Mossburn Highway to the Mouth of the Mavora River

Whoo boy, today was a doozie.  After a trip to the ranger station for a hut pass and a 1.5 hr wait for a hitch, I set off along the Mavora Lakes Road for what was supposed to be 11km of road walking.  Thanks to one short hitch from a chatty farmer (i.e. maybe 100m) and one more hitch from a hiker on his day off (to get me back to the trail after I walked past it), I finally reached the Mavora River.

Following another farmer's instructions, I ended up crawling 5-10m through bush lawyer and devil's tongue to reach the river and my orange TA poles again.  (These farmers are nicer than I expect.  I usually expect shouting/shooing rather than trail-finding advise when I'm standing lost in the middle of a patch of dirt when the farmer comes to plow.  It's not their fault that they don't think the orange marker poles just across their boundary fences mark a footpath.  They can look as well as the next person and tell you there's no worn tread there.)

The river "path" was reasonable, though.  It went through reasonably low (knee-high) grasses with only occasional prickly bushes and thistle barring your way.  There were tons of yellow-flowering shrubs, and lupine dotted the banks of the Mavora.  As long as I kept to the poles, there was even a beaten footpath that showed up from time to time.  If you went away from the poles in hopes of following the river rather than winding back and forth between river and farm fence, you ended up in hip-deep bog.  (Ask me how I know.)

After 2-3hrs of moderate progress along the banks, the trail forded the lower calf-deep river (full of algae-like gunk and didymo) and headed to a super-fast path through the woods.  Older, well-spaced trees + drought = zooming trampers.  There weren't even a ton of roots to keep me from a 4km/hr rate!  There was some nifty rotting wood along the path - it didn't have signs of lichenous/mossy fuzz, but it was turning a nice teal/turquoise color as it decomposed.

Unfortunately, the terrain was so nice that I passed 5 quality camping spots and ended up on a bluff above the river (and away from a water source) before I got tired.  After another hour of hiking, I've made it to a little divot in the land near the mouth of the Mavora.  I've covered 30+km today (and that doesn't include the piecemeal hitches, since I wasn't walking then).  I'm glad that I covered good ground today, there's some nasty weather hitting the fiordlands, and who knows how far inland it will come.  I'm just hoping there won't be rain tonight, as my tent site is a prime pond spot.