A clouded in Kime Hut on the exposed tops
of the Southern Crossing, Tararua Range.

fallacy [fal-uh-see]. 1. a deceptive, misleading, or false notion, belief, etc.: That the world is flat was at one time a popular fallacy.. 2. a misleading or unsound argument. 3. deceptive, misleading, or false nature; erroneousness. 4. Logic. any of various types of erroneous reasoning that render arguments logically unsound.

The Hut Fallacy. 1. a deceptive, misleading, or false notion or belief prevalent in New Zealand outdoor circles that the objective of reaching back-country huts can reliably replace additional measures of safety. 2. a presumption that plans work, judgement is always perfect and/or that accidents only happen to other people.

I hope nobody minds me defining this term, at the very least for my own purposes. Despite this kind of thing happening often, I don’t know of a quick and easy term to describe it. I think The Hut Fallacy is something that pops up often in New Zealand’s back-country.
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The Mokihinui River, near the south-west side of Kahurangi National Park, has a large catchment. Our new years’ walk along the river was inspired by recent plans of Meridian Energy to build an 85 metre dam, which would flood the river with an artificial 14 kilometre lake for the purposes of electricity export from the region. This would be at the expense of a unique landscape that can only be formed by a wild river, and of the flora and fauna that inhabits the region. A recent unofficial statement suggested that the current government is unlikely to allow this to occur, although Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee has since complained that his comment was taken out of context and he’s not interfering. The official commission doesn’t expect to reach a decision until February 2010, and nothing’s certain in the current climate. This is why we wanted to go out and see the Mokihinui River, because its future seems quite uncertain.

Sue crosses one of
many side creeks.

Dates: 31st December, 2009 – 5th January 2010 (one day late)
Location: Mokihinui River, Mokihinui Forks Ecological Area and Lyell Range-Radiant Range Conservation Area (south-east of Kahurangi National Park).
People: Steve, Allen, Sue, Dmitry, Mark, Robert and me.
Huts visited: Mokihinui Forks Hut (0 nights).
Route: Start at Lyell, walk up the gold mining route to the head of the south branch of the Mokihinui River, follow the river to Mohihinui Forks Hut, then out along the route on the river’s true left to Seddonville.
[Photos]
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Queen’s Birthday Weekend in the Tararuas didn’t quite work out. There was snow back home in central Wellington, nearly to sea-level for the first time since about 1995, and there was easily snow down to 200 metres in the Tararuas. None of this began until Sunday morning, however. As we set out late on Friday afternoon, we were still planning for the possibility of our original intent.

Dave getting snowed on.

Dates: 29th – 31st May, 2009
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Holdsworth Road-end.
People: Dave, Marie S, Marie H and me.
Huts visited: Holdsworth Lodge (0 nights), Atiwhakatu Hut (0 nights), Mitre Flats Hut (1 night).
Route: From Holdsworth road-end to somewhere past Atiwhakatu to camp on Friday night, Mitre Flats and up then down Mitre on Saturday, back to Holdsworth road-end on Sunday.
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After starting out at Holdsworth Lodge, plan A would be to climb up Baldy, then get over Three Kings and Girdlestone to spend a night at Tarn Ridge Hut, drop down over Mitre to Mitre Flats on the following day (possibly with a very early start if we had to fit into a weather window), and walk back to Holdsworth on the Monday.
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Honestly, who would have thought it’d be rainy fogged-in weather on Labour Weekend? Apparently not us, because we had a fairly intensive tramp planned that would have gone from Rangiwahia over to Howletts, then back via Iron Gates. Unfortunately it rained and it snowed and it didn’t really work so well, but it was still worthwhile and from a personal perspective, I was still able to see places I hadn’t seen before.

Steve, Amanda and Paul
north-west of Mangahuia.

Dates: 24th – 26th October, 2008 (one day shorter than intended)
Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Rangiwahia to Heritage Road-end.
People: Steve, Amanda, Paul and me.
Huts visited: Rangiwahia Hut (1 night), Triangle Hut (0 nights), Iron Gates Hut (1 night), Heritage Hut (0 nights).
Intended Route: Walk to Rangiwahia, then around Maungamahue and the back of Te Hekenga , over to Taumataomekura, Teraha and to Howletts Hut for Saturday night. Then via Daphne Ridge, Otumore and down to Iron Gates Hut (or possibly Triangle Hut) for Sunday night, before heading back up to Rangiwahia Hut and out again on Monday.
Actual Route: Due to weather issues we went straight down to Triangle Hut and Iron Gates Hut on Saturday, before continuing to the Heritage road-end on Sunday and getting out a day early.
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After dinner from that Kebab shop at Bulls, we reached the Rangiwahia road-end at around 9.30′ish, I guess. At the very least, after the walk up the hill (which from past experience seems to take about 90 minutes), we were settling down at around 11pm on Friday night. The weather forecast was already dismal, without much suggestion that things would clear up until about Monday. Although we’d made plans to sleep in, Steve was still up and about at 6.30, and everyone followed.

