Glade Wharf – Clinton Hut (7.1 km)

Sunday, March 10: Cloud at first, then mainly sunny apart from one cloudy period

GPS Tour
Youtube Video

Bridge over the River Clinton at Glade Lodge

Up at 7:30, which was cutting it fairly fine, especially after the cooked breakfast of baked beans from some abandoned food and fried eggs took about twice as long to prepare as it should have, due to the defective can opener.

Anyway, that out of the way, all the stuff was packed up and into the car. Couldn’t locate the tickets and thought about unpacking everything again, but they turned up in one of the many pockets of the hiking trousers. Short wait at reception to pay a parking fee of $10 for safe parking at the back of the motorcamp for the duration of the hike. Then it was the short stroll down the road to DoC where the bus was already waiting and, soon after that, loading.

Wetlands from helipad, Clinton Hut (panorama detail)

The trip to Te Anau Downs continued to be cloudy and we were immediately left onto the boat where I availed myself of a cup of coffee and then went onto the upper deck for photos. Fairly soon we were launched, and the weather started improving almost concurrently. Everyone was friendly and introduced themselves without much prompting, so there was easy conversation. Views were pretty amazing – even compared to 2009.

Swimming hole at Clinton Hut (panorama detail)

At Glade House I stopped to take a number of brackets before walking down the very dry and dusty track towards Clinton. At the hut had lunch with an American family (Chris, Lauren, Nick and a younger brother), and set up my spot tracker for a first message. Then it was down to the helipad to recreate the notorious Clinton Wetlands panorama – had to tilt the camera to portrait to get the mountains in and there will be a little parallax, but I’m sure hugin will set that right. Then it was down to the river (for another panorama), and to look for the blue berries. The river bed looked very washed out after the floods in January, and there appeared to be only juvenile plants present, and no berries. But then I found a couple of bushes with blue, and another with very light green berries.

Tiny blue berries growing on a shrub in the river bed – unidentified

Ranger Ross gave a nature talk and I asked him whether he was stationed an the track in February, 2009 – he said he had been at Dumpling, but I am fairly sure Mel & I met him coming from Mintaro ending duty on Day 2. Asked him about the berries and he said they were wineberries. (They are apparently not, but that is now a task for another journey.)

Back at the ranch cooked dinner of rice, peas & instant noodles, which I ate with an Australian group, Chris, his sister Shandra and her husband Alan. Then it was time for Ross’s hut talk.

Still have to wash the sox before the ISS flies over, and there should also be some time for long exposures of the glowworms in lieu of sleeping. Mark (veterinarian from California) had an interesting suggestion of delaying the flash (slow synch) to catch both the glowworms and their surroundings, which worked OK on his Canon, but not so well on mine. To bed at around midnight.