The holidays have ended early for stranded guests at Lake Ōhau Lodge, leaving the isolated village by any means possible.
Wednesday saw relief for both residents and visitors to the Waitaki District as wild weather eased and repairs ramped up.
Paddock one day and a temporary highway the next - flooding caused farmland to act as the new road out of Lake Ōhau.
"Getting 19 carloads of guests whose holidays had come to an end, we got them down to State Highway 8 so they could head off on their own to other parts of New Zealand," Ōhau Snowfields & Lake Ōhau Lodge general manager Mike Neilson said.
The washout on Lake Ōhau Road stranded about 150 guests at the Lodge overnight.
It had also prevented supplies from coming in until they too went cross-country.
"We met the food truck and we loaded up two four-wheel drive vehicles of food, supplies, which we have now got all the way back to the lodge," Neilson said.
The paddock won't see much more traffic, as repairs to the washed-out culvert are well underway.
"It won't be long now until they have a track across the culvert back up to us," Neilson said. "Probably a day or two."
"It could take slightly longer so we don't want to promise anything but all going well, 24 to 48 hours," Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher said.
The Waitaki District is in clean-up mode while the wet weather eases.
"The water is receding, it's still high in a lot of places. The Waitaki River normally flows at 300 to 400 cumecs, it's flowing at about 1500, so that's a pretty massive amount of water going down the Waitaki valley towards the coast," Kircher said.
Much of the South Island has been hit by flooding in recent years, but the mayor believes this is new ground.
"This one, it's just the absolute volume of water that's happened in a very short time and the destruction that that's caused, it's not something of a scale that I think any of the people living in those areas have experienced before," Kircher said.
Roads were under threat on the West Coast as well.
The deluge freed boulders the size of cars on State Highway 65 near Murchison.
The Lindis remains impassable, as does the road to Haast - but Aoraki/Mount Cook is once again connected, albeit temporarily.
Cautions remain in place on both sides of the South Island, from Gore to Arthur's Pass - and from Waka Kotahi and helpful locals alike.
"As I said goodbye to them I said you're now on your own," Neilson said.
More good news for the region is the snow warnings have been lifted, those are now forecast for the Canterbury High Country.
