Bush and Baths

Almost a year ago to the day we had attempted this route in reverse, going up Rocky Creek and descending Griffin Creek. An hour before darkness we stood less than 40m vertically below the saddle between the two valleys at the base of what I recalled to be "a 15m waterfall, at least vertical and probably overhanging". We'd had enough and headed back to Rocky Creek Hut, not sure if we were even on the right route. All we knew was that it had taken us far too long to get up Rocky Creek and that crossing to Griffin was now out of the question.

We were still keen to see Griffin Creek and Hut however as well as complete the circuit so a fine Saturday morning saw us parked once again at the Rocky Creek end together with three Nelson based trampers who were walking up Rocky Creek.. We however were going to do the trip in reverse, so all being well we would see them at Griffin Hut later in the day.

Walking in to Griffin Creek was more straightforward than we expected. The track is well marked and although very steep in sections there are plenty of tree roots to pull on. The bush is the beautifully lush West Coast type.

Only the scrub zone is overgrown which takes about 10 minutes to negotiate and we stopped for lunch just off of point 974m where we had lunch with an inquisitive weka.

The descent from here is pretty narrow, but the trees block out most of the exposure and pretty soon we were at Griffin Creek. This is a lovely valley with deep river pools and Blue Duck. We counted 8 in total, but maybe 2 were the same and following us up the river.

It's only 45 minutes up to Griffin Hut which is a real treat with many homely touches. The best past is that a bath has been installed down by the creek. This is heated by making a fire under it. Sitting it a warm bath in the bush whilst a weka tries to steal your clothes is a wonderful experience.

The other trampers that we had seen at the Rocky Creek entrance didn't arrive until gone 8:00pm so we went to bed expecting another big Sunday.

The track over the saddle is pretty overgrown. It starts off OK and then you walk in a creek for a bit, but after that it's a fight to make progress. The 1km from the hut to the saddle took us 2 hours in total. We couldn't see much from the saddle itself as the cloud had come down, the saddle is just high enough to reach the scrub zone.

The initial descent from the saddle is better and pretty soon we were crossing the slip mentioned in all of the route guides.

We then found ourselves at the top of the waterfall that we had been below a year previously.
On closer inspection, it was more a waterslide than a waterfall, with three flat sections in between three short steps. Maybe in total 5m. It's funny how your mind plays tricks on you.

The waterslide was easily negotiated and an hour later we were back at the turning to Rocky Creek Hut, on the route we had walked last year.

Rocky Creek is much prettier in its lower sections than the confined and overgrown creek head. With the knowledge of several shortcuts on a lot of the bends we are getting much faster at this section of the route and pretty soon we reached the start of the route to sidle across to the Taipo Valley.

For the second tramp in a row we bumped in to Frank and Honora. They were busy cutting the track on the descent to the Taipo Valley and had done a great job, especially on the river flats which were no longer a maze. We arrived back at the car after having taking 8 hours from Griffin Hut, which we thought was quite a respectable effort.