Day 55: Merrival Hut to Martins Hut: The Longwood Forest

29km, 9 hours

The Longwood Forest. the only thing I'd heard about the Longwoods is mud. It almost has these connotations of a forest you'd find in a fairy tale. An evil forest. Old trees, damp, mossy, cold, no water and mountains of mud. And it was exactly that.

The crew were up early. Conny and I had the pleasure of being on the bottom bunks and listened to the sounds of a thousand mice scuttle across the floor. As soon as I put my head on my pillow I heard scratching. So I was quickly up moving all our food bags off the ground and hanging bread bags from the wires on the ceiling. There's nothing worse than listening to mice underneath you and in the walls beside you so I put my earplugs in and tried to sleep and forget they're all around me.

It was our first misty morning but that was a good sign as while the rest of the country was dealing with a cyclone and torrential rain, we were getting beautiful clear blue sky days. It's like we have been in a weather bubble and one day ahead of bad weather the entire trek down the south island.

Walking 5km on the dirt road again we all walked together chatting. We all were coming up with 'your top 3...' questions. Like your top 3 best days on trail, your most influential persons met and even our worst 3 days on trail. Funnily enough none of us could come up with 3 bad days, we all capped it at 2.

The five of us powered through the tracks this morning, we were energized for the final days!

Then the farm track ended and we were finally into the dreaded Longwood Forest.

It was incredible. Straight away I was like this forest is seriously cool. It was just bendy eerie old trees everywhere and mud puddles that weren't so bad to walk through. Thankfully there hasn't been rain for a while so the mud was a harder sticky consistency vs wet slippery mud.

I was loving it! We made it through the first section and was out into the clearing, wet soggy marshlands area where we all met up at the phone tower and had an early lunch. All commenting we thought the Longwood would be much worse than it was even saying 'its not that bad'.

Little did we know...

Another 5km down the 4wd track and we were back into the forest. Oh my word. Mud. Mud like you've never seen before. 20 kilometres of mud. Mud up to your shins, mud up to your knees. Sloppy wet mud and there was no way around it! The sign at the start said beware off trail because it's an old mining area so there are old mine shafts and then water races hidden throughout. So even trying to avoid wading through mud I seem to risk falling down a mine shaft. I took my chances at some points.

There were times where I was so suctioned deep in the mud I was paranoid I'd lose a shoe and then I'd be really stuck. Or you'd have to twist your knee so awkwardly to get out you fear you're going to do a knee injury. I avoided a deep mud hole at one point only to step into a smaller pool thinking it was shallow and I was knee deep in a hole. It was just hilarious.

When are you ever faced with hiking through this much mud. It stunk! And there was no point getting frustrated with it you just had to laugh and appreciate being a smelly dirty little pig in the mud. With mud everywhere I also would remind myself that I'm 2 days from a shower. Ohhh good times.

Finally out of the forest again and into the tops we hit the Trig on top of Mt Longwood. The boys well in front were long gone but Laura, Conny and I chilled there for an hour having a second lunch, laughing at the state of us and the filth we were in. We were just so happy at being filthy. The views were incredible of all the ocean around us and we could see so clearly our next three days.

The trig also signifies 100km to the finish so of course we had to take some photos and chat about how far we had come. The three of us had started on the same day and we couldn't believe we were still here together. We could have stayed up there all day but we had 4km left to walk in the mud to get to Martin's Hut.

Down hill we go back into the mud. Oh we laughed! Congratulating each other for not having fallen in it yet, when next minute Conny slid straight down into the mud. I laughed so hard trailing behind and said 'well I won't be going that way'. Choosing the other side of the downward slope and in a quick second I too was down on my bum in the mud. Filthy!

I would then slip over another two times before I got to the hut. Now looking like I had badly soiled my black shorts. There's nothing I could do about it. Us girls commenting to each other there are not many girls who could have got through today. (TA hikers excluded) but put any girl in a 20km mud pit and get them to make their way through...

Finally we see the hut and loud, laughing and in high spirits we turn up and David and Ivan are just peaceful clean and chilling on a hut mattress in front of the hut. Their look at us was like 'what the hell has happened'. How did we get so muddy they asked.

Someone had discovered a stream about a 10 minute solid bush bash in the forest from the hut and had drawn a map in the hut book. Us 3 girls were set on getting there to clean ourselves off. Nothing's ever straight forward. I was head high in ferns in a hole, clambering down a bank to find this stream. We get there and it was only just slightly more than a trickle. I was upstream doing my absolute best but not getting anywhere to clean off. My dirty water hitting Laura trying to clean herself then the even dirtier water getting Conny. It was like the 3 of us had come out of the trenches and were trying to clean ourselves but we just seem to be spreading the mud further.

We gave up and then climbed back up to the hut.

It was just us again in the 4 bed very very old NZ forestry hut. The boys being gentlemen camped so we could have the beds but by the state of the inside of the hut, having half a floor, gaps to the outside world and looking like a horror movie location I think they chose the better option.

We sat outside cooking our meals together. Our favourite part of the day. Talking rubbish. The joke between Ivan and I have changed and he's now proposing to me at bluff so we have put in an open invite in the hut intentions book for a wedding at Rocks Hut in the Richmonds for Nov 23. This is all a joke but to all the hikers behind, they have no other reason to believe it true.

Before heading to bed us girls thought the hut being so holey would be freezing, we put on all our thermals only to be so hot that night in the hut we were down to our underwear before morning.

I've never been more tired in a hut but the 3 of us girls talked and laughed for ages. It was our last hut on the trail after all so we made the most of it.

Ren x

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