Day 5 – Kia Ora to Bert Nichols (aka Windy Ridge)

Definitely shorts weather by this day, boots had all dried out, no need for gloves and swapping merino wool layers for quick dry hiking shirt. As an aside, I was actually worried out the hot days and the heat, cold weather I’m good with, but hot days are a bit of my nemesis. Nothing worse than having to slap on layers of sunscreen and sweating all day – hence i really try to opt for long sleeve collar shirts and a good hat for sun protection, I have found the lightweight merino tops (say around 170 or 160gsm) are a good compromise for cold and warm days, the ones I have (from IO merino) have collars too which is much better than the open neck ones, I took two of these and also a stock hiking shirt (collar with long sleeve) for the potential of much hotter days, worked pretty good. I would probably only consider taking a singlet as well since sleeping in wool was actually too hot, even in the tent.

Got myself a new cool hat to replace my 10 year old cotton one, its one from a brand called Shelta, there is local (the only one too) distributor in Sydney where i could try them out, which is key since I have a fat head apparently, so the usual macpac or Katmandu ones just don’t cut it for me, too small. The shelta ones have sizes up to XXl which is great, they also have a stiff peak in them to avoid the floppy hat syndrome and are lightweight and float 🙂 check them out, they have lots of types to suit hiking and boating. Expedition Kayaks is the distro for them.

Thats probably enough product placement for me 🙂 that said it is always great to talk to people about gear and get their lived experience, counts so much more than online reviews and the AI generated slop.

There was a couple of big waterfalls to check out on this section of walk, however the first stop was Ducane hut, a historic old number with a huge fireplace, how it never burnt down is beyond me, wooden hut with a big ass fire 🙂 Cool hut tho, gotta say the bunks looked a bit rough 🙂 great shot of the top of Mount Ossa in there too.

The first set of falls was Dalton and Ferguson, tough ones to shoot given the light but also access is kinda limited, basically your stuck on the edge of the cliff looking at the falls. The next one, Harnett falls was much better, you could walk all the way up to the base of the falls (if your keen) and also go for a swim, which we did, actually floated down the river, the water was actually not too bad, definitely helped that the sun was fully out so easy to warm up afterwards.

There was a marked change in the terrain and bush on this day, it makes sense since you are dropping in altitude, the bush starts to resemble the same kinda stuff you see in sydney and the blue mountains. There was lots of cool fungi and also a few nice little waterfalls which I had to definitely stop and take shots of, just battled the local spiders for a good view 🙂 Lots of the same typical path shots in this set, hard to take a bad shot when you have cool paths and great trees.

The Bert Nichols hut is pretty good, older style but I wish we had camped rather than hutted this one, however we had a very early start the next day so opted for hut.

Astro was definitely on the cards this night, so it was off to the helicopter pad for some late night star gazing, these turned out OK and it was cool to see the different shots with a variety of lighting from the other campers 🙂 its actually a bit boring if its all pitch black.

I did have a tripod failure moment here, whilst doing a full overhead pano, my little tripod struggled to hold the camera still, so a couple of frames had star trails in them 🙂

These are my highlight images from day 5.