In some ways this rescue wasn’t very interesting. It barely made the news at all. It was reported very briefly in the DomPost, not even giving an approximate location, but reporting the GPS failure. A press release from the Life Flight Trust (duplicated here) adds a few more details, but wasn’t picked up and analysed by any popular media outlets that I can find. Also being a press release from the helicopter operator, its main focus is that they rescued people with their helicopter rather than explaining why those people needed rescuing.

The mention of “deep snow” in the Alpha Hut area means they were probably coming over from Aston (on the Tararua Southern Crossing route) or around Quoin Ridge in the water catchment zone. From reports it’s unclear exactly why there was a problem, if the two of them intended to be out overnight, or even if they’d actually requested a rescue or if it was just lack of information that resulted in the decision to send a helicopter. If a message had not gone out, maybe they would have simply reached Alpha Hut, or just had a night out walking around in circles in calm but cold weather. Such things happen, but usually go unreported.

From informal chats I think what happened is that in attempting a Tararua Southern Crossing, they took a wrong turn at Alpha Peak earlier in the day, apparently not having a proper map or anything, and went down Quoin Ridge instead of towards Alpha Hut. Then the Sun went down. From the result it sounds as if they were probably not carrying their own shelter, and relying on reaching Alpha Hut that night for their safety (see The Hut Fallacy).

I found this story interesting because of how the GPS was mentioned. I’ve also met at least three people now who heard the news and independently expressed similar feelings. The implication from the reports is that the failure of the GPS was a key factor in causing the rescue. I’m not sure this can ever be the case, though, because a GPS isn’t the kind of tool that it should ever be necessary to rely on if other preparations have been made.

It’s sad how the media machine can simplify a story like this, through no intent of anyone specific but by how it operates, republishing information and then simplifying it to fit in small spaces. Irrespective of what actually happened in this case, the worst thing is how the presentation could just reinforce impressions that anyone might already have that a GPS makes things safe, and that it’s perfectly acceptable to assume one can send a text message from a cell-phone and expect a helicopter rescue to be called out when a GPS fails. It’s the same kind of media simplification that suggested a cell-phone would have saved a couple of unfortunate people about a year ago (see this specific example from Newstalk ZB) when really there were a plethora of reasons that added together. In that case it essentially came down to bad preparation and some dreadful decisions. The cellphone factor was almost a completely irrelevant red herring, but for a while was pushed to the front of many media reports, probably because it simplified things in terms with which more readers were familiar, reinforcing whatever false beliefs readers may have already had.

Sometimes I think the reported messages are irrationally harsh on those being rescued, to the extent that people can get called idiots or stupid even if they were mostly well prepared and did 99% of things right but just made a silly mistake that resulted in a high profile rescue. Maybe rescuers have been quoted out of context or in the heat of the moment, or are just trying to take advantage of any media attention to get another safety message published through the media lens (although to be fair there are a lot of people rescued who’ve done some pretty idiotic stuff). This time it’s the opposite. Nobody’s out there denouncing the two rescued people as morons (which I think is good), but there’s also a very skewed presentation of what the actual problem was. If anything it could only lead to a worse understanding of what happened, and how to avoid it happening to others in future. If that’s all that’s going to be printed in an outlet like the DomPost, it probably would have been better for everyone that it didn’t get printed at all.

Getting out of Crow Hut right now is one of the more awkward climbs from a valley I’ve personally had. We more or less slid down the hill-side yesterday morning, persistent rain apparently making the topsoil absolutely sodden. A year ago I bought the cheapest Scarpas I could find, part of an experiment with getting cheap boots, but the soles are the best I’ve had on any boots to date and I’ve learned to trust them. Yesterday they often failed. Placing them flat on the soil (usually safe) was enough to trigger random acts of slipping and sliding, or sometimes not. So, now on the way up, and faced with one of yesterday’s 80 centimetre skid-marks on a 40 degree slope and no clear way around the edges, I have some uncertainty about exactly where to put my foot.

Still, in my case with hands poised in front ready to spread myself flat on the ground and slow the slide next time something slips out of place, we eventually get through the worst of it.

There’s snow up here now, which must be from last night.

Dates: 25th – 27th June, 2010
Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Kawhatau Base Road-end.
People: Amanda, Alistair, Richard and me.
Huts visited: Crow Hut (1 night), McKinnon Hut (0 nights)
Planned route: Up and around the Mokai Patea Ridge, down to Crow Hut for Saturday night. Then up and along the Hikurangi Range over Mangaweka, and out past Purity Hut.
Actual route: Straight to Crow Hut for Saturday night, up along and down to McKinnon Hut, back to the Kawhatau River via the main track, then bashing up to a farm.
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Yesterday was a short day. Camping at Kawhatau Base overnight, we’d hoped to get up over Mokai Patea — an alpine ridge which you know you’re on because it’s a kilometre wide (as Alistair put it) — drop down to Crow Hut and stay a night, then up to the tops and along the Hikurangi Range. Another trampey club group sharing our transport, with a shorter plan in mind (walking into McKinnon Hut and back), was set to drive the van further south later today to collect us. We abandoned our whole plan before it began, looking at the weather and everything. Just rain and rain and rain, not entirely claggy tops but enough to limit visibility to about 5o metres or so. We decided to ditch the idea of the Hikurangis, go straight to Crow Hut, and maybe get up early and around the Mokai Patea Range on the next day, ending up back where we began.

The cable-way was fun. It’s the first time I’ve been in one of them. I don’t think I’d ever want to have to winch myself over, but in a group of 4 we were able to arrange things to (usually) have people winching from both ends. It’s good that it’s there, too, because it makes this a wet weather trip for which we don’t need to worry about the Kawhatau River probably being flooded for the next few days. From there it was a very steep climb of 900 metres to the bush-line, with bits of flax to grasp in the steepest parts and token efforts at steps which seem half-buried, but maybe help to keep the slippery track together. We had a brief cruise over the tops in calm but claggy raining weather — the route is poled. Then we skidded into the bush-line down the slope where every foot placement is an entry in a lottery, as I described earlier.

Alistair and Amanda.

Richard and Amanda at Crow Hut.

And yeah, a big sleep-in. We sat down at lunch time, having just arrived at Crow Hut, needing to decide if we were going to cross the bridge outside the hut and continue to Wakelings Hut on the far side of the Mokai Patea Range. Doing so would mean a marginally shorter climb this morning if the weather cooperated enough for us to go that way, but it’d suck if we had to back-track. There didn’t seem much point, especially with a dodgy forecast and with the knowledge that we were already comfortably sitting in a nice, tidy hut. Amanda started tinkering with the wood burner, and we commenced a lazy afternoon. The mud-toned Kawhatau River that we’d crossed earlier via the cable-way continued its rampage below as the rain came and went. We all slept well yesterday afternoon, and last night.

The Kawhatau River outside Crow.

The bridge outside the hut is interesting. It’s a typical New Zealand swing bridge, but without the mesh down the sides. This seems to be an area that gets less people — we’re the first people who’ve written in the book for a month. The tracks to the hut on either side are bordered by side creeks, which apparently can come up. One person wrote in the book that they’d been trapped behind the creek coming down from the Mokai Patea Range, and had to camp out on the far side.

We awoke at 6.30 this morning, in anticipation that we might just be able to walk out around the Mokai Patea. Alas it was not to be so. Glancing outside, things didn’t seem to different from yesterday. Perhaps worse. We went back to sleep, and for brief moments in between we discussed what we thought the others would be most likely to do based on what we thought they thought we might be doing. Eventually, we got away about 2 hours later, on the assumption that they’d hedge their bets and try to get back around mid-afternoon. We figured we’ll head up the top, and try to meet up with the others as they come from McKinnon. If we see footprints we’ll know, and otherwise we’ll turn the other way to catch them there. And thus we’re now climbing back up out of this slippery hole.

Alistair reaching the snow.

It’s snowy though, as I mentioned. This is the first time in a while I’ve been able to get into nice snow on the tops. It feels almost criminal to tread in the frosty covering to create a muddy foot-print. We stop at the bush-line to put on extra layers. It’s becoming colder with elevation, and I’d rather be fully covered before we start getting buffeted by the wind that’s likely above the bush-line. Further up I’m appreciating it. There’s a light but icy breeze coming from the south, although the temperature’s probably not freezing yet because we’re still getting rain.

We’re at the junction just east of spot-height 1471 at around 10am, and it’s good to have the day’s only significant climb out of the way. The tussock’s covered in ice, the poles of the poled route up here are wind-swept with ice, the ground’s covered in snow, and there are no footprints. They must be sleeping in, which isn’t a surprise since for all they know we might not be out until 4.30pm if we were to get all the way around the loop. There’s no point heading down just yet because we don’t have a key to the van, so we set off towards McKinnon Hut, expecting to see them coming towards us soon.

Drizzle drizzle. It’s still foggy but we can see far enough to pick out one or two poles ahead in the route, so nobody’s too bent on navigating. The route climbs up to a large tarn, or maybe a lake, which is frozen over and might have looked very photogenic if there were some more sunshine. It’s not to be. Then we climb further up a gentle gradient towards spot-height 1625. We’re becoming concerned now, because we certainly should have seen them unless they were backing themselves to get out really fast. Still no footprints, until we arrive at the iced-over signpost 20 minutes above McKinnon Hut. There have clearly been a group of people here this morning. They stood around and regrouped, and then went… towards the Hikurangi Range and Mangaweka!

Eh?

Alistair dropping to McKinnon.

Maybe they’ve just headed out to bag Hikurangi Peak, or something like that, and will be back any moment. Amanda suggests that a couple of us should drop down to the hut to check things out, for which Alistair and I volunteer. Amanda and Richard stay up the top, in case the others return. And it’s down again, into the slush. Every few steps I slip and slide sending a big splash of snowy mud ahead of me. My raincoat’s about to have a date with the washing machine, and so are my mittens. They’re sopping and they’re muddy, but they’re keeping off the wind-chill despite my numb fingers underneath. Glancing behind it looks as if Alistair’s having similar issues. We’re getting snowed on now, it’s getting colder. We get to McKinnon in about 15 minutes, a wonderful little hut on the edge of the bush-line, now surrounded by snow.

McKinnon Hut.

It’s empty.

Checking the book. Yes, they’ve been here. Yes, the person who wrote it forgot to write their own name. Yes they were here last night. Yes they’ve left for the morning. Yes, the cable-way pulley is broken. Yes, the cable-way pulley is broken. Yes, the cable-way pulley is broken. Yes, the cable-way pulley is broken. Yes, the cable-way pull… Um, Alistair?

Yeah? Says Alistair. He’s busy putting on another thermal layer.

The cable-way pulley is broken.

What? Oww crap, we’ve got a long day ahead of us now. Alistair says something like this at about the same time that I’m thinking it. Maybe he’s using more colourful language. It’s one of those times when things spin around in my head for moment.

