Day Three: Pompolona to Quintin Lodge

Okay, so who told the Kea to get right under my cabin at 4:30 a.m. and start broadcasting his plans for the day to his buddies? And believe me, it was a big agenda... I nearly went against my bird-loving instincts, thinking of how far I could throw my boot with any accuracy. Needless to say, I saw the first puff of the generator that morning... at 6:00 a.m. trying to get back to my usual happy place after such a rude awakening.

As we all leave after breakfast and lunch packing activities, we are looking up. It seems that some of yesterday's gray is holding on, but we're hoping to have the morning sun coming through for our zigzagging up to the pass. As you can see from this photo, the waterfalls are filled and spilling happily down the mountainsides. Anywhere you looked this morning, there was clear air, clean bubbling water and grand vistas.

The sun starts coming out as if we planned it and after dripping vegetation with boardwalks crossing rocky riverbeds, we begin to move up the side of this saddle. The flowers are newly refreshed and coming out all over the edges of the trail. Although you are watching where your boots are going, it was just as important to stop, eat a chocolate, turn around and look out at what was all around you. The expanse continually took your breath away!

As we round the last zigzag, we see the top of the Quintin MacKinnon Memorial and know that we have gotten to 3278 Feet. We are jubilant! I'm going to post this photo without zooming in on it, because you've already seen the group I'm talking about (and how cute we are) and it's more important to see all the peaks so near us. We had walked 13, 705 steps to get there... (BRING IT ON!) and we were ready for lunch - as well as the show of dish washing that rivals ANY dish washing I've ever witnessed!!! Okay so maybe I was a bit giddy anyway. After having two major back surgeries, let's just say this was a bit of an affirmation to me that I don't have to stop doing all that I love because of any physical limitation. I was feeling pretty relieved and very excited.

The Clinton River Valley stretched out behind us now, making our progress in the last two days very apparent. After taking our last look at it, we started down the other side of the pass - the tougher side - since going down is usually more exhausting than going up. We had all been checking on one member of our group who had an injured knee. The guides all had radios to keep in contact with each other, so updates were immediate. We could only imagine the continual pain of that day and hoped that very good pain killers were on hand.

The descent was long and grueling, but we broke it up with songs (I've never heard the Do-Re-Mi Rap, but I assure you - it's out there now!) and encouragement to "get amongst it!"

To say that we were all leaning pretty heavily on our hiking sticks by the time we got to Quintin Lodge is an understatement. That stick was holding me upright by the time we got to the lodge. But after being assigned our bunks, we put down the packs, had something to drink and left for the remaining three mile roundtrip to Sutherland Falls. Walking without the pack was like flying!

The energy in the air was enough to fuel ten more walks up and down from the pass. We were SOAKED from the spray, but really charged by the ionized air and our day's accomplishment. We practically skipped back from that half mile of falling water. The view of where we'd come from after lunch was its own thrill - Mt. Balloon stretching to the sky.

Frankly, I'm surprised we didn't drink the champagne dry that night (I think we left at least one bottle...). We had a lovely dinner after we made sure that our injured colleague had an appropriate acknowledgment of the day's trials. The slide show that evening was especially exciting: accompanied by vegemite face-paints, a guest heckler to the evening's slide show commentary (which we VERY MUCH appreciated, given that we Milford 6 had silenced ourselves for the evening out of respect) and the fulfillment of a day well hiked.

The full moon is out this night and we gather outside to look at the magnificent stars and see the shadowy figures of the weka dashing about like little dinosaurs along the edges of the lodge.