heavy rain warning

spent the week in the clinton doing the whio thing again. managed to scam another ride in the waka huri huri (yay for made-up maori words for things that never existed before europeans arrived) which saved me 13 miles of walking. Wed was a cracker day during which i located a new nest after much cursing and swearing at house-sized boulders and dense coprosma shubbery. a fair chunk of the riverbed was dry, so spent most of the day "looking for ducks" while really avoiding the crowds of walkers that spoil the track now that the season has started. Woke on thurs morning to a big rumbling noise which i was praying wasn't the cliff in front of the hut collasping. turned out it was only an avalanche behind the hut (which is not much of a brighter prospect). pissing with rain and a heavy rain warning on the sched, so i skedaddled down the pomp gorge before the river got to high and then checked out red and kitty who are presumably still nesting. smashed a canada goose's nest much to her distress but better than having a bunch of geese flapping around upsetting the balance of things. looks like verne and shirley are still nesting as well which is good. picked up eric's tx down at 6 mile - not sure what happened to him. no carcass, so hopefully it's a case of dropped transmitter and not something more sinister. Headed back to the hut quite damp and settled in for the evening. lit the fire, cooked up a big feed and was about to go to bed when i heard a knocking at the door. now one never gets visitors at castle, so thought it was a bit weird. turned out to be bushy, the warden from mintaro who had been sent to get me. the office bods were a bit worried that my hut might fall into the river because of the heavy rain, so i had to pack up and walk the hour up to mintaro on that dark and stormy night. trundled back down there this morning to find the hut fully intact (much to my disappointment as i had left most of my crappy uniform in the hut, hoping that it would wash away and i could get it replaced with new things). packed up the rest of my shit and walked out to glade in the pissing rain. 20mm an hour it was falling, with the river rising quite fast. hopefully maude and shirley's nests haven't washed away and the ducklings down at forks are okay. should now be sorting out my wet shit at the backdoor....but where's the fun in that??