What the hell are we going to do now? They’ve written in the book, and I quote verbatim as best as I can read it: “Pully on cableway broken, take alternate route. Gryzoned End? Try nav to pt 1625, pt 1471, then northern spur to farmland. May if Wx bad take main track, poss try to cross river sth of pt 854.” Er, slight problem. I quickly find a map and try to figure out what they’re doing. It makes no sense. 1625 is the signpost where Amanda and Richard are presently waiting, 1471 is the junction leading down to Crow Hut, and the northern spur would take them direct to Crow Hut by the way we came up. This is not what their footprints indicated, and we certainly didn’t see them on our way here. Enough of this, we’ll figure it out later. Meanwhile we have to get back up to Amanda and Richard and figure out what to do next. The cable-way pulley is broken. Maybe we can get there and discover they’re wrong, but in the back of my mind it seems very doubtful the river’s going down any time soon, within the next few days, given the saturation in the soil. Maybe we’ll be camping out.

With some speedy thinking between the two of us there’s no way we want to try and navigate off the tops in the Ruahines without advance knowledge of where we’re going or a lot of time and good weather on our hands, of which today is not. The range is surrounded by a giant ring of leatherwood, which can slow you to a 100 metre and hour crawl, or worse, if you get stuck in an un-cut section. I note in the book that we’ve passed through, and state for the record that we’re going back to the cable-way, and if necessary we’ll camp out and wait for the river to drop. On the off chance that the others get out some other way, we’ll at least be able to wave to them since the cable-way is practically next to the road. This is probably what we’ll do. Maybe we’ll discover a crossing point.

So what else can we do? Alistair and I struggle up another slippery slope towards where Amanda and Richard wait for us. Maybe we can drop back to Crow for another night and hope the weather’s good enough to get out over Mokai Patea tomorrow. That wouldn’t be ideal because it’ll need a lot of food for the extra energy, and we’re only really stocked with the intent of a short weekend trip. Amanda’s at the top — she and Richard have been walking back and forth to try and keep warm for the last 40 minutes, and experimented with following their tracks to try and get a better idea of where they went.

THE CABLE-WAY’S BROKEN!

What?? She can’t hear me, so I give up and just keep walking towards her.

We take a guess that the others might have been trying to go out over the Hikurangi Range, despite what was written in the book, which would put them at the wrong road (Putaru, below Purity Hut) if they got out, but at least they’d be out if they got there. Or perhaps they meant to write 1468 instead of 1471, which is a spot-height on a neighbouring ridge, and would actually put them on a farm. We’re confused. For us it’s getting near mid-day, and being the middle of winter we only have about 5 hours of light left. What to do. Well, we start by back-tracking. We’ll probably do exactly what we wrote in the book. I pull out a phone to see if there’s reception, but there isn’t. We’ll need to try and get a message out if we can, to tell our contact what’s going on. We’ll try again at the point above Crow Hut.

I took this to figure out what was wrong
with my balaclava, but it didn’t help.
Not a bad portrait, though.

This day is quickly becoming more depressing, and the weather’s changing to match. It’s not a gale, but there’s an icy blast coming from the south-west. The southerly’s coming in. My balaclava’s full up, but it’s not sitting quite right and every so often I suck it into my mouth accidentally and suddenly can’t get any air until I tear it off with my hand. We can still see, and we can mostly follow our earlier tracks, but we’re trudging through the mud. It’s about 12.20pm when we reach the junction above Crow Hut, and fluttering in the wind is a plastic back tied to the sign. It’s a note.

The day is becoming even more confusing. Have they passed by here? That doesn’t seem possible, because we still only see our own footprints and they couldn’t have gotten over here from where they’d gone without some mammoth and ridiculous navigation effort down to a creek and up again. In the end we decide that the note must have always been here, but somehow this morning we looked through it in our enthusiasm to catch up with the others. The note confirms things. They’re aiming to navigate down the spur that heads north-west above the true left of Rocky Creek. This would drop them into a farm which they must be hoping to walk through to get to a road bridge off Smith’s Road much further down.

Amanda, defiantly removing a glove to be able to use her phone, manages to get a text message out to Jackie back in Wellington, or Sydney where she was once before, or wherever in the world she might be. It doesn’t really matter as long as she’s contactable. In the message, we tell Jackie the cable-way’s broken and we might be camping to wait for the river to go down. We continue back-tracking. I’d dropped my pack for a minute as we stood around, but picked it up again quickly because the wind-chill was coming right through the back of my soaking raincoat. That’s Gore-Tex for you. I like being on the tops and I like being in the snow, but right now I’m just looking forward to getting back into the tress. The snow’s horizontal and it’s biting the side of my face. Shelter will be nice.

Further along the ridge Amanda’s phone beeps. We’ve heard back from Jackie to say she’s received the message, and if she doesn’t hear otherwise she’ll assume we’re camping, and let various people know we’ll be late out. Some time after 1pm we finally reach trees, and can drop lower and out of the wind. Amanda has a go at contacting Dirk, in the other group, and eventually gets through with a text message. Dirk sends back a message saying something like “others are at 1200 metres and it sounds a bit hard”.

Amanda and Richard on
the way down.

Another confusing message, not so much hearing that they were having problems at 1200 metres… about where there could be a leatherwood and dracophyllum jungle… but the fact that he said the “others” were at 1200 metres. With some further exchanges and the application of logic, we deduce that Dirk isn’t with them at all, but is actually roaming up and down the road because he never got across the cable-way. We continue further down, and receive news that he’s talked to the farmers below the spur the other group are coming down, and also called the Police and spoken to a Search & Rescue coordinator, presumably not because of any immediate danger, but because it sounded as if there might be a chance the other group could end up stuck somewhere awkward. Fair enough. Search and Rescue should be brought in early so that they can make decisions on whether anything needs to be done or precautions taken. We later hear from Dirk that he was asked the standard 500 questions about the group’s experience and capabilities and gear so they’d be able to tick all the template boxes for their risk assessment, hopefully determining that there’s no imminent risk. It’s amazing there’s cellphone reception up here at all! You can never rely on cellphones.

By now I’m resigned to camping out and missing work tomorrow, quite possibly Tuesday. I wonder if we’ll get a chance to try and build a camp-fire in the rain. That’d be interesting, but only if it actually works. If it didn’t work it’d be depressing. As we continue downwards, we get views of the muddy brown squiggles of the flooded Kawhatau River to our right and begin trying to pick out places where it might be crossable. It doesn’t look any better. On the other hand, we get a view of the farm-land to our left, on the far side of Rocky Creek. Alistair’s behind me, and he’s inspired. If we could get off the main track, and somehow to the base of Rocky Creek (another muddy brown gutter that’s flowing into the main river), then maybe we could cross the creek and figure out a way up to the farm-land, much of which overhangs a bluff above the main river. It sounds like a possible option, and we still have a few hours of daylight left.

Busted! (Look closely at
where the cable goes.)

Finally reaching the bottom of the spur at half-two, after a controlled slippery slide through the flax, we can see the extent of the damage on the cable-way. It’s still there, which is a relief. It didn’t collapse with anyone in it, and if that’d happened you’d assume the others would have set off an emergency beacon rather than continue on their weekend tramp. On the other hand, it certainly wasn’t anything we could fix, either. The drive cable, which fits over the large pulley wheel, has sliced right into the groove of the wheel so that it now hung around the spokes. They’ve left a plastic bag on the end with a note warning people not to use it, in case it wasn’t obvious, and wrapped a bunch of chains around the end to fully cripple it. The cart that hangs underneath is at the far end, and we later find out that although in its crippled state and with Dirk on the other side, they’d had to write a note and force it over to Dirk so he knew what was going on. The distance is too far to shout clearly over the flooded river below.

Well that sucks. My unlikely back-of-the-mind fantasy that they’d been grossly incompetent when they assessed the damage, and had only thought the cable-way was broken, was not to be. We’re still stuck.

Amanda, Alistair and Richard.

Plan B is to drop down to the river, and survey it for any possible crossing points. This doesn’t seem likely either, but we have to look. A hundred metres down-river, there’s an island in the middle that we think we could get to, but there’s little point because the far side of the island just has a much more forceful flow, plus a steep bank that we’d have to be clambering out of, and a possibly un-climbable bluff to climb up to get back to the road afterwards. Plan C is more inviting, though less instant. We follow the main river around looking for Rocky Creek, eventually having to clamber up an old land-slip to get over a hump, push through lots of stubborn scrub and drop into the creek. The creek is running muddy, but turns out to be completely crossable. We cross in pairs, now finding ourselves at the base of a short 100 metre climb to a flattening plateau, which would be the farm-land. This could take some time.

And it does take time, because the spur’s very overgrown. Amanda’s leading up the front, basically forging a path through all kinds of yucky stuff. There also the occasional sprinkling of Onga-Onga (aka Stinging Nettle) hidden amongst it all. We stop for a few minutes some way up grabbing a bite to eat, Amanda remembering we haven’t had any proper lunch and by now it’s mid-afternoon. As time goes on and we force our way higher, the bush gives way to some more exposed bluff-like clay faces, which we’re lucky enough to be able to find a way to clamber up after Richard figures it out. Finally we spot some possum carcasses, which look suspiciously as if they’ve been thrown overboard. Sure enough, there’s just one more some-what awkward clamber up an over-hanging tree root, and we’re on the outside of a fence made of number 8 wire!

Not a proud moment, but one I’m resigned
to accept in the circumstances.

This is such a great feeling. Hopefully the scatterings of what we’ve heard of Dirk talking to the farmers gives us some kind of informal permission to walk over their land. I don’t care if it gets dark now, I could walk over farm-land for ages, because being here means that getting out is under our control once again. Amanda checks her phone and actually has reception, so she sends a message to Dirk to let him know we’re coming through here. We have no idea if he’s received it, though. And we walk. And looking to the road on the far side of the gorge, we see the van sail back towards the Kawhatau Base road-end. Dirk can’t have received our message, and he must be going back to check if we’ve shown up at the end of the cable-way. And we keep walking.

An hour, about five kilometres, a flock of cows, several sheep, a curious horse, a pig, and a herd of excitable farm dogs later, we arrive at the farm-house and knock on the door. The sun’s low and we’re just reaching the hours of darkness, and these guys have had mis-placed trampers coming out of their ears all day. Well, Dirk and 6 other people at least. They’re very well tempered and accepting about it. The others were doing better than we thought they were, having made it down about half an hour earlier. Dirk had even managed to convince the guy to drive to the back of the farm and give them a lift. It was very nice of them. The guy’s wife pokes him and says he should give us a ride too, and very soon Richard and Amanda are crunched in the front of the ute. Four packs, Alistair, and I sit on the back with the dog, and we’re screaming down the road back to the camp-site. You can tell when you’re being driven around the back-roads by a local. The guy leans out the window as we’re passing through one of the gates, shouting to someone that they found the lost trampers.

Awesome. We hadn’t realised we’d walked this far in the last hour. The van’s at the end of the road, and they’re very happy to see us. (It means they can go home!) A couple of them have wandered down to the cable-way trying to see if we’re there, and they’ve been concerned that we’ve not yet arrived, but they come back within a couple of minutes. Now it’s just a mess getting out of all this saturated gear — we’re all still in the full storm gear that we’ve not removed since the snow on the tops.