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We began the weekend with an ambitious plan to start from Cone Saddle, and walk to Alpha Hut during Saturday via Neill, Winchcombe and Hector. It didn’t quite work out, but we still had a good time.

A Tararua Rainbow, looking
south from near Neill Peak (1158).

Dates: 12th – 14th September, 2008
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Walls Whare Road-end.
People: Alistair, Sarah, Illona, Amanda, Bernie and me.
Huts visited: Cone Hut (1 night).
Intended Route: Walk to Cone Saddle and camp on Friday night. From Saturday morning head up to Cone, over to Neill via Neill Saddle, across to Winchcombe Peak, continue to Hector, then follow the Southern Crossing track to Alpha Hut for Saturday night. Out via Marchant Ridge on Sunday.
Actual Route: We got to about point 1055 below Winchcombe Peak, then decided to turn around and head back to Cone Hut for the night and head back to Walls Whare on Sunday.
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We arrived at Walls Whare in coordination with another club group that was indirectly aiming for Totara Flats, with both groups planning to walk the first leg of their trip on Friday night. The others intended to spend the night at Cone Hut, whereas we thought we might just camp up the hill at Cone Saddle, which was marginally closer to where we planned to go.
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Last weekend we went to Penn Creek Hut in the western Tararuas.

Dates: 1st – 3rd August, 2008
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Otaki Forks region.
People: Craig, Fraser, Peter and me.
Huts visited: Field Hut (1 night), Penn Creek Hut (1 night), Parawai Lodge (0 nights).
Intended Route: Otaki Forks to Field for Friday night, then up to Vosseler and navigate down spur to Penn Creek Hut for Saturday night. Out to Otaki Forks via Table Top on Sunday.
Actual Route: Straight to Penn Creek Hut via Table Top on Saturday (due to heavy rain), then back up to Table Top on Sunday via spur starting at S26 025307, due to a flooded side-creek blocking the usual track.
Related bits: Craig also wrote about this weekend.
[Photos]

Saturday night, prior to which we didn’t do much at all: There’s a little mould on the Penn Creek Hut mattress that I’m sitting on as I write these notes. We’ve been here for 5 hours now, since a bit after mid-day. Water drips from the skylight into a bucket. There’s also water dripping into the fireplace, thwarting efforts to get a fire going. We even tried to burn some of Peter’s marshmallows, but that didn’t work either. Did I mention that the trees are dripping? And so is the sky. The bucket was nearly full when we arrived and we’ll need to empty it before we leave.

There were supposed to be six people in our group, but two bailed on Thursday, citing correlations between the reputation of the Tararua Range and the weekend’s forecast. This meant that before we arrived, we only had Craig’s small billy in which to cook. Fortunately there’s some quite good cooking and cleaning gear at the hut. Craig organised the trip. He looked impressive earlier today, sporting his Oringi Jacket — “the jacket that keeps you and your shorts dry” — just like that guy inside the back cover of every FMC bulletin. Peter’s on his first ever club trip, having arrived a few weeks ago from Scotland. Fraser’s also on his first club trip although he’s been tramping in New Zealand before, particularly in the Orongorongo Valley, and has some interesting stories. Last night I asked Fraser about his pack, which looks about as old as he is and far more worn down. He told me he found it in a dumpster and had to argue with his friend about who’d get to keep it.

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Marie and Allen walking down
from Kapakapanui.

This weekend was going to be a great navigation trip, which I’d been looking forward to because I’m really keen to get some good navigation experience. A couple of people had to pull out on late notice so there were only the three of us in the end. We hadn’t decided exactly where to go until Friday night at the railway station, but the basic idea ended up being an approximate anticlockwise loop starting and ending at Otaki Forks. I’d looked at the forecast on Thursday afternoon and it hadn’t actually appeared too bad, maybe with a bit of rain around Saturday night or so. It didn’t quite turn out that way, though.

