copland valley track

i walked 5.5 hours each way. i had to ford five big creeks and walk over a very scary one-man-only swing bridge. made of lawn fence. it was a bush walk. i didn't see much of the river. i lost one of my crocs the first day [a guy i met on the routeburn found it and left it on the trailhead for me]. i got lost once, two meters off the trail. i panicked at some other point, but calmed down quickly. i was scared of getting my shoes wet [blisters, blisters]. i then reached the hut. the toilet did not have running water. i went to the thermal pools during the day time and was eaten alive by the sand flies.

but then! everything changed! two germans and a brit showed up at the -nearly-empty-so-far hut. one of them had his birthday. they were going to walk to the thermal pools at night. i joined them. there were no sandflies about. the water was hot. there was much mud about, but after we turned off our torches we could not see how gross it was. we did get to see Mt Cook, ca 20-30km away, covered with snow. we got to see the entire mountain ridge. the moon rising. the milky way. we did satellite spotting. we sat in the warm muddy waters until it was too hot and moved to the body-temperature pool. after about two hours i went to bed, muddy and gross but happy.

the next day i had a 5 hour bush walk. i had to ford five big creeks and walk over a very scary one-man-only swing bridge. made of lawn fence. it was a bush walk. i didn't see much of the river. i smelled bad - a mixture of DEET, sweat and sulfur from the pools. at the end of the track i found my missing croc. i caught an atomic shuttle which ripped me off to Franz Josef.
but the fords were much easier on the way back. i knew the way. i saw where i got lost. i knew i did not have much more to go and civilization was around the corner. and more important - even though the track was not as scenic as i had expected, i got to soak in thermal pools in the middle of the night and see mt cook.