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John left Christchurch in the morning, Stan and crew departed mid-afternoon and Kerry’s carload managed to get away at 5:30pm. At Hokitika, the night car turned one street too early and got lost! Consulting a GPS phone put us right and we got onto Stafford Street, and arrived at the holiday house at 9:30pm to find the others happily installed.
Saturday morning dawned fine and clear. The team were away by 0815 to the other end of the lake. A roadside photo-stop at Dorothy Falls was worthwhile. We headed up the steep Mt Brown Hut track through rata, kamahi forest. Most of the group had lunch at the beautifully located hut with great views of the lake and snow-capped mountains. This is the first hut I’ve seen that provides binoculars for sight-seers. There is a wood-stove but the small amount of fuel must have been air-lifted in. Most our troop left for the long descent at 12:30. By 1pm cloud started to roll in around the hut. The youngsters—including Darcy—took Kerry’s car back to base with the second car following later.
We dined on beef stroganoff on rice plus a big plate of blue- cheese flavoured veges. Sue Wilder generously made the vege dish. She had to beg-off the trip when she caught a cold. 87.5% of the diners had fresh fruit and custard. Stan, the 12.5%, has a long-standing aversion to custard.
We were up early again, to cloudy weather, with rain forecast. Margaret and Stan offered to take us to the lake- end so we could walk the length of the lake on the foot and cycle track and return to base for lunch. We set out in light drizzle then rain and arrived at the northern end of the track to find our “taxis” waiting for us. Not only that, Margaret and Stan had done most of the clean up of the house. We packed and headed away around 1pm.
We were: Margaret Clark, Stan Wilder, Joy Schroeder, Wendy McCaughan, John Robinson, Darcy Mawson, Jim Ouano and Kerry Moore (KM)
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