As time goes on we find that Dirk stayed the night in Mangaweka with some students at the outdoor education centre, and it was very nice of them to put him up. Apparently they’re strategy board game and role-playing enthusiasts, and overnight they taught Dirk to play Dungeons & Dragons, or something like that. Very cool. Looking at what we did in the weekend, we didn’t seem to go that far — about 25 kilometres in all, but with an awful lot of steep climbing and descending. Apart from the farm-land, I figure we were on an average of about a 1/4 gradient for nearly the entire weekend. On the map it was like a giant three point turn with a wonky end. It was great weekend for decision making.

It was very nice for Dirk to stick around and keep track of everything, and make sure we could get out over a farm with some kind of notification. A few other people might be rather turned off if they’d organised a weekend tramp for seven people, then lost them all after the first twenty minutes. He was still helping out though, just from the other end.

It’s late, and we stop at Bulls to discover that the re-opened fish & chip shop there is actually really good. The sky’s fairly clear outside during the drive home. Which reminds me — I completely forgot to stick my head outside Crow Hut at 11pm last night and look for the partial lunar eclipse. I guess the southerly’s passed through, and tomorrow could be a nice day on the tops. Perhaps even a good day to walk along the Mokai Patea range. Next time, though. These things happen. The van’s noisy. One way or another everyone had a rewarding time, and everyone has their story to tell tonight. This was mine.

Rain and rain and rain.

Things began with an idea of a weekend expedition over the Tararua tops to Tarn Ridge Hut. Somehow, even with the weather cooperating for such an idea, things didn’t quite work out that way. It was the opposite, and we spent the majority of our time navigating off-track below the bush line.

Dates: 7th – 9th May, 2010
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Kiriwhakapapa Road-end.
People: Illona, Richard and me.
Huts visited: Blue Range Hut (1 night), Mitre Flats Hut (0 nights), Mid King Biv (1 night)
Planned route: Up to Blue Range Hut for Friday night, over to Cow Creek, navigate up to Table Ridge, along around Mitre and Girdlestone, and to Tarn Ridge Hut for Saturday night. Down over Mitre, then up Donald Spur and past Blue Range Hut back down to the road.
Actual route: Up to Blue Range Hut for Friday night, over Te Mara and down Donald Spur to Mitre Flats, then up to Mid King Biv for Saturday night. Back to Mitre Flats, up onto Blue Range near Stoney Creek, along to Bruce Hill and down a spur to the south-east to the old bush tram track that leads back to the road.
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Originally there were going to be four of us, but Paul unfortunately had to drop out with a foot problem, which left Richard, Illona and Myself. We stopped for a Friday night dinner at Carterton, which has a fabulous kebab shop, then continued to the Kiriwhakapapa road-end. Along the way we discussed the original plan, which would have been to walk from Kiriwhakapapa to Cow Creek, up to Table Ridge, along to Girdlestone, and then on to Tarn Ridge Hut… then come down over Mitre and up Donald Spur (a more direct way back to Blue Range Hut) on Sunday. The more we thought about it, the more that this idea seemed to be skimming the edges of available daylight at this time of year. Consequently, we thought we might try doing it in reverse instead, which would make Saturday the longer day.

The Tararua Main Range
under a blanket of cloud.

By about a quarter past eight, we’d begun our walk up to Blue Range Hut, eventually to arrive at about 10pm. The solar powered lights are back, which is nice, given they’d vanished last time I visited — perhaps they were just out for maintenance.

With a long day in mind for Saturday, we were up about 6.30am, and out the door at a quarter past seven to walk past morning views of a sliver of cloud sitting on top of the Tararua Main Range. Our 7.15am departure might have allowed enough time for our day’s plan, except that we had more trouble than anticipated in finding the top of Donald Spur — the spur to the north of Donald Stream that heads west of Te Mara (1104), and a known short-cut down to the Waingawa River and Mitre Flats. The informal route up to Te Mara is marked off the main track up from Blue Range Hut with a ribbon tied to a tree branch, but after this we muddled around for some time, and possibly wasted about an hour in confirming we were actually walking down the right thing.

Illona near the top of Donald Spur.

The delay wasn’t too bad in essence. All three of us have done reasonable amounts of off-track navigation, but none had been in a proper position of responsibility. I think the experience helped to boost everyone’s confidence because we all knew that decisions we made would actually have consequences. We did eventually find the top of Donald Spur, having back-tracked to Te Mara peak, which we’d originally sidled around (trying to be smart). Then we just trusted the bearing to let us sidle up the side, making sure the terrain around us matched what was expected, and eventually confirming with the GPS just to be sure we were correct about our assumptions. Once on Donald Spur things were fairly easy going, although there was more tree-fall than I would have expected given how often I’ve heard it’s used. The tree-fall might be left-over from a storm a year or three back, and maybe not completely cleared out.

Tree-fall on Donald Spur.

Richard crossing the Waingawa.

Donald Spur drops into Donald Stream, a couple of hundred metres in from the Waingawa River. We reached the Waingawa at about 11.20am, which is probably about an hour and forty minutes after we’d become confident we were near the top of the right spur. After a five minute stop for a snack, we crossed the Waingawa (which was running very low) and carried on for a little over an hour along the main track towards Mitre Flats from the direction of Cow Creek. By now we were really starting to realise that we’d need to hoof it if we were going to get up Mitre, around Girdlestone and on to Tarn Ridge Hut before dark. It isn’t a terribly nice track. incidentally. Very muddy in a few places, and also just one of those tracks that weaves around the inside of little gullies, involves clambering over logs, and other annoying little things that make it slightly slower than might otherwise appear. The LINZ map data also doesn’t clearly indicate that much of this track also sidles fairly high above the Waingawa. (To be fair, however, it possibly does show the track on the appropriate side of the contour lines if you look closely enough.)

Arriving at Mitre Flats.

It was lunch time, about half twelve, as we walked into Mitre Flats. Very coincidentally, within a minute of us walking up, two guys arrived from the direction of the Pines — it turned out to be Adrian and Robert, both of whom we knew. It’s a small country, I guess. They’d camped at Kiriwhakapapa last night (apparently turning up after we left, and they’d seen our car), then driven back to The Pines entrance, and were now on their way to walk to Cow Creek Hut and eventually meet up with the car they’d left at Kiriwhakapapa. As for ourselves, we were beginning to have doubts about whether we still wanted to go all the way up to Tarn Ridge. With a little over four hours of reasonable daylight remaining after we’d finished lunch, standard metrics suggested it could take us about 3.5 hours just for the 1100 metre climb up to Mitre, before carrying on around Girdlestone. The area wasn’t familiar to any of us, and if we were lucky we’d be walking up to Tarn Ridge Hut with torches on the edge of darkness. To add to this, we were having some doubts about the length of time it might take to navigate down to Cow Creek Hut on Sunday, especially if we ran into similar problems as that morning, and once we finally did get down we’d have at least another four hour walk ahead of us.

Illona had a rather good idea, though, of going up for a look at Mid King Biv. It hadn’t been obvious at first, because Mitre Flats is one of those areas that’s on the edge of all the maps. Once we were looking at the correct maps, however, and had some time to absorb the idea, it looked feasible and interesting. Mid King Biv is named after Middle King Peak (1521) underneath which it sits. It’s sheltered just below the bush-line and accessible from the tops, but (it turns out) is also very accessible from a spur that leads up from the confluence between Baldy Creek and South Mitre Stream — just south of Mitre Flats Hut. With this in mind, we wrote some notes in the Mitre Flats hut book about our adjusted plans, convinced Adrian and Robert to leave a note on the car after they walked out, and (eventually) Illona would send out a text message to inform our emergency contact. With the new plan, we wouldn’t be able to walk out the original route, either, so we made alternative plans to come back to Mitre Flats the following day, and find another off-track route over Blue Range.

Studying maps around
South Mitre Stream.

At 1.30pm we began walking straight up the South Mitre Stream, beginning from the small bridge that leads towards Atiwhakatu Hut, but we soon found an easier ground-trail on the true right. After a small (but obvious) creek shown on the map, there’s an informal marker tied to a tree about 5 metres up Baldy Creek from the confluence. Inside the trees, it’s a short hop up a slope, then a cairn. After this, although we continued to have maps and compasses out for most of the climb, things are relatively easy heading up the spur on what is often a well-defined ground trail. We decided it was probably safer to stick with the ground trail when we could, as long as it didn’t suddenly veer away, since it looked as if the contour lines get rather close in a couple of places. At a high enough point, Illona was able to get out a text message to indicate our adjusted plans.

Things gets tangly nearer the height of Mid King Biv, above about 1000 metres. Apparently Mid King Biv was quite difficult to find until very recently, but it’s now quite well marked off the main route along the spur since a couple of years ago. At first we reached a point where we could stick our heads out on the Baldy Creek side of the spur, and noticed a couple of cairns, but they might have indicated an older track or a less common route around that side. After pushing around a lot, Illona spotted one of those giant orange Department of Conservation triangles up ahead, and we found it much easier to reach by going back under the trees and continuing to bash our way through. The triangle primarily indicates where a short, DOC-marked track leads off to the Biv, which is obscured just below the bush line and not very visible from far away. It’s also necessary (or at least sane) to follow this route a short distance to continue going up, since otherwise there’s no obvious way straight ahead.

Turning off the spur to Mid King Biv.

Mid King Biv.

We reached Mid King Biv at about 4.30pm, and it’s cute. We filled a handy bucket from the stream behind the biv. There’s a good space for camping out front, and a nice fire pit in an area that would be sheltered from the wind coming over the ridge. The biv itself is basically just a box, with 2 mattresses — one of which sits on a platform about 20 cm above the floor. I lifted the lid of the platform to find a scummy old billy, and a few sheets of broken glass that looked as if they might once have been in the small solitary window on the end opposite the door. The hut book’s very cool. It dates back to 1999, and is probably only about 20% full. It looked as if someone might visit every month or two, although some people certainly don’t write in the book. The person who’d come down from here and written in the Mitre Flats book the day before certainly hadn’t.

It also makes some of the bureaucracy that surrounds back-country recreation fairly obvious. When a hut is so small and remote, the three required signs that cover DoC’s perceived legal liabilities really stand out. On opening the one and only door of the biv, we were greeted with a proportionally large FIRE EXIT sign, which mostly overlapped the standard DoC “environmental care code” sign to make it look as if the environmental care code ends where the FIRE EXIT is. Below the two of them was the giant sign stating “DANGER — Only use your gas stove in ventilated parts of the hut!”, never minding that there aren’t any unless you have your stove running in the middle of the fire exit. Completing the lower section of the door was the regular sign to say “WARNING — the water we provide here is probably okay!”. Incidentally, the water is provided by the Department of Conservation’s well-engineered and very natural looking stream behind the biv that’s a tributary to Baldy Creek down below. All of these signs are spaced on the door of a box in which it’s not possible to stand up straight.

The base temperature on Saturday night wasn’t too bad, but there was a lot of wind chill coming over the ridge and down to meet us, which made things uncomfortable when sitting outside to prepare dinner. We spent most of the time wrapped up well to keep off the light but icy breeze. Illona did most of the preparation of Paul’s green curry recipe, which worked nicely, and then produced an interesting dessert based around berries, chocolate, and some weird kind of spongy italian biscuit. Very nice.

