I woke with some anxiety that today would be more of yesterday. Fortunately, I was wrong, as I am occasionally.

We're off at just after 9 am, planning a cruisy short trip to the Ada Hut. Frankly, I was under-trained for yesterday and I'm glad of a short day. We have a light misty drizzle, but it's still warm enough to leave off the polyprops. The track for the most part sticks close to the river.

This is the way I had imagined the trip. However, just as I am starting to relax, the Maruia cuts in hard against the bank we're on, and we have to climb sharply for a bit.

It does this several times - just enough to keep me slightly wary.

We break out into meadow.

There's a fine purple topped grass which soaks up every possible bit of dew and unloads it onto our legs and sox. It's the only time on the trip that I get wet feet. Gaiters? Maybe....

We continue through scrappy open forest, still close to the river, and then through more meadow. The cloud cover is very low. I am unconcerned. The track is, at least for the moment, flat. I am also spotting more wildflowers here and there, in particular a small red hawkbit (I think) instead of the usual yellow dandelion style we have up north, and a tiny pale blue flower which I see later in a DoC pamphlet described as a NZ Bluebell.

We cross a dry boulder creek and again I wonder at the force of water necessary to create this creek bed.

There's more bush, and the occasional ferny glade

and more rocky creek beds. We start to climb a little - gently,

and it's more open forest path

We emerge onto a large avalanche field, parts of which have a wonderful alpine plant cover, and a characteristic red lichen covering the rocks.

We climb once again, gently, into the forest above the river.

You wouldn't want to bush-crash too far in that lot.

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