Dates: 28th – 30th March, 2008
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Otaki Forks Road End.
People: Allen, Marie and me.
Huts visited: Kapakapanui Hut (0 nights), Renata Hut (1 night).
Intended route: Up the Fenceline Track to point 476 above Otaki Forks, then south-west around the ridges to Pukeatua, past Kapakapanui and down to the saddle near point 822. Cross the road and head on to Renata Hut for the night. On Sunday, walk along the Renata Ridge Track to point 925, and head north up the ridge for about 1km before hopping west onto another ridge and going north to Waiotauru Forks. Jump over the footbridge, and back out to Otaki Forks.
Actual route: Well the first day went okay, but we ended up walking down the 4WD track towards Waiotauru Hut until we could see that the river was well up after a lot of recent (and continuing) rain. At that point we turned around, and hitched a ride out to the Akatarawa Road in a grunty Toyota LandCruiser.
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12 people in a 6 bunk hut.

The weather report for the weekend indicated what looked to be quite a violent deluge of a front smothering the entire country all at once, from north to south. The met service was issuing weather warning’s galore. Forecast chart visualisations available through Jim McGregor’s metvuw.com website might have implied that all of New Zealand would be bathed under a combination of beautiful sky blues and majestic sunset reds during the weekend, but unfortunately the colouring on those charts was artificial, and in fact indicated quite the opposite. Our party was affected too, with two members pulling out late on Friday afternoon, having decided they were too frightened at the prospect of spending a whole weekend playing cards against the rest of us at Rangiwahia Hut.

Dates: 29th February-2nd March, 2008
Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Rangiwahia Road End.
People: Alistair, Sarah, Marie, Jeremy, Dirk and me.
Huts visited: Rangiwahia Hut (1 night), Triangle Hut (1 night).
Huts seen: Pourangaki Hut.
Intended route: Up to Rangiwahia Hut on Friday night, then past point 1635 to Maungamahue. West to Te Hekenga, around to Taumataomekura, along Sawtooth Ridge to Ohuinga, then down to Pourangaki Hut for Saturday night. Up to Pourangaki on Sunday morning, then back along to Maungamahue, and out again via Rangiwahia Hut.
Actual route: Shortened a lot due to weather and injuries, we reached Te Hekenga then followed the spur down to Triangle Hut for the night. Back up to Rangiwahia Hut via the main DOC track, and out.
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Socks at Waipakihi Hut.

In the past I’ve tended to overlook the Kaimanawas. Driving along the desert road, the mountainous areas of Tongariro National Park on the other side have usually grabbed my attention, whereas legends of wild horses in the Kaimanawas give the impression of them being a rather large, publicly-owned pet food factory. Wellington Anniversary Weekend was a good introduction which challenged my perceptions, and I discovered I was wrong before the trip even began. Contrary to my former impressions, I found that much of the Kaimanawa Range is privately owned. I was going to start this report with some background information about the private land issue in the range, but I decided to post that part separately after it became a bit long.

Dates: 18th-21st January, 2008
Location: Kaimanawa Forest Park, Urchin Road-End.
People: Craig, Ruth, Paul, John, Mike and me.
Huts visited: Waipakihi Hut (1 night).
Intended route: Begin at the Urchin road-end, walk over Urchin to the Waipakihi River, up Motutere and around Middle Range past Thunderbolt, down to Waipakihi Hut for the night. Then out to the Umukarikari road-end via the Umukarikari Range, camping somewhere.
Actual route: Over Urchin and up the Waipakihi River to the hut, back over Te Hiwiokaituri Ridge and back down to the river before camping overnight, then out over Urchin.
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This was a trip of altimeter arguments, contradicting and incorrect weather forecasts, and a high quantity of photographs of varying quality. In fact, the trip was so much about altimeter arguments and taking photographs that I couldn‘t possibly do those topics justice, so I won’t spend much time mentioning them from here on.

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Craig emerging from
Ngapuketurua (with a slight
vegetation problem).

We were supposed to be walking through rivers all weekend according to the original plan, but the weather was so good that we just couldn’t help ourselves, and ended up on the tops. Eventually, we found ourselves moving very slowly thanks to some very overgrown ridges.

Dates: 30th November – 2nd December, 2007
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Poads Road to Mangahao Dam.
People: John, Paul, Craig and me.
Huts visited: Te Matawai Hut (0 nights), Arete Biv (0 nights), Dundas Hut (1 night).
Huts seen: Herepai Hut.
Initial intended route: Begin at Poads Road, wander up the South Ohau River to the old site of South Ohau Hut, wander up past Te Matawai, then down the Mangahao River to Mangahao Flats Hut, and out via the Dam.
Actual route: With some really good weather, we went from Te Matawai Hut up to Arete, over to Dundas, from West Peak to East Peak, then around the ridge to Ngapuketurua, north-east along the ridge, and down the Puketurua Track to the dam.
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