Hazel dropped Dennis and I off at the SH63 end of the track in good time - a short bush section took us to a nicely graded 4WD track that took us up to the Red Hills Hut by mid morning. Every hut for the next 8 days was a real pleasure - mostly 5-6 people huts in lovely locations. Each day we normally reached a hut by mid to late morning, and then moved onto the next one for the night - but the spacing provides really good options for shorter days if the weather or peoples' bodies demand it !
Generally this is a harder section through almost all of the entire length - we were carrying 2 days spare food and used one of those by completing the route through to Pelorus Bridge in 7.5 days, rather than the planned 7 days.
A really exciting point from a TA point of view, given that we were travelling the reverse of the normal direction is the number of TA people we met each day - average probably just below 2 - 2 other kiwis, a lot of people from the US, and one Indian. So really providing a good view of the number of people TA is brinigning into the country.
The section from Red Hills Hut to Porters Creek Hut involves a steady sidle in a semi circle of the Red Hills, with some steep and rough descents and ascents into side streams which exposed the truly tortured nature of the landscape. A geologist's dream place I am sure, with all sorts of rocks all within a very small area.
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