Nobody felt like camping. Once the dishes were out of the way, we squeezed into the biv, abandoning the second mattress to lean it against the wall. Richard and I head-to-tailed on thermarests on what remained of the floor. We also briefly made more specific plans for getting out on Sunday. Plan 1 would be to cross the Waingawa opposite Mitre Flats, then attempt to get straight onto Blue Range. Plan 2 would be to find a route up to Lookout Point (on Blue Range) which Richard had come down about a week before. Plan 3, if the first 2 failed, would be to go back up Donald Spur to Te Mara, and down past Blue Range Hut. If we were really in trouble, plan 4 would result in a long and tedious day following the main track out to Cow Creek, then up past Blue Range Hut.

As we extinguished our torches and darkness enveloped the interior of the tiny box, I noticed for the first time that those Department of Conservation FIRE EXIT signs glow in the dark! For the entire night, every time I opened my eyes to what might otherwise be total blackness, I could bathe in the warm glow of the FIRE EXIT merely 2 metres from my face. It continued to glow just as clearly at 6am.

Departing under the
Main Range.

On Sunday morning, we were once again up at 6.30am, but this time things took a little longer to arrange and we weren’t away until an hour later. Following the initial part of the track that sidles around the main range ridge from the biv and back to the spur, we initially began to follow it upwards by accident towards the main range, but soon noticed our mistake and headed back into the trees to where we’d come. We mostly followed the ground trail to get down, although we probably relied on maps and compasses more frequently than on the way up. The spur broadens in a couple of places which resulted in a few minutes here and there of searching around to find the optimal way down without going too far from our bearing.

Baldy Creek as it meets
South Mitre Stream.

It was 9.20am when we reached the confluence of South Mitre Stream and Baldy Creek, and 30 minutes later, after some shuffling around on the edge of the stream trying to figure out just how far the ground trail on the true right went, we were back at Mitre Flats Hut to note in the book that we’d passed through again. After this we backtracked to the main bridge over the Waingawa, and quickly found our route up to Blue Range.

The proper spur that we’d had in mind starts at Stoney Creek and heads a little north of east, but we didn’t follow that far because there’s an informal track that begins from behind a big obvious sign. In one direction the sign points towards Mitre Flats, in the other direction it points towards the road (The Pines). At first glance it seems fairly pointless having this sign at all, given that it only offers a backwards and forwards option, and most people probably want to go to wherever they didn’t come from. On closer inspection, it probably exists because directly behind the sign, a third informal ground trail climbs the hill and it stands out very well. I think this is what remains of the track to the old Mitre Flats bridge, which was further along the river, and we even saw an old orange marker some way along it. Apparently there’s also an unmaintained and rougher track along the river, so there may be some connection.

In any case, we followed this ground trail for a few minutes looking for an obvious route up the hill, based on vague memories I had of doing something similar about three years ago. The trail mostly runs parallel above the river, but we spotted a few options for heading up-wards and soon decided on one roughly opposite the hut, just north of the top of a slip, at least as we discerned later once we’d figured out what spur we were on. This took us up a small bubble of a spur heading south-east, almost at right angles to the main spur, and briefly well defined at about the 500 metre contour. There was even an occasional axe-blaze chunk taken out of the odd tree, and we figured that as we couldn’t possibly go past the initially planned spur (one would think) we may as well follow it, and they eventually met nearer the top. After a brief sit-down followed by a little extra climbing, we found ourselves on the southern-most of the two nearby spot-heights at 865 metres. It was nice to be on Blue Range.

The main Blue Range ridge has a ground trail along much of it which, if you don’t mind sharp Totara branches regularly slapping you in the knees, and occasionally face, is superior in many ways to some of the more official tracks around the Tararuas. (The one I mentioned earlier near Mitre Flats comes to mind.) We pushed north along the range towards Bruce Hill (975), taking guesses every so often at where we were, and confirming with the GPS once we’d placed our bets. The range veers to the north-east as it nears Lookout Point (725), which we didn’t visit because it’s off to one side but which is reportedly not a very impressive lookout point, but is the top of another common route down to the Waingawa River. Very soon after Lookout Point, the going became much tougher and more overgrown. It was still very doable and there’s still a ground trail, but things were certainly slower. After a kilometre of bashing and climbing, we arrived at a small plateau just south of Bruce Hill to stop for a snack, maybe ten minutes before 1pm.

From here we’d had an approximate idea to navigate down a wonky spur to the east, then south-east, into Mikimiki Stream, and I hopped up to the top of Bruce Hill, about 100 metres north, to calibrate the altimeter. We debated for a little while about exactly where to go to find our east-ward spur. I managed to confuse myself because there’s a very well defined, and marked, ground trail that heads south-east off the plateau, which I thought might twist eastwards soon after it left. I think Illona had it most correct when she suggested we’d need to simply push eastwards off the plateau and follow a bearing, even though it wasn’t very well defined at a first impression. In the end, we looked at the time of day and considered there were only a few hours of daylight remaining, and followed the markers, leaving at about 1.10pm or thereabouts.

It quickly became obvious that the markers were leading us straight south-west down a spur towards spot-height 535 and onto the same old tram-line track we’d have been aiming for anyway, albeit a few kilometres further from our destination. We knew from past ventures, however, that the tram track was very fast, and figured we may as well just hit it further back, possibly adding half an hour or an hour to what we might have otherwise had to walk out. It’s actually a really well defined and easy to walk hunters’ trail down that spur. It’s marked frequently with blue milk bottle caps and white plastic covered in reflective tape, and even hops out onto rocky knolls between the dracophyllum for short stints, affording some nice views of the surroundings both out towards the Wairarapa, and in towards the Main Range. Overall it’s far superior in quality to many official tracks, and we hit the main track a little before 3pm. Not too long after, about 4.15pm or so, we stepped back out to Kiriwhakapapa Shelter where we’d left the car.

What a great weekend. As places go, the Blue Range in the Tararuas isn’t a bad place to get lost. There’s not a lot to fall off, there are plenty of spurs going to interesting places, and it’s on the side of the range more sheltered from the rain coming off the sea to the west, which among other things makes it just a little easier to push through the bush, and probably to find a reasonable campsite if necessary.

It’s strange that our initial plan had involved little if any navigation, because I think this is perhaps one of the most worthwhile navigation trips I’ve had so far. All three of us had done some off-track stuff in the past, but none of us was too confident beforehand. Realising that we were all about equal with navigation skills, I think, helped us all to take the responsibility more seriously and it was a good confidence booster. As Illona pointed out, we each tended to look at similar problems in different ways, and it helped to learn from each other without immediately having to feel as if one person was more of an expert and authoritative over anyone else. I’m hoping I have an opportunity to get out on a similar trip again some time.

A couple of weeks ago, I took part in a bulk order of the new Topo50 maps, which replace the old 260 series that’s been in publication for several decades until now. I’m now the owner of 18 Topo50 maps to get me started, having picked up most of them for $3.50 each, around half the usual retail price. You can get this price (which includes GST but not postage) if you have a bulk order or 20 or more maps direct from LINZ, which makes it useful for clubs or groups of friends who know in advance what they want. I wrote about these maps last year, including more detail about why it’s actually happening and what the main changes are. The new maps have a couple of obvious differences:

• They’re smaller. All maps are now metric A1 size. This means they fit less information, but they should also fit more nicely into other equipment that takes metric paper sizes such as photocopiers and satchels. Smaller maps also means less to carry, unless you happen to be crossing map boundaries (which is more likely). Another side effect is that the boundaries between maps have shifted all over the place. Some areas fit more nicely into the Topo50 map boundaries, whereas others definitely don’t.
• The map grid has changed, which means all reference coordinates have changed. This is the most important reason why LINZ wants people to start using new maps, so as to reduce confusion between the old and new map grids.

Strictly speaking it’s no longer necessary to buy the maps at all. LINZ now makes them downloadable, letting people with adequate facilities print their own and mix and match the parts they want. Personally I still prefer to go with the standard pre-printed maps, mostly because I trust the consistency of production, with an idea of how the paper and toner will last, knowing that every map will have coordinates properly produced, and so on.

I possibly haven’t broken these regions into the same segments that everyone else would have, but a few notes about the various regions are:

Wellington Old maps: R27, R28 & Pt. Q27 (Wellington), R26 & Pt. R25 (Paraparaumu). New maps: BQ31 (Wellington), BQ32 (Lower Hutt), BP32 (Paraparaumu) for the northern-most part.

In the 260 series, the bulk of the Wellington region used to exist on a single map titled “R27, R28 & Pt. Q27“, of which R27 was the main component and the other two parts were tacked on to two different edges making it an unusually large 260 map. Further north up to Waikanae, including Kapiti Island was on another spliced-together map. These inconsistent sizes splattered around the system were one of the things making the 260 series more expensive to produce. The Wellington map contained all of Te Kopohau Reserve, Makara and the coast up to Porirua, all of Belmont Regional Park, everything around the Hutt Valley and the bulk of the Orongorongos and Rimutaka Range as far as the south coast, with a tiny part of the southern Wairarapa on the edge (really only Lake Oneke). The northern map (which I’ve rarely used) contained Kapiti Island, most of the Akatarawas, and a slight fringe of the Tararuas east of the Akatarawa Road between Upper Hutt and Waikanae.

In the Topo50 series, the same region now crosses three main maps. Map BQ31 (Wellington) covers all of Wellington out to the Cook Straight on the south and west, but only extends north to about Tawa (not as far as Porirua) and east-wards doesn’t quite reach Petone. Pencarrow Head juts into the eastern edge of the map, but apart from this none of the Eastbourne side of Wellington Harbour reaches this map. All of Lower Hutt and the bulk of the Orongorongos and Rimutaka Range is drawn on map BQ32 (Lower Hutt), although without as much to the north. The eastern edge of this map is roughly the same as the old 260 Wellington map, just reaching Lake Oneke. Everything north of Tawa, and still reaching about the same fringe of the Tararuas, is now on BP32 (Paraparaumu). Most of Kapiti Island appears on this map, but the north end with Waiorua Bay is chopped off. If you specifically care about the north end of Kapiti Island, it’s worth noting that Topo50 map BN32ptBP32 has been intentionally shifted south to overlap, and includes all of Kapiti Island. (I don’t own this map.)

Tararuas Old maps: S26 (Carterton) for the southern end, S25 (Levin) for the northern end. New maps: BP33 (Featherston), BP34 (Masterton), BN33 (Levin), BN34 (Shannon).

I think the Tararuas lost out with the new map divisions. In the 260 series nearly the entire range was nicely covered by two maps, but now there’s a mixture of mountain range, flat farms and populated towns and coastal areas. I was going to take my new maps into the Tararuas last weekend, but took the old ones instead when I realised our stint on the middle part of the main range was going to cross three different maps. The route just fitted the old maps so much more nicely.

All of the Southern Crossing region fits into BP33 (Featherston), which also seems to be the most filled-up of these maps as far as tramping regions go. It also includes the Southern Main Range right up to Anderson, and (nearly) all of the route down to Waitewaewae Hut. The map extends north to Otaki Forks and Waitewaewae Hut, about the same line as the old map. It’s the east-west split where things get annoying, as the Featherston map only extends as far east as Mt Holdsworth and much of the Totara Creek track. If you want a map that includes places like Holdsworth Lodge, Mountain House and Powell Hut, you’ll also need to get map BP34 (Masterton), which is mostly farm-land but includes this corner of the Tararuas and also the Barra Track up to Mitre Flats (but not Mitre). That whole area falls into a frustrating network of map boundaries. If you wanted to head further north to somewhere like Cow Creek, or up over Three Kings or Mitre on the tops, you’d find yourself getting onto yet another map, BN34 (Shannon).

