By Ruth
Distance: ??
We woke up from our fourth and final night at the motel in Hanmer Springs, sad to be leaving behind the luxury, but looking forward to being on a new trail – one of our own choosing! We went out for one last flat white before getting our thumbs out for the hitch back to Boyle Village (actually a few kilometres beyond Boyle along the highway).
The hitch was a bit of an adventure on its own, as first we got a short ride out of Hanmer to the highway junction, and then got picked up from there by a couple who are modern-day gold diggers out near Reefton. They were a very colourful couple. Other than the panning for gold (actually they were proud to tell us they run a “sluice operation” – no idea what that means), the lady declared herself the undisputed hitchhiking champion of the world. We had to agree the title was deserved when we found out the car she was driving us in had been given to her when she was hitchhiking a few weeks ago! Pretty incredible.
Almost two hours after we started trying to get a ride, we got dropped at the trailhead for the hike we had planned: the Nina Valley track, then up to the Sylvia Tops and down to Devilskin Saddle where we planned to spend the night at the Devil’s Den Bivvy, a tiny two-person hut at the top of the saddle.
At first the walking was pleasant and easy along the valley floor. Then we crossed the Nina River (and went for a dip, of course) and began to climb. It was probably one of the most difficult climbs of any hike we’ve done in NZ. It was so steep and also quite overgrown. I kept having to use tree roots and branches to pull myself up the trail. After a strenuous couple of hours we emerged above the bush line and out onto the “tops”. Basically the tops are a short mountain ridge with several high points that we went over. We could have stayed in the valley the whole time but we wanted a bit of a challenge, so we chose to tackle this route.
As I mentioned, the trail up to the tops was overgrown, but it was marked. Once we emerged from the trees, all trail markers stopped, but it wasn’t too difficult to tell where to go since we were following a ridge at that point. It was very fun up there, the views were great and the walking not too tough.
As we reached the end of the tops, Devilskin Saddle and the hut came into view. Then came the hard part: figuring out how to get down off the ridge and onto the saddle. It was after 5 pm at this point, and the way down we thought we would go looked very steep and exposed. So we had to climb up one last “top” in order to access a safe route down. The way we went down was not exposed, but it was very steep and covered with dense grasses which were either very slippery or sharp enough to stab you and draw blood. It was a bit stressful and unpleasant, but all in all we handled it pretty well.
We reached the bivvy around 6:30 pm. It is such a cute little hut, perfect for two people. After a pretty tough day we are exactly where we wanted to be: cozy inside with mountains all around.
