Within the hour

The trail climbed steeply away from the huts and an hour able we were able to look back at where we'd come from - it's there very small at the bottom of the valley. Always surprising how fast out gain height sometimes although I must say carrying Heavy packs takes it out of you!

The morning after the night before

Well hardly slept a wink with everyone wriggling around on the plastic hospital mattresses and snoring. Give me a hotel room with en-suite any day! Climbed out of bed at 6:30 as there was no point pretending any more and made our breakfast and were ready to head off by 7:45. Weather still defying all the odds with perfect blue skies - amazing!

After dinner speeches!

So around 8pm our warden called us all outside with the sand flies for our evenings entertainment - obviously the guy fancied himself as a bit of a Tommy Cooper so we sat though 1 1/2 hours of "entertaining" stories with a smattering of interesting facts while we were bitten to death. Maybe we were just tired but after a while the stories were so bad we ended up in hysterics at the whole thing :-O

Camp Cook

Our first real camping experience! After all the bananas were gone we had to fend for ourselves. Made a well deserved hot coffee when we arrived and then dined on butter chicken made in our little camping cook set.

Mackenzie hut

Arrived at the hut for our first night in the trail quite late. Had a bit of a pavlova sorting out our bunks as we didn't really know how the system worked. The beds we chose from the board turned out to be non-existent no matter how many people we asked but eventually got some beds but they were all in a row sleeping right next to other smelly people. Don't like roughing it!

Earland Falls

A nice stop! Woo double rainbows! Oh and a waterfall which made a nice place for a stop :)

Alpine flowers

Apparently they are all wight because the are pollinated by moths at night - there you go!