WILD TRIPS
Shaken and STIRRED
A hut isn't the best place to get a good night's sleep, but Sally Turnbull had a particularly restless night on the Old Ghost Road when the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake hit.
“We were in Specimen Point Hut. It was full and we'd gone to bed as normal,” she says. “At about midnight, the hut started to shake.”
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake, described as the ‘most complex earthquake ever studied’, lasted around two minutes.
“The hut was really rocking and rolling. All the pots and pans were rattling and everyone was waking up,” says Turnbull. “It was so huge we thought the alpine fault must have gone. It went on for a long time, with several aftershocks. Everyone was calm though, and nobody panicked.”
The hut sits on a high point with a view over the Mokihinui River, and the trampers were concerned about safety. “The hut had moved around a lot,” Turnbull says, “and given it's on a cliff we thought it would be prudent to go and check if we were still
