By Ruth

Distance: 23 km

This morning we woke up a bit early. We didn’t sleep that amazingly because the ground wasn’t too flat at Camp 485. On the plus side we saw this gorgeous sunrise, and got our earliest start yet - 7:20 am.

Today’s walk began in a nice forest with some easy river crossings. Afterwards we got into an active logging area. It was a bit shocking to see the contrast of one side of the road (the forest we had just walked out of), and the other side, where it was clearcut.

After this rude exposure to the forestry industry, we entered the Dome Forest. We had heard a lot of whispers about the Dome Forest, and how muddy and difficult the walking there is. Luckily, we have been having pretty nice and dry weather recently, and although the trail was muddy, it wasn’t bad at all. It was a very enjoyable section of forest walking.

So far I’ve noticed two big differences between the tramping we’ve done in NZ so far and the hikes we generally do in BC. One is the mud. I don’t know much about geology, but the soil here doesn’t seem to absorb much water. In BC when it rains the ground will pretty quickly soak up all the water, not leaving many puddles on the forest floor. But here the soil is like clay. Once it gets wet, the water will just sit on the surface forever, leading to lots and lots of mud.

The second thing is elevation profiles. In BC we usually hike up a mountain. The elevation profile is very simple: up and then down. Here we tend to walk either on the beach (flat) or on forest ridges which go up and down repeatedly. It is a different rhythm from what we are used to.

At the end of today we walked through some sheep pastures and on some roads before arriving at our hosts for the night – Roma and Graham’s place. We have pitched our tent on their lawn and have use of a whole little cabin with a kitchen stocked with bread, jam, milk, and frozen veggies. A real luxury stay.