Wanting to make it to Boyle Village and the Outdoor Center at a reasonable time we got started earlier than normal this morning. We had another good night’s sleep with no disturbances in the night and enjoyed a nice breakfast in the morning. We set out as the sun was just starting to rise around 730. We quickly discovered that even though it wasn’t raining and was shaping up to be a clear blue sky day the grass was mostly frozen solid due to the temperatures overnight. Our feet and lower halves were soaked and freezing within 30 minutes of leaving the hut.

The sun decided to come up as slowly as possible and it felt like it wasn’t until around noon that we were actually warming up. The valley we were hiking in had great views but the trail itself was either very rocky or very boggy.

Near lunch time we hit the tiny Rokeby Hut, a small old hut built in the early 1930’s. Certainly grateful that we didn’t need to stay there. We kept going for a short while and made it to the next hut for lunch. This was a serviced hut so should’ve been nice but was really old and didn’t have any water supply, so very glad again that we didn’t stay here.

We had another 15km or so to go to Boyle Village and were both getting pretty tired by now. The day was hot and I think we were both feeling exhausted from the five day trek. We stumbled on for several hours (over the course of which I managed to loose my water bottle) and across a few swing bridges and eventually made it to Boyle Village.

We had planned on staying at Boyle for the night (the village is just an outdoor center, there isn’t actually anything else here). When we arrived there were a bunch if different signs with confusing directions for TA hikers. It was clear that they got a lot of hikers come through and were trying to maintain some semblance of order. Unfortunately one of the signs also said “Closed for the weekend” which the notes hadn’t made clear. We shipped a food resupply box here as well so needed to pick that up at least. We sat for awhile getting eaten by sandflies until a sort of hut warden showed up. It was her first weekend looking after the place and she had no idea what she was doing and didn’t have the confidence to do it without specific directions. Eventually she was able to pull out a sheet that had our names and that we and boxes and were staying the night so she was happy to let us stay after that and got our boxes. She wasn’t sure where we should stay and put us in the main lodge which has about 70 bunks. We’re pretty sure we’re not supposed to be in here but we have it all to ourselves and have had a shower, have a huge kitchen, and nice bunks for the night.