Burn Viaduct is the largest remaining of its kind in the world.
Two more plusses are to get there you take a not-to-be-missed jetboat trip down New Zealand's longest waterfall” or steepest river, the Wairaurahiri River, from NZ's deepest lake, Lake Hauroko. The river is a series of rock-strewn rapids over 27 kms between shorelines of uninterrupted forest and wilderness.
It’s not jet boating for “speed and spins” but jet boating as a means to reaching the starting point for the walk, the remote Waitutu Hut and for our acompanying passengers the rifle-toting hunters, the separate deer hunting trails.
The Waitutu Hut is an initiative of local Maori who set up a lodge in this wilderness area for hunters and trampers. It's more than adequate compared with DOC facilities. There are twin and eight bunk rooms, linen and sleeping bags available for hire, hot showers, heating, cooking facilities and a fridge. The Hut is situated close to the mouth of the river that opens on a sandy beach looking across to Stewart Island.
Although it poured that night we were too cosily tucked up asleep in the lodge to hear much. It was still raining the next morning but not heavily. Almost entirely covered by bright blue, three dollar, plastic ponchos we set off from the hut to walk to Port Craig, about 16 km away.
Just 10 minutes from the lodge a large muddy pond flooded the track and seeped into the surrounding bush. We spent 15 minutes dancing around the edges trying to decide how best to cross it without getting our boots wet. I knew I could immerse my new The North Face boots up to my ankle without my feet getting wet but this pond was deeper than that. Finally we had no choice but to plough straight into the brown stuff, watching the perfect stitching and lacing of my clean new boots disappear into a quagmire of mud.
This was just the beginning. From then on the pathway unfolded as a channel for a flowing river that streams crossed at regular intervals gouging it deeper in these places. It hardly ever got shallower than mid-calf to knee-deep and at times, up to our waist and armpits when we accidentally slipped into a hole. Looking forward, the river flowed toward us in an almost straight line as far as we could see and the same when we looked behind.
I silently thanked my The North Face Invicta boots every step I took as I shuffled along in the murky water, not knowing how, or on what, my feet were landing. The supporting shank down the centre of my boot (I was told) would stop my foot from rolling side to side at each step. My feet rarely slipped and landed steadily with each step as if on flat concrete giving me the confidence to wade/stride ahead the seven hours it took to walk to Port Craig.
For more info about The North Face boots, visit their website www.thenorthface.com.au
There were a couple of swollen river crossings (scary at the time) and a part where the track disappeared under a newly made waterfall. The idea of being winched out of the bush on a long rope dangling from a helicopter crossed my mind, as the only alternatives were to go back the way we had come or overcome the present challenge.
The highlight was the wooden viaducts, especially the Percy Burn (36m high, 125m long), that traverses a gully so deep you could just make out the bottom. Those hardy men who had scaled that gully to build the foundations for this epic engineering feat almost 100 years ago, were true adventurers. This put my own sense of intrepidation into perspective.
It is here that the Hump Ridge Track joins. Other trampers descending from the Okaka Hut at the top of the 'Hump' talked of boardwalks and staircases which sounded like luxury compared to what was left of the South Coast Track. The mud wasn't over, and there was still a steady stream of it to go through before reaching Port Craig and then on the following day to walk out and back to civilisation at Tuatapere.
It was just one of those experiences sent to challenge you. In fine weather it would have been an in-your-comfort-zone easy walk.
