Te Araroa : Mavora Lakes to Ohai

KM this section : 109
KM completed : 2831

Is it too high?

Hard to believe there are only ten days or so of walking left... when the going is hard I tell myself, 'not long to go', but really I am going to miss this.  Well, not there yet... indeed there is another Mavora Lake, the south one if anything more beautiful than the north.  Then I walk along the Mavora river, the couples said something about taking the road rather than a terrible river trail, surely not this though, it's a lovely walk.  Then I reach a bit of DOC idiocy, a sign says 'don't stay on this path if the river is high, cross here (there is a bridge) and follow the left bank instead'.  Is the river 'high'?  I don't think so... across the bridge, there is no path on the left bank... well I stay on the path, which is good, but that's because it's part of a loop track back to the lake, whereas I have to ford the river.  Well that is easy enough, it is indeed not high... but sadly, clearly pretty much every TA walker has taken the road, all I find on the far bank are pole markers, too far apart to even guess at a path.  I struggle on, but hacking along through bog, over fences and so forth is not much fun, this is the terrible river trail I guess.  In the end I give up and make my way to the road.

The Aparima River.

Well, makes for easier walking, though I briefly revisit the 'trail', to camp on it.  Much further ahead than planned too, this is in a section that the guide helpfully suggests two to three days for, well, turns out to mean around fifteen hours as per signs on the ground, less in fact when I come to walking it.  Does seem to be a thing that the oh-so-macho 'I don't need a path, I'll just walk down the river' DOC people nonetheless think five hours is a fair day's walking.  But anyway... what the guide gives with one hand, it takes away with the other, the next section, five hours in the guide, is signed as eight on the ground :(  I make it six and a half hours of hard slog through forest, am glad to reach a hut, get a fire going and relax.

On Telford Tops.

And then, a good day again... more forest, but easy enough, much of it the mossy high altitude woodland.  Then open hills, well, at just over one thousand metres I guess Telford Tops includes a mountain... the last time I'll climb one here maybe?  And then a nice walk down a ridge line to camp.  I've made good time, some 4 hours ahead of plan now, this is good as I can get to Ohai early.  And so it proves, after a nice day of walking over farm tracks I get to town, what there is of it, Ohai, an old coal mining community, has clearly seen better days.  All the shops are shut, as is the pub in which I stay the night - they still do accommodation, nice place to stay and I manage not to be tempted by the many bottles of spirits hanging about.  For lo, my resupply box is here, I have two cans of beer and also two tins of STAG CHILLI, together with some two hundred and fifty grams dry weight of rice this makes one hell of a meal.

Bustling Ohai.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.