Introduction and Preparation

Things for next time:

• Proper Gloves - The ski gloves from the visitors centre shop did not cut the mustard, cold hands made for a miserable 5 days of hiking
• Proper Socks - Some merino or Smartwool socks would have kept my feet warmer and drier.
• Certainly room for improvement with the rain Jacket and pants. Very good for the money, but it would be better if they clicked together, or the jacket was longer.
• Gaiters? Maybe these would have helped in the snow, but tbh wasn’t expecting so much snow.
• Camp Slippers/Crocs - These would have been very handy, we seemed to be the only people silly enough not to bring any, my socks were wet and my feet cold every night going to bed.

Day 1 - Ronny creek to Waterfall Valley

We thought we would get up at the crack of dawn and beat the shuttle to Ronny Creek, but in the end didn’t get away until much later than planned, and ended up meeting the bus at the ranger station after walking 6km.

Turned out to be very poor weather to start the day. The going wasn’t too bad until we were up past Marion’s lookout. Very windy and stinging rain/hail, but the gear was holding up well, still dry and warm.

We met a gentleman who we had spoken to on the bus, he encouraged us to keep going on to Kitchen hut, warning us not to change into fresh socks or they would soon be soaked too.

We stopped at kitchen hut for some coffee and snacks, met a nice mouse and fed him some nuts. After the warmth of the coffee permeated our frozen limbs, we steeled ourselves and pressed on.

Eventually we made it to Waterfall Valley hut and were disheartened to learn that the heater wasn’t working at that stage. Out of gas. Meaning all our clothes were soggy for the next day and making for a cold night.

Otherwise the Waterfall Valley hut was far from the worst hut, fairly modern, relatively small bedrooms, 4 double bunk beds in each, with closable doors to keep the heat in.

Day 2

On Day two we set out nice and early with the plan of going all the way through to New Pelion Hut.

The weather was much better, the section of the track between Waterfall Valley and Windamere was a delight to walk on, and took us under 3 hours. We thought that the remaining 15km or so wouldn’t take very long. After some lunch and a few minutes in front of the gas heater to try to dry out things, we set out again towards Pelion.

Not sure if that is Pelion West in the background below, but this section of the hike had some lovely views, despite the poor visibility.

The first half of this section was quite pleasant, we stopped briefly at the Forth Valley Lookout to take in the view and have a snack.

We descended through the rainforest towards Frog Flats, tripping over hundreds of soggy tree roots, making for quite hard going. It quickly became clear that the remainder of this section wouldn’t be overly fun. At this stage we thought we were just around the corner, but probably were not much more than half way through.

We must have been pretty tired and moved pretty slowly, since before we knew it the sun was sinking. After getting out our headlamps we kept going through the rain forest and eventually arrived at Pelion in the dark. Seeing plenty of gleaming possum eyes off in the bushes. I have never seen such large possums in my life.

Inside we found two fellow travellers sitting and eating in the dark, they hadn’t been able to get the heater going, but I eventually got it to light.

Lots of people seemed to complain about Pelion hut, but I didn’t mind it at all. The small enclosed rooms meant that everything was warmer. Although the is only a header in one half of the building, the bedrooms are likely a fair bit warmer than lots of the other huts. The toilets were a bit smelly, but at least they were close by.

Day 3

We lingered a bit at Pelion in the morning, making the most of the sputtering gas heater. Eventually we set out towards Kia Ora.

A bit more of an eventful day, the reasonably steep rise through the rainforest to start us of, continuing on to Pelion Gap and I decided to make hay while the sun wasn’t snowing.

A reasonably easy track up to the base of the dolamite cap, there were intermitantly good views. Unfortunately I didn’t fully summit this one, there was plenty of snow and ice on the rocks and I wasn’t really equiped for climbing.

I would happily recommend this one to anyone in better conditions. For the most part while we were up on Pelion the weather held out, but it started to turn when were coming down and it soon was raining or snowing.

