Hawdon Valley

On Friday, Shalom, Erin, Sam, and I went up to the Hawdon Valley hut and stayed the night there. Sam drove (it was about an hour and a half drive to the trailhead), and the tramp was about three hours. Shalom loaned me her smaller tramping backpack, which was nice. It was really nice weather going up, sunny but not too hot. We didn't break for lunch because we were trying to beat this huge group of kids up to the hut (there were maybe nine of them, and the parking lot was full. There are twenty beds in Hawdon hut, so we were worried that if we didn't beat that big group to the hut, we wouldn't get beds, and we all had just sleeping bags, no tent or sleeping pads), and also because nobody was particularly starving. We ate when we got to the hut, and played cards (Sam and I taught Erin and Shalom a game that I learned on the 230 fieldtrip. It's called 500, and it's a partner game with rules similar to hearts or euchre). We went for a short little walk, but there wasn't much of a trail to anywhere.

We saw a species of parakeet that has an orange stomach. They are fairly rare. Apparently there are only 100-300 in New Zealand, and that tramp is one of the few places to see them. We also saw keas (one of them tried to steal Erin's sandal, but only moved it around the deck) and a small mountain wren that was pretty cute. The keas were pretty amazing... it was my first time seeing one, and I was very excited. Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of the kea, but here is the parakeet:

Sorry, the photo is a bit dark.

The hut was pretty much full, and everyone went to bed way before us. Seriously, the hut was silent by nine o'clock. The next hut on the tramp was nine hours away (we were only doing one night, returning to the car the next day, but if you wanted to continue, you could carry on to the next hut), so we figured they were getting to bed early so they could have an early, well-rested start the next day. That was not the case, as we were the second group out of the hut the next morning, after the South African couple, who had not gone to bed too much earlier than we had.

We left to do a day hike up to a lake in the next valley over. It's the first two hours of that nine hour leg I just mentioned. It entails scaling the ridge just behind the hut and tramping up the neighboring valley. Unfortunately, the sun didn't get the memo and had no interest in scaling the ridge. The next valley over was *frigid* and one big wind tunnel. The scenery was lovely, though.


There were many river crossings, and we had a chilly, windy morning tea by the lake before turning around and booking it back. We ran into the other groups on their ways up as we tramped back down, and they seemed disheartened by our reports.


When we got back to the hut, it was pleasantly empty and quiet. Also, it was sunny because we were back over the ridge. We played a few more rounds of cards, had lunch, threw some marshmallows at Sam, and packed up. We were out by 1:30 and hiked back to the car in good time. It was pretty spectacular. That night for dinner, we had grill cheese and tomato soup. All in all, a good good time.


Oh, and if anyone is keen to know what the coarse-grained counterpart to trachyte is, I forgot to mention it last post: it is syenite, and I will never forget that.