Greenstone and Caples Tracks
Type: Loop
Time Spent: 3 nights 4 days backpacking
Distance: 60 km (37- miles)
Elevation change: 4225 meters (approximately 6800 feet)
<Day3>
Mid Caples Hut to middle to the forest near the junction of Caples track and Steel Creek track
8 km (5 miles), 81 meters (266 feet) elevation gain
When we arrived at Mid Caples hut at 7 p.m. there were only 3 people at the hut. There was plenty of space. Two guys from Chicago, US. Father (Steve) and son (Dan). A lady from North Island, New Zealand (Julie). They were super nice.
Then at 8 p.m. another hiker showed up. He is from Tasmania island, Australia (Gary). He was also friendly and chatty.
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| Mid Caples hut |
Since there were only 4 people at a hut with 24 bunks, everyone used 2 mattresses. It was luxurious.
Gary snored a little, so I woke up when he snored, but it was fine. Compared to the hut we stayed in Italy during Tour du Mont Blanc, it was nothing. The Italy one was so terrible.
The heavy rain warning was from 10 p.m., but the rain didn't come until 5 a.m. It started raining and got heavier when everyone woke up around 7:30 a.m. Ha. So all 4 people stayed at hut, kept fire going in the stove by putting coals continuously and chatted. I am not a social person, and in fact sometimes anti-social, but I found those people very nice and friendly and "safe".
Julie is an avid hiker and she knew a lot about hiking places in New Zealand. Mr.N asked recommendation and got some ideas for the future trips. She is very nice, but her New Zealand English was hard to follow for me as a non-native English speaker. Even Mr.N had a hard time since she spoke very softly.
Gary came to New Zealand without a returning ticket. It seemed that Australians can go to New Zealand without returning tickets. Nice. He is retired, so he has time. He didn't rent a car and he hitchhiked to the trailhead. That's why he started hiking at 4 p.m. and arrived at the hut at 8 p.m. Gary has been to the U.S. 36 years ago and he hiked in Montana to Canada again that time by hitchhiking. He found out I did Mt.Whitney and asked me questions. He tried to hitch hike from Montana to Mt.Whitney, but it was too far to hitchhike that time.
Steve's another son lives in Boston and we talked about Boston and New England a little bit. He has done "Great Walks" before and informed us basically Great Walk huts are same as this Mid Caples huts. The price is $141 vs $15, though.
It was still raining at noon, but Steve and Dan decided to go, because their plan is to go to Mckellar hut. Soon Julie left for Green stone hut around 1 p.m. Gary decided to stay at Mid Caples hut for another night. It's nice to have unlimited time. We left around 2 p.m. when the rain stopped. Since we had only 8 km to go with minimal elevation gain, we waited for rain to stop. Everyone was leaving and Gary said "I am attempted to hike, too" but Mr.N said, "You have unlimited time, no need to rush :)"
We left the hut at 2 p.m., so we soon saw people coming to the hut. We chatted that Gary would be happy by having chatting buddies. Actually those two people were second time we saw on the trail. We were hiking the same loop at the opposite direction. It was funny and nice.
On the contrary of our optimism to find a freedom camp spot, it was hard to find a good place. It was very dense forest all the way and hard to find a flat dry spot. Most places had a lot of roots or moss on the ground. Our concern was it was going to be uphill to the saddle soon and if uphill started it would be unlikely to find a spot. Luckily after extensive search, we found a used campsite. It was very big site 70-80 meters away from trail and it seemed that trail crews used to camp there. We guessed that because a section of trail near the campsite was well maintained: actually all gravel was on the trail and trail edge was dug for the water to flow away from the trail. It must have been a long work, because the well maintained portion was quite long. The campsite has flat dry area with view. It was perfect, because there were falls on the mountain, which showed up only after rain. Also a lot of toutouwai visited us. They were very amusing and cute.
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| Falls seen from the campsite |
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