Day 90 – Nelson lakes day four – Blue Lake to Waiau hut

Starting from Blue Lake hut the path goes up to Lake Constance, then up more along the western shore and back down to the lake. The path seems almost unnecessarily aggressive and although Lake Constance isn’t as striking as Blue lake, it sits in a bowl surrounded by mountains on three sides. I have to admit I wish I would have gone on with Katie, Gerben and Sanna and camped there instead of staying at Blue Lake. I sat at Lake Constance for a while, eating second breakfast and watching other hikers come over the pass.

Eventually I decided it was time to go and started the steep climb up Waiau pass. I don’t know why there weren’t switchbacks on the way up, there could have been and maybe should have been, but no. After the first climb the trail levels out enough to catch your breath before ascending once again. The good part is that the top you can see from the second climb is actually the top of the saddle.

I ate lunch at the top and was soon joined by Pete, Katie, Sam, Tristin and Veronique.

It was an absolutely amazing spot.

The way down was extremely steep, it would have been a lot of fun to climb up, but a couple sections required us to put our poles away and climb down backwards using our hands and not being able to see clearly where there next food holds were, which is particularly tricky with a big pack.

When we got to the first stream we took a break, Sam needed water to make her lunch so she couldn’t break at the top. Tristan busted out his ukulele and we sat in an alpine garden for a while just enjoying the gorgeous day.

We had a great view of Lake Thompson, there isn’t a trail to it and it requires descending 500 meters then going back to another 500 meters along a stream, but it’s supposed to be an amazing campsite. I decided with the forecast of rain in two days (last we checked) that I’d be better off skipping it.

We hiked a little further down to a campsite where I thought about staying, with all the breaks it was already 4 PM and the trail notes said it was another four hours to the next hut, although there was camping along the way. I decided to make it to the hut, put some music on and picked up the pace.

I managed to make it to the Waiau hut around 7, all the beds were taken, but I was fine to camp. Tristan and Veronique also camped there, but the rest camped along the way.

There were tons of sandflies. So many that sitting in my tent it sounded like it was raining with all the sandflies hitting the inner wall of the tent. I’ve gotten used to getting in the tent quickly, then sitting there for ten minutes and killing the sandflies that got in with me before doing anything else.