About an hour from Dunedin, sitting at the top of the Rock and Pillar Range, is a little gem: Big Hut.
The hut is up at the top here, somewhere
It's a place I was keen to visit because 1) I'd heard about the interesting landscape surrounding the hut, 2) it could be reached on foot in just a few hours, and 3) I could convince a few friends to come along by saying things like, It's only a short drive from Dunedin!... The views will be great!... It's just a little walk up the hill to get to the hut!
Thankfully, on the day of our adventure, the sun was out the whole time. Just after leaving the car park we all warmed up enough to be comfortable in just a t-shirt and shorts. By the time we reached the hut, it was a whole other story. We were freezing!
Correction: it's a steep little walk up a large hill to get to the hut
I just love how diverse the scenery is here! This area around Middlemarch looks nothing like Dunedin, or Queenstown, or Wellington...
It took just under three hours to reach the hut. Mostly, we were slowed down by steep sections like this:
This is similar to the terrain at the Northburn Station 50k I ran a few months ago
Here's a wee bit of the hike that I filmed during one rest stop:
If we were interested in staying at the hut overnight we could have slept in a large bunkroom. The hut doesn't have any source of heat (well, there's some solar powered contraption that sort of kept the kitchen area at an "I'm freezing, but I don't think I'll get frostbite" temperature) so we would have had to play LOTS of table tennis to stay warm (can you believe someone managed to get a ping pong table up there?!).
It was c-c-c-cold at the hut!
We stayed in the hut long enough for a quick lunch and then headed back to the car.
All in all, it was a lovely day walk. I think I'll plan to go back to run the track for marathon training. As for my friends, I imagine they'd go back again...in summer!
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