From St Arnaud to Lakehead Hut
Hiking time: 03:30p.m.-06:15p.m.
Daily/Total distance: 9.5km /253.5km (140 hitched/skipped)
Steps: 15281
Weather: cloudy with some showers to continuous heavy rain-.-

This morning I got up early to get everything packed and ready to go. I still had to drop off my food box at the post office before the shuttle leaves at 12pm. As I got up early though I got everything done with plenty of time to spare.

The shuttle set off at noon with only 3 people on board. As we were going towards St Arnaud, the weather became more and more cloudy with the occasional rainfall occurring. We arrived in st Arnaud in dry conditions at 1:30pm. I went ahead and picked up my food box that I had sent a month ago. 8.6kg it says on the box. I can’t remember this being so heavy. So I went on with the tedious work of looking over my food and deciding what to keep nd what to leave.

As I had now my OSM bars, I gave the packages of shape crackers away to a backpacker passing by. I also started eating some of it, especially the fruit smoothies that I had picked up in the baby section of the Super market. While nice on trail, they are heavy and create more rubbish to carry with you. After going through everything, I only had 7kg left to take with me which considering I am planning for 7 days plus one extra in case of bad weather isn’t too bad.

I set off at 3pm. My first spot was at Lake Rotoiti at the Jetty that is always photographed for instagram shots. So I also stopped to take some pictures.

After taking the pictures I continued to the trailhead. At 3:30pm I set off from the trail head. The trail is really nice through beech forest along the side of the lake. There is drizzle every now and then but the canopy of the trees kept me protected from it.

My knee is feeling alright today. I am following the Physio’s order and rotate my foot a bit outwards while walking. There is a twinge of pain now and then, but for about 95% it felt fine. After 1.5h I managed to slip on a wet root and roll my ankle. Now I will have to see how this is feeling tomorrow morning. Doesn’t hurt too bad, but I will have to keep an eye on it.

The last hour before reaching the hut it started raining in earnest. At this point even the trees weren’t enough protection anymore. So I am soaking wet. The shoes were still mostly dry as I managed to get over the streams by the way of stepping stones. At some point though the track was just a puddle of water and now even the shoes were soaking wet. Soon afterwards I reached the hut at 6:15pm.

I took my wet clothes off in the front room of the hut, wringing out my top and shorts. There came so much water out of this. The I tried to find a spot to hang up my things, but everything was already blocked. Inside the hut I found a tour group of 12 people as well as 2 TA hikers sitting around. The tour was getting dinner made for them while I set about filtering water, organising my things and hanging up all my wet gear. There was no fire going because according to the tour guides you ate not allowed to light the fire places in a total fire ban. Not that it would be possible to start a bush fire with the rain outside.

As the group finished their dinner and set out o go to their tents, another tour group of we people arrived. They had set off at the same time as me but are ed an hour later. Talking to them while eating dinner I found out that they are doing a tour through New Zealand for 2 weeks. All of them are from North America.

We hikers got some of their desert of chocolate fondue as they didn’t finish it and the guides didn’t want to carry the rubbish out. I then went to sleep at 10:30pm, having to brace the wet outside just before to reach the longer toilets outside.