Much of the northern end of the Tararuas falls on map BN34 (Shannon). The souther end of this map falls a little further south than the Kiriwhakapapa Shelter and North King. The Shannon map includes pretty much all of the Northern Main Range, north-west of Arete and past Dundas, down past Herepai Hut or onward into the leatherwood-laden hell-hole towards the Mangahao Dams. West of Arete, it’s necessary to switch to map BN33 (Levin), which includes most of Carkeek and Dorset Ridges on the far east, most of the middle Main Range, and Oriwa Ridge.

Ruahines Old maps: T23 (Kimbolton), U23 (Dannevirke), T22 (Mangaweka), U22 (Ongaonga), U21 (Kereru). New maps: BL36 (Norsewood), BK36 (Taoroa Junction), BK37 (Tikokino).

I haven’t really visited enough of the Ruahines to know where all the best bits are, but at face value I think the area’s done much better for map boundaries in Topo50 than it did in the 260 series. The Ruahines are long and thin (especially at the southern end), and trend diagonally up the North Island, at least compared with the map sheet indeces. In the 260 series, the range crossed at least 5 maps, possibly more, but often only cutting corners or scraping edges of the maps. For instance, the walk into Heritage Lodge or Rangiwahia Hut occurs on the far east of map T22 (Mangaweka) — a map which is almost entirely farmland irrelevant to the range. Further east, the bulk of the Ruahine Range at that latitude falls onto U22 (Ongaonga), but still only uses 1/3 of the map surface. Further south, most of the range fell diagonally across T23 (Kimbolton), but just cuts the corner of U23 (Dannevirke), and that could have been annoying for anyone wanting to walk across to any of the 6 huts marked on that tiny corner of the Dannevirke map. Towards the northern end, map U21 (Kereru) was actually reasonably full of Ruahine Range area.

The reason I think the Ruahines win so much under Topo50 is because the west and east map boundaries are placed to fit the full width of the range so much more nicely than in the old maps. About the same area for which I needed 5 large maps with lots of farmland is now covered by 3 smaller maps of mostly mountain range. The thinner parts of the range around Rangiwahia, Heritage and further south now have the entire width of the range falling within a single map — in this case BL36 (Norsewood). The two maps further north and north-east, BK36 (Taoroa Junction) and BK37 (Tikokino) cover the whole area up the Ruahine Main Range, and out to the edges on both sides without huge amounts of extra.

Aorangis Old map: S28 (Palliser). New maps: BQ33 (Lake Wairarapa), BR33 (Ngawi).

The Aorangi Range, mostly a hunter’s playground on the south-east coast of the North Island, used to be entirely on one map. I guess there’s a slight loss here because it’s now mostly on two. The southern border of map BQ33 falls just south of the Putangirua Pinnacles, which is a starting point for a trip I’ve now done twice, to walk south from there out to Cape Palliser. Both maps have a lot of wasted space outside the mountain range, but at least the whole range does seem to be covered on just two maps, though, and it doesn’t get more complex.

Mt Taranaki / Egmont Old maps: P20 (Egmont), plus a few extras around the edges. New maps: BJ29 (Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont), BH29 (New Plymouth).

Most of Mt Taranaki/Egmont used to fit on P20 (Egmont), with the exception of a couple of edges of the national park falling onto P19 (New Plymouth) or Q20 (Stratford). The design of Egmont National Park, I think, means that those two edge maps often wouldn’t have been relevant anyway, simply because they mostly involve just the beginning of well define tracks up to the mountain in the middle, and also because the Park has several roads leading up to the inner section in which many people start their activities regardless. Consequently it was often possible to get by in all of Egmont with a single map.

In the Topo50 maps, I think the boundaries become slightly less efficient. There is still a single map, BJ29 (Mount Taranaki or Mount Egmont) that covers the central cone of the mountain. Most of the national park is restricted to the north-west corner of this map, however, and the entirety of the Pouakai Range to the north east has been cut off. To get the park in its entirety, it’d be necessary to obtain three more maps: BJ28 (Opunake), BH29 (New Plymouth) and possibly BH28 (Oakura). I don’t own any of these, but might get them in the next bulk order I take part in.

I have a few other maps scattered around, but this covers the main Wellington-based regions I tend to spend most time tramping in. If you’d like a look at the boundaries for yourself without leaving the internet, LINZ has published map sheet guides for the new map series, including comparisons between where the old sheets and new sheets lie. My current favourite way to check out the Topo50 map extents online, however, is to visit Koordinates.com and search for “Topo50″, switch on the Topo50 map layer, zoom around to find what I want, then toggle the Topo50 sheet index layer to see which map it’s on.

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.
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Day one, 31st December 2009

We’d stayed the night at the Lazy Cow Backpackers in Murchison, which incidentally is a very nice backpackers. They gave each of us a small paper bag of sweets that reminded me of the 20 cent mixtures I remember buying when at school. I never got around to eating mine, so threw it into my dry bag, which was handy at the time, to munch on later. After a drive down the road, we began our tramp at Lyell at around 8.30am, intending to sidle up the hillside to the north and end at the saddle at roughly NZTM252805 for that evening, possibly pressing on depending on how long it took to arrive there. Lyell is an old gold mining town, but today none of its original structures remain, and it’s entirely a sandfly-infested campground. From Lyell begin a net of short walking tracks, eventually converging into a single track that sidles upwards to nowhere in particular, approximately northwards. The track is an old gold mining route, which the Department of Conservation now seems to be restoring as a well graded mountain bike track. It doesn’t really go nowhere, as it provides access both to the ridges nearer the top, and also to the head of the southern branch of the Mokihinui River, for which we were aiming. Still, it felt strange to see such a major effort being expended on this track on which we saw no other people, and which (as I said) didn’t really seem to go anywhere specific before petering out.

Up from Lyell.

Being an old mining track, the route is an impressive engineering feat in places, given how parts of it have been cut into steep and sometimes bluffy hillside. As part of the restoration, particularly from 8 mile creek and onwards, relics of the mining era have been intentionally left beside the track (sometimes locked down) to help provide an historic experience for visitors to the area.

3 hours after leaving, we took an early lunch at what we thought might be the crossing point of 8 mile creek as marked on maps (though we later discovered a more likely candidate). This was shortly after a slip on the track that would likely prevent most bikes from getting past, and from then on the grade of the track took a step downwards. It’s still a good track, however, as tramping tracks go.

DOC’s vacant fly-camp.

Some time after lunch, at around 1pm, we arrived a vacant DOC fly-camp full of covered supplies, probably to be occupied again by workers after the new year’s season was over. Walking through the camp it quickly became obvious why they’re here. Immediately around the corner, a large section of the hill-side had fallen away, roughly east of Mt Lyell (1092). There must be continuing plans to extend mountain bike access at least as far up as here, because DOC seems to be cutting a well graded track into the side of the slip. Such a track would keep the same gradient and I presume the relevant engineers believe it to be a workable idea, though we came away wondering if the slip could just take away the new track again in the future. Allen ran ahead and discovered that there is a thin route around the side at the moment, but markers still re-direct trampers upwards and over the top, via an ad-hoc route through the bush. After a short rest, this is what we followed and the sudden up-ness and softer ground made a nice change to everything up until then.

Robert, Steve and Dmitry.

An hour or so later at about 4pm, we were high enough to have entered the vicinity of dracophyllum. About the same amount of time again later, we finally reached the saddle near the top, quietly marked by a couple of pink tags, and decided to camp having considered the chances of finding reasonable campsites further down. The nearby ground was spongy and leaked water as a tiny stream emerged from the ground, one of several that would converge into the Mokihinui River below, and this was to be our main source of water. We were pretty much at the high point of the entire trip at about 840 metres, however, and water certainly shouldn’t be an issue after this giving we planned to walk the length of a major river. Between seven of us we set up three tents on the track, with Allen and Sue, Dmitry and Mark, and Robert and myself. Steve decided to bivy out in the open, wrapping his sleeping bag in a blue tarp and his pack liner. The weather was playing nicely and allowed us to cook up a brew, and dinner from fresh vegetables and pasta without and problems before bed. Robert and I celebrated the arrival of the year 2010 at 9pm, then fell asleep. Some time during the night, a forth tent had mysteriously materialised over Steve.

Day two, 1st January 2010

Steve followed by Allen at the
upper southern Mokihinui.

We were away shortly before 8am, and discovered that past the saddle on which we were camped, any remnants of a marked track quickly disintegrated. A photocopied description of the area that Steve had obtained indicated that we should be able to follow a bearing more or less north-west, however, which was consistent with the map, and then drop into the head of the south branch of the Mokihinui. With about an hour of careful sidling and eventual dropping down what became a rib, we eventually hit the very modest creek that was well smothered with fallen branches through which we needed to clamber. The occasional South Island Robins and Fantails followed us, as they do, taking advantage of our kicking up the insects that they enjoy. It was probably a good thing we hadn’t carried on the previous night, because apart from one possibility, there wasn’t much camping down here at all.

Mark, followed by Steve and Dmitry.

The creek became decidedly easier to walk along over the next 30 minutes as it opened up slightly, but still with regular obstacles that required some thought. The occasional footprint indicated that someone else had been this way in the past few days, but we never met them. We still weren’t moving as quickly as we’d hoped, which was a concern given the forecast was for some rain to be coming that night, and we’d hoped to be a long way along the river before that happened in case flooding became an issue. We stopped at 12pm’ish for lunch at a small side catchment coming down from Mt Montgomery (1332) to the east, and by now enough side creeks had come in to have built what was initially a tiny creek into a respectable waterway.

Steve gets wet.

At 2.20pm, we reached the confluence with Granite Creek, which comes down to meet the Mokihinui from its true right. We spotted a giant DOC triangle marking the beginning of a route up the hill-side on the true left, and initially thinking it might be related to getting around some bluffy areas further along the river, we followed the markers. The track doesn’t follow all the way over the bluffs, but instead drops back down the the main river just on the south side of where Silver Creek comes down to meet the Mokihinui from its true left. It wasn’t immediately clear why this track led up above the river for that short stretch, but looking through the trees it appeared there could be some difficult-to-negotiate rapids in the main river.

Checking out the markers near
a vacant worker camp.

We ceased for several minutes as we came back down to river level, because on the opposite side of the Mokihinui (the true right) there appeared to be another vacant worker camp with a massive stack of firewood, and a roughly marked track leading perpendicularly away from the river. If we’d contacted DOC beforehand we might have had more information about this track, but we weren’t sure so we didn’t follow it. It may be a route that veers around north-wards behind spot-height 383 on the true right, so as to get around some very bluffy areas on the main river. Without knowing exactly where it went, or for how long it’d stay on the true right, however, we elected not to follow it. By now, despite some very sunny weather to date, we were beginning to feel conscious about the coming rain, and not wanting to risk stranding ourselves on the true right of the Mokihinui River lest it come up too high for us to cross back. Instead we decided to try and remain on the true left, or at least within clear reach of it, and this would possibly mean we’d miss staying at Goat Creek Hut further down, located on the true right.

