Tuesday, 23 December 2025

Te Araroa 18/12/25

Day 88, Slaty Hut to Mount Rintoul Hut (1921)

We managed an early start and everyone untangled themselves to be away by seven.

Looking back to Slaty Hut
It was a misty morning as I set off into the cloud to start the climb to Old Man, over another hill first, all in open country, pity about the cloud.
Cloudy morning
Into the forest for a while then before climbing out onto the open scree slopes up to the top with some views through the cloud.
The clouds make it look even better 

A bit of forest then before the big rock and scree slopes up and over Mount Little Rintoul and the long climb to Mount Rintoul itself at 1731 meters.
Over the first top
The top is a big gravel plateaux and a lovely high-level walk, unfortunately with only occasional gaps in the cloud.
On the way up

On the top



On the right way down

The trail markers were easy to follow but I still managed to get it wrong and started descending the wrong way down a gully before realising my mistake and scrambling back up right to the last marker where the correct way was obvious.




Still plenty of down

And some up as well 
A very steep descent on scree to the tree line and an equally steep section in the trees, where l managed to slip up before reaching the very nice Mount Rintoul Hut.

Into the trees before Mt Rintoul Hut 
Only five in the hut tonight, the others went on to the next one.
Mount Rintoul Hut 


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