27 February 2007

A Ridge Too Far...

The Mavora Walkway

Day 3 page 3 Taipo to Boundary

Onwards.

Up we go

and down

The right hand end of this range is where we're headed.

Sometimes the groundcover is mind-boggling in its range of colour and variety of form.

We're getting, at least for the time being, a little closer to the valley floor and the areas between the ridges become increasingly boggy.

Over to the right is a tarn that has been infected with didymo. It spews a constant stream of free cells into the river below and on into the lakes.

There's a serious bit of sidling ahead unless we want a longish detour around the bottom

Looks like we're headed up again. There's an orange pole we can just see, and a 4WD track winding its way up just to the left of centre.

However, before we go up, we have a bit more down ahead of us.

There's still a lot of valley to go. We've been walking four and a half hours now, against the DoC estimate of three hours. We will take six and a half. Miranda is still not feeling like eating and a cup of tea is still more than she can handle, so she's been swallowing water and battling on. I've had a few pieces of biltong, and I've topped up water from a clear stream at least once. There's no shade.

We start heading up again towards the 4WD track and the orange pole. The heat is coming off the rocks like a bath.

There's a pale ghreen lichen growing on the rocks that's rather lovely.

Miranda hits the wall again. There's still no shade, but I discover there is some virtue to being stout, and I meditate for about ten minutes until she is OK to continue. A wet hat provides some relief.