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Published: March 26th 2013
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I didn’t sleep fantastically in the bunk house, very hot and quite smelly with lots of people in there, and then at 6.30am we were all woken by the hut shaking and a deep grumbling, thunder like noise. This shaking continued for around 30sec (though it felt a lot longer) and we all laid silently, when it had finished someone said, ‘wow, that was an earthquake’ and then we all started talking, and didn’t really go back to sleep after that. It turned out the earthquake was a 4.2 on the Richter scale, with the epicentre located only 2miles underground and 20km North of Milford Sound – luckily no damage was caused!
After breakfast and moving my stuff to a now vacated bed by the window in the main room – for the 5* views we headed off on our walk to French Ridge hut. It was a nice easy walk continuing through the valley for the first 1.5hrs to an area called Pearl Flats, from here we crossed the river and then started to climb. This was like no path I had attempted before, it was unmaintend and in sections we climbing up bits of rock, over fallen trees
and using tree roots as steps. This would have been far too risky to attempt alone, as if you fell there would be no-one to get help, but with both of us – now named Miss Elastic (Anna) and Miss Monkey (Me) we continued on. After two hours of serious climbing like this we came out of the tree line to the ridge, we had a quick mid-morning snack to refuel, then ploughed on, still going up but along a track this time to the hut, a very cute little hut, just below the snow line at 1465m. After lunch in the hut, a sit down and a wonder around, oh and use of the toilet with the best views in the world we headed down. I was quite apprehensive about the climb down, but actually it was a lot easier than up and less risky – in sections you could just use the tree branches to help and swing down on, and we were back down by 5pm.
This evening I headed down to the river again for another refreshing dip – much needed after today’s activities.
Originally our plan was to walk in to
Aspiring hut the first afternoon, walk to French Ridge hut and back today and then walk out tomorrow. However, lots of people yesterday in the hut had attempted to get to Cascade saddle, and raved about the views, so we decided to make the most of it, and make tomorrow another full day of walking, climb to Cascade saddle then walk out. As lunch for tomorrow hadn’t been calculated when we packed our food, luckily Anna always carries a spare dehydrated meal for 2 in her back pack – so we decided to have this for dinner tonight, and leave our vegetables, tuna and rice for lunch tomorrow. So for dinner was a HIGHLY appetising, dehydrated full English breakfast meal, and we cooked a boiled egg to accompany it!
This evening the hut was a lot quieter, with only two people from yesterday still around and a Canadian family. I spent most of the evening talking to the Canadian family - Aunt, Uncle, Nephew and Nephew’s friend – who were all lovely, and discussing travel plans and different walks.
We the lights went off at 10pm, and I was settling down for bed in my new 5* window
bed, the stars were just amazing, so many in the sky it looked so beautiful. After admiring them for about an hour I feel asleep, and slept a lot better this time, and waking to watch the stunning sunrise over the mountains in the morning.
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Debbie cull
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Earthquake
Wow bet the earthquake experience was both scary and exciting (once all ok). The private toilet in the mountain looks good!!!! Everything sounds amazing & energetic. X