A dyslexic marker arrow.

As might be expected, avoiding the most likely track around the limestone bluffs, which begin on both sides of the river at about NZTM 284877, did nothing to solve our problem of getting around these bluffs. Steve’s photocopied instructions implied that there should be a route somewhere up high on the true left of the river, though it was sketchy about any specifics. After a lot of messing around and clambering up some fairly steep slopes with the help of sturdy trees, we worked our way along an approximate route above the bluffs. It wasn’t a marked route so we were following our noses for a time, and it was also unclear when we should be heading down-wards — Steve’s photocopied instructions simply indicated we should continue to follow our noses down once we were past the bluffs, but even after we thought we were past the end, we couldn’t see any obvious way down for some time. We finally discovered an orange arrow marker nailed to a tree at NZTM 286885. It was a very old marker, and furthermore it was a dyslexic arrow that pointed left-wards, away from the river into a ditch (after which there was one further marker and apparently nothing else), rather than right-wards down the hill towards the river. This was really a set of markers intended for getting up the hill, but we found it easy enough to follow the other way. Within 20 minutes we stood back on the bed of the Mokihinui River, which was becoming increasingly impressive in its ability to channel water. By now it was 6pm, and we had around 3 hours until sunset.

There’s a wonderful geology along this stretch of the Mokihinui on the north side of the bluffs. Huge slabs of limestone rock line the banks, having been thrust upwards during past earthquakes. The river now surges over them eroding a smooth channel. Occasionally a giant house-sized monolith has toppled from the gorgey walls and slammed into the riverbed below, to be slowly eroded away by the water as centuries and millennia pass by. That’s what it looks like to my untrained eye, at least, though I may be very wrong. For practical purposes, the river walk in this region involves walking along the flat slabs above the river, generally okay except there’s often a covering of slippery slime for which obtaining friction is tricky. In the rain it could be treacherous, so it was a good thing for us that the rain hadn’t yet arrived.

We discovered another track marker leading away on the true right at roughly NZTM300900, but once again it wasn’t clear where it was heading. Despite following the first couple of markers into the bush, we lost it very quickly. It’s possible that it headed further back and eventually to Goat Creek Hut, although to get there it’d still have to cross a major side-stream (Stern Creek), or perhaps it was the returning marker of that other track we’d seen leaving to go around the bluffs on the true right much earlier in the day. We never found out for sure. By 7.45pm we were debating how much further we should go, given that it was forecast to be raining by the following day. Ideally, we really wanted to not just be on the true left of the Mokihinui River, but also past as many significant side creeks as possible. By the start of the day we’d intended to get at least as far as Goat Creek Hut, opposite Hennessy Creek, but we were still nowhere near it, and hadn’t even reached Owen Creek that entered on the true left about 3 km earlier.

Approaching sunset.

We continued a little further and eventually established our camp-site for day 2 at NZTM303905, on a sizeable vegetated peninsula jutting into the true left of the Mokihinui. We named it dead goat island, after the discovery of two dead goats. As Steve noted, goats rarely drop dead spontaneously in such situations, so it seemed likely a hunter had shot and left them. We didn’t check.

Steve toasts a marshmallow.

And we chopped our vegetables and cooked our dinner on the campfire, then toasted marshmallows on a clear, calm and quiet night. High above us the occasional cloud slowly coasted through the sky. Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, twinkled violently. Some wild turbulence was brewing in the upper atmosphere, and it was soon to cross our path.

Day three, 2nd January 2010

Steve, shortly before leaving
dead goat island.

The front must have finally arrived and rain began some time in the early morning, perhaps 3am, prompting a low key getaway at about 6.30am, without messing around. The main Mokihinui River was not flooded and we were still able to cross back and forth, but only in strategic and carefully decided places with aspects of caution. We spent more time carefully edging along the side of the river than we might otherwise have bothered with.

Our final crossing, from the true right to the true left, occurred an hour after we left and shortly after the entrance of Owen Creek into the main river. It was an awkward crossing which may have been more straightforward except that the surface under the increasingly swift current was almost entirely boulders, providing virtually no flat ground on which to stand. Technically the river was still not flooded, but we decided there and then to not cross that river again until it had gone down. This decision was the end of any hopes to visit Goat Creek Hut on the true right, but in many ways it was a relief because at least we were on the side we needed to be on to get out.

For two further hours we remained on the flats. There was one difficult clamber up a bank for which we needed to remove packs and pass them around to get up, but generally we spent the time bush-bashing through trees on the true left. It was 9.30am, 3 hours after we’d left that morning, when we finally reached Hennessy Creek. Given the way it was surging it could have been the end of the day already, but we were relieved to find a useful fallen tree that allowed us to walk or shuffle to an island of scrub half way over the creek’s mouth. Unfortunately the other side of this small island was another raging torrent, but it did enable us to sight a larger tree further up the stream, spanning the entire waterway, and we were saved!

Reaching the small island.

Hopping and walking and shimmying over the mossy knee-friendly green carpet of this sturdy tree trunk that spanned the surging water below, we patted ourselves on the back and continued pushing through the river-bordering bush… for about ten minutes or so… and then we came to the enormously demoralising realisation that the Hennessy Creek we’d just crossed wasn’t Hennessy Creek at all. It was an un-named minor side stream that flowed into the Mokihinui River about 200 metres to the south of Hennessy Creek. The real Hennessy Creek really did spell the end of our day, and it was game over. Time to camp. Oh krud. Goat Creek Hut was now about 200 metres away behind the trees on the far side of the flooded Mokihinui River, yet completely out of reach. For all the time that we spent so close, we never saw Goat Creek Hut.

And so we waited. We even had a day up our sleeve in the original plan which had been set aside for lazing around in the sun. All the environment needed to do was to stop raining on us.

Not a great idea.


Home for two nights.

Having arrived at about 10am, Hennessy Creek, quite a thunderous and constant surge of water, was at its highest point that we saw (at least during the day) at around 3.30pm that afternoon. There were a few gauges we could use to measure this. For instance, I took several photos of the far side of the creek to help document the visible rocks, few as there were. A mid-sized horizontal overhanging tree dipped its branches into the creek, and completely stripped of leaves those branches were getting a severe walloping that also caused much turbulence in the water immediately past it. The “creek” happily forced its way over the trunk of this tree at its base which stuck out from the high side of the creek bed. My favourite measuring device was a couple of metres further down-stream, where a smaller tree that I mentally nick-named the Loopy Tree was looping furiously as its thin lower-most branches held an elastic pattern of becoming caught in the torrent’s surface. It was then launched erratically into the air before reaching its maximum extent and bouncing hard back to the surface of the turbulent water, only for the pattern to repeat over and over again.

From mid afternoon the rain would sometimes hold off for short whiles, giving us false hopes before beginning again and dashing them. The level dropped about 20 centimetres from its high point before finally settling on a constant state of flood that it most preferred. The top-most rocks of its true left bank were now visible on the far side, the water merely frequently lapped over the trunk of the horizontal tree rather than blasting over in a constant surge, and the Loopy Tree reduced from a frantic explosion of craziness to a hypnotic loopy pattern of an impressive radius.

We optimistically hoped this was a sign that the level would decay further overnight. Allen and Sue, banking on their past experiences, were smartly locking themselves down to half rations already at that point, but the rest of us had complete meals that evening, optimistically hoping things would improve by the following afternoon. With the size of the catchment and the sheer amount of rain that we later discovered was falling, not completely consistent with the forecasts we’d earlier seen, our optimism was unfounded. Robert and I did our best to keep water out of the tent, but with limited success. Some time that evening, Mark knocked on our tent door and asked if we’d seen Dmitry — it seemed he’d gone for a walk and not returned. It rained for the better part of the night.

Day four, 3rd January 2010

The rain continued. We discovered where Dmitry had been, though, and yes he had returned. Dmitry, who despised the idea of being so trapped, had been up river looking for possible places to cross, and he’d actually found something promising. On the morning of day four, everyone bar Allen and Sue went up the creek to check it out, and it was quite a cool concept. Despite the creek being in flood, Dmitry had discovered an underwater island that stretched about 30 metres down the middle of Hennessy Creek. From the true right bank at which we were stuck, we could reach the top end of this island relatively safely due to the shallowness of the water flowing over the gap. The water directly on the other side of the island was surging even more violently of course, since all that water in the river has to go somewhere. Due to the shape of things underneath, though, the surging water was gradually filtering over the top of the entire length of the island from the true left to the true right, taking the complete 30 metres to do so. By walking the length down the middle of the creek to the far end of this underwater island, we would then be at a point where the gap to the true left was now shallow, with the bulk of the water now surging on the true right side of the island behind us and from where we’d come. Dmitry in fact, who’s very well balanced on his feet, had already done this completely by himself the previous evening, and come back again. Looking at it collectively, however, we didn’t reach a positive consensus about everyone in the group being able to get through safely. The water was still reasonably swift over the length of the island, and so we decided to wait things out for longer.

I checked the level using my measures when we returned. There was no difference from yesterday’s settling point, with the mesmorising Loopy Tree in its comfortable circular pattern. As I stood and stared at Hennessy Creek, trying to picture a good landing space in case I might somehow construct a giant pogo stick from the available raw materials, one of the many South Island Robins fluttered past and landed on a low branch on the far side. It looked back and chirped, demanding to know why we weren’t on the far side of the creek, kicking up more insects to ease its foraging.

I went back to the tent, and that’s where both Robert and I spent most of the day enduring increasingly annoying back-aches from so much lying in a confined space, phasing in and out of consciousness. I spent some time browsing FMC Bulletin number 178, and came to realise just how much I take for granted all those moments when I have the freedom to mix a cup of chocolate chips, a cup of drinking chocolate, half a cup of strawberry jam, a litre of gooey raspberry ripple ice cream, 3 cups of couscous (to make the whole thing acceptably healthy), and then eat it. In fact, I couldn’t believe I’d never ever done such a thing, and it seemed absolutely wrong that I hadn’t taken the opportunity during any of the many times I’ve been able to. Thus I made a private resolution that I’d mix this recipe once we finally emerged from the mess we were in, but meanwhile I daydreamed that I was swimming in chocolate ice-cream mush. So thank you Warren Wheeler of the Palmerston North Tramping & Mountaineering Club, for your Mt Doom Chocolate Volcanic Cake that allegedly serves 12. Your submission inspired my imagination that evening, and took my mind to a distant land in which I wasn’t hungry, even though it sounded like pitiful-sized portions if dividing it between so many.

Strangely I didn’t feel much like eating any of my 2 day expired pita bread that day, and satisfied myself with a couple of slices of cheese. Robert and I went to sleep to the frequent claps of a thunderstorm, but I soon noticed inconsistencies. There were no lightning flashes through the tent, the thunder invariably originated from the same directions, and the volume wasn’t as variable as it should typically be as a storm passes over. It soon dawned that the ambient thunderous thuds were localised to the raging torrent within about 30 metres on two sides of us. We were surrounded on both sides with the echoes of heavy river boulders being driven down the flooded rivers and occasionally torn from the banks. I learned later that Allen had been concerned enough to rise during the dark and scope out potential alternative camp-sites lest we quickly need to evacuate our residence on the forested river rocks. The thuds continued throughout the rest of the night, as the Mokihinui continued its constant evolution as a wild river, eroding the environment around it in a way that only such an aquatic juggernaut can.

