Originally an 81km 60MJ trip, I shortcut it slightly when I managed to get a ride over part of the road portion.

This was a bit of an unplanned trip and I didn’t have any supplies on-hand.  I booked a bus ride to Levin in the afternoon and went to the supermarket when I got there.  I ended up going a bit overboard and bought about 80MJ of food.

The trip started with a road section to North Ohau and a run up to Waiopehu.  There was a weather warning in effect, and supposedly 120km/h gusts.  That’s at sea level.  It’s usually a lot stronger up on the ranges.  So I was expecting it to be a bit blowy.  There was also supposed to be a bit of rain.  The weather was already coming in when I reached Waioopehu and it was just getting dark.  I was intending to reach at least Te Matawai that evening, but freezing cold and shivering from the wet I wasn’t feeling particularly motivated to put wet clothes back on and head out, so I eventually gave up and settled in for the night.

The weather was probably a bit awful overnight, but I just slept through it.  I woke up around 7am and the weather was still pretty bad, so I figured I’d get another hour of sleep and see how it was after that.

So, umm… 2pm comes and I wake up again and head off.  Ooops.  At this point, already behind where I planned and starting very late, I was starting to make the schedule a bit tight.

I kept running until a couple of hours after dark and got to Nichol’s hut, and stayed there for the night.

The next day was a hideous push.  Around 11 hours of running and climbing to Anderson Memorial Hut, Mid Waiohine, up the back side of Holdsworth and out to Masterton.

I missed my train by about half an hour :(

In retrospect, if I hadn’t screwed around so much at the start, it wouldn’t have been too hard to pull this route off in two days.

I tried hitching a ride into Wellington, but everybody that stopped lived in the Wairarapa.  It turns out people in the Wairarapa are much nicer than Wellingtonians.  After a couple of hours of trying to hitch, I ended up in Carterton.

Big feed of fish and chips for dinner… slept at the Marquis of Normanby pub/hotel.  It was a ripoff considering the crappy room I had.  Terrible value.

Caught the train home in the morning.  Big trip… sore legs… and lots of other bits.  All good.