Another short one today! Jaunted through the woods to Aparima Hut. It was 17/16.5/13.5km, depending on which sign or notation that you trust, and thought the trail notes said navigation would be tricky, the trail was clear and well marked.
The rolling terrain was largely split into open mossy forest or open-ish bracken woods. The weather was poor - cold and wet with mostly just a light, steady mist and a bit of a breeze. With the help of the weather, the ferns and grasses kept me soaked from the knee down, while everything covered by my rain shell and skirt barely got damp. I kept my gloves and my fleece beanie on nearly all day.
I must have seen well over 100 different types of moss today, and it honestly wouldn't surprise me if that guess is an order of magnitude too low. There was stuff that looked like tiny ferns and tufted evergreens and other stringy mosses hanging from the birches. The mosses were a gazillion different hues, but my favorite was a pale green-white moss that hinted of edelweiss. I didn't stop for anything more than a few sips of water and two nut bars all day, and so I made it to the hut (complete with pot-bellied stove!) for a late lunch of melty cheese quesadilla around 3ish. The fire's warming everything up now, but this hut is big and new and drafty. Thank heavens for whoever filled the wood pile so well!
Oh, and while they weren't yesterday's Telford Tops daisies or the little shrubs with tiny white flowers, today's prairie did have some evergreen-looking shrubs/trees that adorned themselves with a rather attractive small, white flower. Up close these guys have tiny round leaves that rotate around projecting stems, and they (or something that tends to share similar habitat) every now and then smeel just faintly of allspice. They almost look like self-decorating Christmas trees. (I've since learned that those trees are Manuka trees, and those small flowers produce a pretty tasty honey.)
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