Day five, 4th January 2010

The Mokihinui — a flooded Hennessy Creek
comes in behind the trees on the true left.

The rain had slowed, and even largely stopped by the morning of day 5, but the rivers on both sides remained high, with such large catchments and possibly with more rain occurring further up. We couldn’t tell for sure. Robert and I spent some time sitting on the rocks next to the bank of the Mokihinui, which we’d by now figured out how to reach through the trees, and were even able to dry a few things during intermittent sunshine. Some time around 8am, a helicopter came completely unexpectedly from the south, swooping low along the river and directly over us. It looped around over the river and down to the ground behind the trees on the opposite bank of the Mokihinui, almost exactly where Goat Creek Hut should have been. The helicopter sat for several seconds in its obscured position before suddenly lifting off and flying away further down the river, the fumes from its engine silently drifting down to where we stood.

We had no obvious explanation for this, and despite having tried to wave from our positions in our colourful polyprop, we had no idea if anyone in the helicopter had seen us to be able to note that we were stuck here. It occurred that perhaps the hut over the river had occupants, maybe even someone with a mountain radio, but there was no way to tell and if such people were there, they weren’t coming down to the main river where we could see them. Probably we should have found some brightly coloured pack liners or similar and anchored them out in the open, so that any future aircraft cruising along the river might realise someone was camped in the trees behind Hennessy Creek, just in case we were so late for there to be a Search and Rescue alert. We didn’t think of it at the time, however.

I went back to the tent, deciding to empty my miniature dry bag from the top of my pack, and try to dry out some of the items inside that had collected water. That means things like a wallet, cellphone, head torch, GPS, and all those things that absorb water really well when there’s a lot of it. Fortunately though, I discovered the two most absorbant things in my dry-sack were a spare cotton handkerchief, sopping wet, and a sticky mish-mash splodge of white goo. I couldn’t figure out what this was until I pulled it out and realised it was the 20 cent mixture of lollies I’d been given at the Lazy Cow Backpackers at Murchison. On another day I might have thrown it away (or at least not eaten it), but right now this was a treat! I managed to peel away the layers of paper gunk (well, most of them), and get at the sticky marshmallow. The splodge included at least a couple of jelly beans and a jet plane, and if I handled it carefully enough it was possible to un-twist the wrappers around the toffees. All in all, a good bonus meal.

Free energy.

With the rain receding but the rivers taking their time to go down, Allen took some initiative to start a campfire. Doing so with so much drenched wood isn’t an easy task, but Allen showed us a valuable trick, which is to find vertical wood. If the wood is standing up rather than lying on the ground, it won’t have absorbed anywhere near as much water, and thus becomes much easier to burn. So we spent late morning and early afternoon scouring the surrounding bush for dead wood that hadn’t settled on the ground. We soon had a large pile, and Allen had a good fire going that we could use to repeatedly boil water for perpetual brews, toast 3 day expired pita bread for a reasonable lunch (much nicer than raw pita bread), stand around to keep warm and pass the time, and (at least in one person’s case) dry out underpants.

By mid afternoon, Hennessy Creek was still up some way, but we decided we’d finally try Dmitry’s suggested crossing location. It took about 30 minutes to pack up, 15 minutes to walk up river, a few minutes of careful crossing in pairs and one group of three, an amount of trawling through a deep bog on the far side where I personally found myself thigh deep in mud having taken a wrong step, some extra time to scramble up a miniature bluff to the flats of the higher ground, and it worked. At 5pm we were across, with another 4 hours of daylight.

From here we took a bearing roughly north, walking over the flats inland from the river. The flats in this vicinity are a nice composition of greens, but there’s little camping as the area’s full of shallow sink-holes between the tree roots and swampy regions. We avoided some of it by sidling up the slope towards the west. As we followed our bearing through the shin-deep aquatic wonderland, we began to encounter ribbon-tied survey markers of some sort, with occasional blue ribbons that anchored specific points (perhaps for regular bird counts), and with pink ribbons leading trails between them. We spent some time trying to follow these ribbon trails on the pretext that they probably went approximately where we were trying to go, but were careful to maintain an appropriate north-ward bearing whilst doing so. At around 7.15pm, we emerged above the now impressively widened Mokihinui River, looking down over a giant flowing channel of water. The late evening sunshine waved goodbye to the land from somewhere above and behind us. At a distance below, a convoy of six Whio — New Zealand’s endangered and unusual Blue Duck — swam by in formation, occasionally diving underwater to feed as they saw fit to do so.

A troop of Whio swim below.

We soon dropped to the level of the river to look for a reasonable camp-site, and eventually settled on a grassed region slightly above the main river at NZTM324981, on the edge of the second of the Mokihinui River’s two giant meandering horseshoe-shaped bends in this region. As we were about to set up camp, however, we had a brief debate about whether we’d be better to continue. Eventually, keeping in mind that we didn’t know for certain whether more rain was coming, we decided to press on to Limestone Creek, or possibly even Mokihinui Forks Hut if it proved easy enough to reach. The creek was the main problem though. Steve’s photocopied notes indicated it was complex to cross, even on a dry day. With an hour of daylight remaining, we decided it may be easier to approach before any possible rain arrived, if we could make it in time. Thusly we packed up again, headed up the hill, and pushed through more bush and swamp until finally reaching the creek. It was not a go-er at all, being too late and too deep.

Checking out near the
mouth of Limestone Creek.

Limestone Creek is a very slow moving waterway, effectively a deep, dark and wide ditch full of water. At first glance, it could require swimming or pack-floating because there isn’t a bottom to walk on, and the steep and high sides would potentially make this even trickier. Furthermore, with the Mokihinui River still in some state of flood, back-wash from the main river was causing the creek to come up even higher. One option might have been to have sidled around above the top of the creek’s catchment earlier in the day, which to be fair Sue had actually proposed early on though we hadn’t done so. We walked to the mouth of the creek where it meets the Mokihinui, but couldn’t see any easy way through there, either. We discovered much later, from a local hunter, that there’s apparently a limestone shelf not far under the water near the mouth of the creek. Reportedly it’s straightforward to simply walk across for those who know where to go. We weren’t in the know at the time, though, and perhaps the state of flood meant this bridge was too far underwater to be usable regardless. Instead, we returned to a reasonable camp-site we’d spotted on the way down to the mouth, and set up camp, planning to hope it didn’t rain, then figure out this problem tomorrow.

It was dark by the time we set up camp on the evening of day five. We spent minimal time before going to bed. With the prospect of us being stuck for another day, I didn’t personally want to spend too much food at this point, so left my main de-hydrated meal. Instead, I traded half a slice of my 3-day-expired pita bread and cheese for some of Robert’s salami. The two of us had a hastily assembled sandwich for dinner, and went to sleep.

Day six, 5th January 2010

It didn’t rain overnight. We awoke at about 6.30am, and with prospects of going somewhere, Robert and I enthusiastically prepared and consumed last night’s dinner (in my case half of my remaining de-hy meal) while everyone else feasted on their regular breakfast cereal, or whatever came to hand. We were now officially a day late, having been due out yesterday, but not much could have been done about it.

There was still the problem of getting through Limestone Creek, and it didn’t appear to be any lower this morning than it had been the previous night. It wasn’t long before Steve had concocted a plan, however, having gone for a short mission up the river and discovered a fallen tree. The only catch was that the tree didn’t span the entire creek. Rather, it dipped down into the creek from the southern side (true right) towards the north, meeting the water about half way across. Beyond this point the trunk continued to sink underneath. Falling off would mean a swim or a pack-float, but hopefully this wouldn’t be necessary. On closer inspection it was clear that the tree had been sawn by someone specifically to make a bridge, but it either didn’t work as well as that person had hoped, or it’s since collapsed into the creek. It worked, however.

Steve on a one-way trip.

Steve was first to inch his way down the trunk, and with some effort he found a way to clamber over the underwater branches on the far side of where it met the water, eventually reaching the far bank below a miniature bluff. Over the next 15 minutes we all followed, and we were over. Although it wasn’t certain if we’d be out tonight given some notes about the state of the track ahead, this crossing had been the last major expected hurdle of the trip. Given how long we’d been stuck and how frustrated some of us had become, it was a nice relief to finally have it behind us. There was finally some light ahead, and with some sunshine in the sky there might even be something to look forward to.

Robert in front of Mokihinui Forks Hut.

During another 90 minutes of sidling through thick tangled bush, we saw several more robins and fantails, and also three baby goats huddled together under a tree without a mummy or daddy goat in sight. Eventually, in the middle of the bush, we began to stumble on ancient human-made remnants of structures such as slabs of rusty corrugated iron. I suspect we were at an old site of Mokihinui Forks Hut, because the LINZ map shows the hut about 100 metres from where it actually is (according to my GPS). Soon after, at 9am, we pushed through the trees to finally reach a hut. It’s a standard 6 bunk hut located under a giant Rimu tree, with a wonderful wide view of the forks of the north and south branch of the Mokihinui River below. We stopped for a break, and applied insect repellent which very suddenly became necessary. Browsing the book, we found that a group from the Nelson Tramping Club had been stranded at this hut during the floods, having already been two days overdue before finally managing to leave about the previous day. Perhaps this had been the point of the helicopter earlier on.

The remainder of the walk out to the road from Mokihinui Forks Hut is shown as tracked on our map, and parts of it are well tracked with Department of Conservation orange triangles and all. Realistically it should only be classed as a route, though. Signs at both ends warn that it’s for experienced trampers only, and there’s good reason for this. The route, which follows the historic gold miners’ track cut into the cliffs high above the true left of the Mokihinui River, crosses numerous slips. Three or four of these slips are especially awkward, and while completely crossable and reasonably safe with care, you should expect to be traversing some narrow paths around bluffs, using fixed wires for security in a couple of places, and so on. The western end of the track also includes numerous creek crossings, and one waterfall under which we all had to get wet. Some had quite strong currents and needed thought before leaping in, though the recent rain could possibly have made a few more full than they would have otherwise been.

Mokihinui Forks, where the
south branch meets the north.

A notice in the hut claims the route takes 6 hours, the sign at the far end claims the route takes 8 hours. With seven of us including occasional breaks, it took about 7.5 hours. The route isn’t well marked to begin with, and even the Nelson Tramping Club (which had unsuccessfully tried to get out twice) had stated in their entry that they’d had to bush-bash north of the hut for the lack of any obvious track. We soon discovered that with the current conditions we could head down to the river level in the long grasses, and follow an approximate direction north-ish, during which we somehow spent lots of time walking within a rather deep ditch, to where the south branch of the river meets the north and it swings around to the west towards the coast. We reached this point at 9.30am, and stood on the beach for a few minutes admiring the scenic surroundings, before taking the lead of a bright orange triangle that led up the hillside above some bluffs over the main river, prior to coming back down again over a few more flats.

