After leaving the Marble Hill campsite we continued west along Lewis Pass to the Rahu Saddle where we planned to do another hike. We pulled over at a small trailhead by the side of the road and started up the Klondyke Valley track.
As soon as we left the trailhead we were immediately in very dense forest and it felt as if every surface was covered in a different shade of green. We had chosen the valley route, thinking that it would be more sheltered should the weather have not turned out to be so nice, but we hadn’t taken into account the rain from the previous week or maybe weeks!
The trail followed the Rahu River which we could often hear off in the distance, but everywhere we looked there was water. In places the trail itself was so waterlogged it felt like we were walking on a giant sponge. We were able to pick our way through the forest, keeping mostly to the slightly drier sections.
We carefully made our way across the river at one point, luckily the water level wasn’t too high, although I think by this point our feet were wet enough that we might not have noticed!
A little further along we stopped and looked up to see what we think was a Kaka a quite rare Alpine parrot. We stood for a while watching the Kaka jump around in the branches, it didn’t seem to mind us watching.
Eventually the Kaka flew away and so we continued to carefully make our way through the forest. Luckily by this point the trail had started to dry out, although it wasn’t always easy to find amongst the dense vegetation.
Without warning the trail left the trees and we found ourselves in a large basin surrounded by steep rock walls on every side. Immediately opposite us as we stood at the entrance to the clearing was a tall waterfall, and the sound of the water seemed to echo around the basin.
As we stepped out onto the tussock grass in front of us, we realised that this entire area was a huge marsh. We were able to pick our way across the drier sections to get to the side of the lake.
We found a nice dry rock and were able to settle there to have our picnic in the sun overlooking the basin. We spent a while enjoying the quiet valley and the warmth of the sun after walking thorough the dense forest. After a while we made our way back down the valley to the campervan so that we could continue on to our next stop.