Not too many photos from near the top but I would be quite spectacular in better visibility.

We continued on to the lovely (heater functional) Kia Ora hut, being quite sick of both snow and rainforest by the time we arrived.

The hut was very busy compared what we had seen in the previous huts, probably 11 people in total that night. A quite nice hut, probably quite similar to Waterfall Valley.

Day 4

We set out fairly early the next day, most of our gear having been dried by the fire.

Our gloves and boots got fairly quickly re-wet in the rainforest, our hands and feet got very cold later on in the snow.

We stopped for a quick mueseli bar at the historic Du Cane Hut which was a welcome break before continuing on.

We visited the Fergusson falls, which were blasting ice cold water across the forest. I stopped to splash my face before moving on. We didn’t go to look at the D’Alton Falls since there was a creek flowing well over the track leading up to them which my partner thought was a bit dangerous (I had the relationship low ground at this time), so we gave it a miss.

It felt like a bit of slog for the rest of the way, once we got to high altitudes the snow and slush quickly sapped our heat and spirits.

We arrived at Bert Nicholls to discover that is was the draftiest and coldest hut we had been in so far, but at least the small heater was functional.

We were very cold in the night, the bedrooms didn’t have separate doors and had lots of ventilation. To top it off, I hadn’t put our sleeping bags inside their dry-bags properly, so the sleeping bags were fairly moist (a silly mistake I probably won’t ever live down).

Day 5

We thought we would take it easy in the morning, monopolising the gas heater to dry our gear the best we could.

In hindsight we maybe should have motored for Narcissus to get the 1pm ferry back to Cynthia Bay, instead we ended up taking our time warming up and made a reasonably slow journey to Narcissus Hut.

Unfortunately it turned out to be a very heavy day for snow, we spent the entire walk trying not to bat each other with treefulls of fresh snow. The snow was nice to look at and maybe to walk through for a bit, but the novelty quickly wore off. I seemed to get even wetter in the snow than in any of the rainstorms we had experienced earlier. I think chunks of snow were getting behind my pack, eventually melting and being forced through my rainjacket and pants.

Crossing the Narcissus was great fun, A was not too fond of the suspension bridge but was very brave.

We eventually arrived at Narcissus hut, not much to look at, but a small building means a warmer sleep. The heater was very fiddly, but I eventually got it going and the warmth fairly quickly dried out the floor of the hut so my dry socks didn’t get soaked.

PSA: The trick seemed to be that you needed to push the knob back in immediately after the ignitor clicked. It helped if you had someone who could loook in the front to confirm that the pilot was lit, then hold the pilot light on for 20 seconds to warm up the thermocouple before turning the gas on high.

We thought we had the place to ourselves but eventually we were joined by two men later on, we had met one of them previously and their good company make the time pass quickly.

We were still deciding if it would be worth it to hike the 18km out to Cynthia Bay but decided not to in the end, and ended up booking the ferry for the 5th at 1pm. This left us with a heap of free time to eat all of our leftover food and chat. The weather was actually quite lovely, plenty of snow on the ground but the sun was out for most of the day.

Day 6

The last day revealed some lovely sights as the weather cleared up a bit. The sun was out and there were some great views to be had of the various mountains surrounding the hut.

The ferry was a sight for sore and cold eyes, we had a group of 10 plus schoolboys turn up just before its arrival and we were packed in like sardines with a few pleasure seekers just out for the boat ride.

Overall, it was a great experience, in the tough conditions I would certainly call it ‘character building’. Next time I would probably try to aim for a different time of year. That being said I can’t imagine sharing the huts 30-40 people. Very early spring may have been the correct time and we just got very unlucky, some snow would have been fine, but the constant cold and snow made everything slow and painful.

Next time I would love to do Barn Bluff, Mt Ossa and the Pine Valley Area.

• Barn Bluff Day Trip
• Arm Valley Track to do Ossa and on to Pine Valley on a separate trip.