Honora suggested going to Rocky Creek for some more track work. I was keen as I reckon there's still another half dozen full weekends worth there.
The forecast was for rain easing off on Saturday. We'd spend the night cosy in Rocky Creek hut.
It was raining when we drove over the pass on Saturday morning. When I turned off the highway at the Taipo bridge I saw the gorse and himalayan honeysuckle was crowding tighter along the track. I wound in the side mirrors, but I forgot to lower the aerial so it got damaged. Then we had to get out and get changed in the rain. I suppose it's good to get the negative bits over with early in the trip.
The track to Rocky Creek starts a few hundred metres up the Taipo. The river was sliding along, muddy gray, and bigger than I'd seen it there before.
I expected the track up onto the high terrace to need a bit of work but it was in fairly good condition. There were only two serious windfalls to be cleared.
When we got down to Rocky Creek we instantly saw a change of plans was needed. It was still running quite high, crashing down through it's bouldery bed. There was no way we could get across and travel up to the hut.
We pitched the fly in the same spot we used on our first weekend in March last year and started working on the track back toward the terrace.
We widened it out to the full 2 metres and cleared all the sight lines. It was raining the whole time so it was wet work.
When darkness fell we packed it in and retired to the fly.
We'd set the camp up quite well and had a cosy evening in our snug shelter.
In the morning we learned we'd both woken during the night thinking about flash floods and debris flows. We were camped about 20 metres above the creek but stormy nights do do strange things to your imagination.
But it had cleared up overnight and we got stuck in on the track back across the high terrace. We actually worked pretty solidly and didn't pause until after 2.00 pm, way past our usual lunchtime.
When we got back to our fly we found it had been ransacked by a weka. We hadn't seen any in Rocky Creek previously, so it was good to know there were still some about. Fortunately for us our misdemeanant weka hadn't made off with anything other than an empty sardine can so there was no real harm done.
One thing I took care of was to remove the old permolats that led poor Merv Meredith's party from the Peninsula TC astray. They'd followed them up the hill till they petered out and then bush-bashed across the top of the big slip. Now markers clearly show the route goes out into the creek.
We cooked up lunch out in the creek bed, shifting position continuously as the narrow beam of sunlight moved across the stones.
After that we packed up and walked out.
Back on the road we drove down to the Harringtons track at Griffin Creek. We wanted to clear some windfalls that had come down on the track we cut in April last year. However while working on them Honora's loppers flipped out of her grasp and banged her in the mouth, knocking one of her incisors out of its socket. Honora is very stoic but it was time to go.
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