Views from above.

Crossing Specimen Creek.

At 11.15am, we reached Specimen Creek, coming into the Mokihinui from the true left. This creek is another waterway with a substantial catchment, and no doubt it could also have been problematic with significant rain, but at this time it was easily crossable. The marked route then heads up the hill-side, for the most part leaving the river well below, offering regular glimpses through the trees of an increasingly giant Mokihinui River below. It was compelling to consider just how much the river had changed from the tiny, barely significant tree-smothered creek we’d first stepped into four days earlier. The total catchment is massive and by comparison the river below was huge. For much of this time, we crossed slips — some old and overgrown, some appearing quite active. Several slips, as mentioned earlier, required careful thought and caution to negotiate safely, but all were eventually doable.

One of the more awkward slips.

At half past twelve we stopped for lunch, and I felt disappointed at how much food I had left on what was now almost certain to be our last meal of the walk, given how I’d spent so much effort carefully budgeting just in case. It pays to be safe though, I suppose. All that remained was to get out, and apart from the regular slip or creek crossing, this last section just goes on and on, roughly 20 kilometres of long, straight walking (except for the slips and creeks) from Mokihinui Forks Hut to the end of the road. In places where trees opened up, I looked over the edge and tried to imagine what this gorge would be like should it be dammed, with a 14 kilometre lake to smother the wild river below. At 3.45pm, we walked past the top end of Rough and Tumble Creek, aptly named for its rapids and the excessive noise it generates as it hits the Mokihinui. With an artificial lake, this spectacular entrance that’s been carved and moulded over the millennia would be gone.

Rough and Tumble Creek.

Much of the track along here is surrounded by a forest of young Rimu trees. One day — notwithstanding any decisions to fell them in the future — it will probably grow into something rather magnificent. As we left the main track and approached the road, we passed two crosses commemorating the deaths of David and James Russell, two gold prospectors (father and son) who died in a slip during the massive Murchison Earthquake in 1929.

After a substantial sit at the road in the vicinity of 5pm, we began our walk out to the small township of Seddonville, which isn’t a long way along the road. As we finally walked this stretch, Donna came driving up in a van to collect us, coincidentally having guessed that we might have arrived about now if we’d been walking all day. It was a nice relief.

Robert and Steve at the end.

Seddonville, the small township near the end of the Mokihinui River and whose population would probably all fit inside the Seddonville Pub, was on an evacuation alert during the early days of 2010, at about the same time we’d been penned behind Hennessy Creek. In the past few days, levels of the Mokihinui River that had been unprecedented for many years. Donna, also a day late out from her own trip further north in the Kahurangis, had already stayed a night in Seddonville and been assured by the locals that there was no way we could possibly be getting out that afternoon. I think they’d assumed we’d have aimed for Goat Creek Hut on the far side of the river, rather than camping 200 metres away in the rain for two nights.

The local hunters had ordered helicopters to bring out their mates, and on hearing about us, they’d even been trying to rig up a way of getting us out on the back of one of the other flights, wonderful people that they were. Ironically if we had stayed on the true right behind the large river to aim for Goat Creek Hut, we might have been spotted on the morning of day 5, perhaps even lifted out by the helicopter that buzzed over Robert and I to land in front of the hut and look in to see if anyone was home. This was not to be, however, but I think with so much uncertainty at the time we would have appreciated it a lot there and then, and happily divvied up any resulting expenses between us.

I’ve seen rivers in flood before, but this is the first time I’ve been stuck in such a way. Although no fun at the time, it was fulfilling and I think I’ll go into future experiences with more confidence about preparation and expectations around waiting for rivers to go down. It’s nice to reach the end of such experiences, though.

The beginning (day 2).

The end (day 6)

Edit 21-Jan-2009: I earlier mentioned allegations that Meridian paid the Department of Conservation to not make a submission, but have just noticed I had the wrong link, and can’t locate a reference. (That link refers to a different case that doesn’t involve the Mokihinui.) The Department of Conservation made a submission against the Mokihinui Dam proposal.

The full published results are available on DOC’s website.

The original proposal of the Te Araroa Trust was to go more or less via this route, but the Trust put together the alternative proposal to build a track along Oriwa Ridge, below the bush-line, after the DOC Wellington Hawkes Bay conservancy expressed concern that the earlier route could be too dangerous for the often less experienced trampers that Te Araroa might be expected to attract. This has been brewing for about a year now, and has unveiled much controversy over balancing the seclusion of dedicated wilderness areas and the promotion of recreation, and all that.

Having gone through the submission process with 218 submissions, DOC has decided that its initial concerns are no longer relevant. It’s decided that for various reasons Oriwa Ridge probably isn’t that much safer anyway, that the reasons against the Oriwa Ridge proposal out-weigh the reasons in favour, and ultimately that there will be no track built through Oriwa Ridge. Reasoning that the Te Araroa Trust has since included rugged exposed alpine routes in other regions of the track, DOC has now also come out in favour of the original Te Araroa proposal that it initially had concerns about, to follow the existing and more exposed route through the Tararuas at higher altitude. As long as everyone who walks this section of the Te Araroa Trail takes standard precautions (ie. doesn’t take undue risks), this should be a win for everyone.

It ruffled feathers and caused stress for people on both sides early on. Oriwa Ridge is within one of two Remote Wilderness Areas in the Tararuas — special areas set aside to receive little or no development. This is so experienced people really can get into the wilderness without having to run into tracks, huts, helicopters, and too many other people. Despite having been a popular route many decades ago, Oriwa Ridge itself has a reputation (deserved or not) of being a remote ridge to walk along thanks to a famous storm in the 1930s that left behind lots of tree-fall, causing the ridge to be a comparably challenging, but rewarding route for people who enjoy getting out to that sort of place. The Te Araroa Trail proposal would have ploughed a more heavily walked track along the ridge, which contradicts the idea of a remote wilderness zone and (being on the ridge itself) would have made it difficult for people visiting the region to avoid.

When the Department of Conservation eventually requested submissions on the Oriwa Ridge idea back in August, it triggered debate amongst many of the locals who visit the Tararuas. The Te Araroa Trust encouraged its supporters to make submissions in favour of its proposed route. At the same time, however, several of the local tramping clubs approached the Federated Mountain Clubs of New Zealand, which made a strong submission against the proposal.

In some ways it’s a shame that so much time and effort has been spent both by people in the trust, in DOC, and other interested parties, certainly with much stress along the way, to effectively arrive at the conclusion that the initial idea was always the best. I suppose at least it’s been thought through in a lot of detail now, however, and hopefully everyone can at least see there’s been reasoned consideration.

Perhaps the last word is that anyone who still wants to walk along Oriwa Ridge, as part of their own Te Araroa route or not, can continue to do so. I’ve never been there, but I intend to see it sooner or later. Unlike many countries, there’s no legal requirement to fill in any forms or pay any admissions, or stay on any marked track. All that’s required is to leave it as you find it, and to be fully responsible for yourself. Once these things are accounted for, Oriwa Ridge and nearly anywhere in New Zealand’s back-country is there to be visited in a relatively un-touched state. It’s one of the beauties of our public estate which I hope I’ll never take for granted.

Alistair and Patricia navigating
down Te Mara.

Dates: 11th – 13th September, 2009
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Ruamahanga and Kiriwhakapapa road-ends.
People: Marie, Alistair, Patrisha, Richard, Tim and me.
Huts visited: Blue Range Hut (1 night).
Route: From Ruamahanga Road End up a south-east spur to Blue Range, heading south-west along the ridge to Blue Range Hut for Saturday night. Then up to Te Mara, and down to the South East. Out at Kiriwhakapapa.
[Photos]
[Download GPX] [Show map] [Display in new window]

We spent Friday night in Kiriwhakapapa Shelter, sharing it with another club group, even though we weren’t intending to start from there. It’s not quite as exposed as the Ruamahanga road-end further north, though. The rain was coming down persistently by the time we drove up, and one way or another anyone on the edges migrated further inwards overnight. Eventually the bellbirds began to wake, and some kind of bird that I couldn’t identify began making a lot of noise as it started fluttering around with its nest in the ceiling.

Our plan for the morning, after driving slightly further north, was to head a short distance up the track on the true right of the Ruamahanga River before turning straight up a spur, and navigating our way onto Blue Range. Alistair looked up a grid reference for the point at the bottom of the spur we planned to climb up from the Ruamahanga River, and we keyed it into a GPS so we could confirm the approximate point we’d want to head up-hill, just in case there was any doubt. Ideally we wouldn’t need it, though.

Ray, from the other club trampey group, was very kind to drive us around from the Kiriwhakapapa Shelter and drop us at the Ruamahanga Road End on Saturday morning, which we finally left shortly after 8am. Perhaps it wasn’t quite raining, but it wasn’t far off. We began by climbing a fence, and this was undoubtedly the climax of the trip until that point. Shortly after this we made our first navigation error, embarrassingly enough as we tried to navigate along the track markers over the farm-land. It did take us to the highest altitude we’d been during the morning to that point, although some mild depression followed once we realised and had to turn back the way we’d come.

The flooded Ruamahanga River.

The Ruamahanga Road entrance to the Tararuas actually has quite a long walk before the park entrance, to the extent that we actually walked for a good hour and 45 minutes before reaching the park boundary. (This, of course, included our unintended detour up a windy farm track, which probably added half an hour.) Still, much of the walk seems to be in a buffer zone between the forest park and the farm-land, which isn’t really farm land. During this walk we could look down to the Ruamahanga River from the sidling track high above, well endowed with muddy flood water, and it was nice to know we’d not need to go anywhere near it in the next couple of days. Eventually we passed a sign indicating the official border of the Tararua Forest Park, and the surrounding trees very quickly changed to provide a more consistent canopy over the track.

Alistair working his way
around the creek.

Soon after entering the park, we had our first minor creek crossing, followed by a much more gnarly creek in a small gorge of its own, though there were plenty of hand-holds to get up and around the edges without any real concern. At this point, we were more or less at the bottom of a very nice, direct spur (east of spot-height 635), heading upwards towards the south-south-east, making it fairly straight-forward to plough upwards and be confident of getting onto the main Blue Range Ridge.

The route up this particular spur is overgrown in places, especially for the first 10-20 minutes. As usually happens, though, it became clearer higher up, and animal tracks along the obvious and a handy deer track developed to make the going somewhat easier. Alistair reckoned he noticed one or two markers, but apart from this we didn’t really see much sign of people at all, although it’d be a reasonable assumption that it’s quite a well walked route.

Our lunch stop occurred on the high point of our initial spur, north of spot-height 875, and we stayed until 12.45, then headed along the main part of Blue Range towards the south-west. By now the rain was coming down steadily, but the tree canopy was holding most of it off, apart from all the water settled on the vegetation we had to push through.

Patricia on the ridge
towards Blue Range Hut.

It’s an okay ridge and certainly not difficult to traverse, but I wouldn’t personally rate it as one of my favourite to walk along. It was interesting though, because it was one of the few ridges I’ve visited so far which felt as if there was much more of an animal track than a human track. I guess people must follow it from time to time, but there wasn’t a lot of evidence of this — Marie found a single ribbon marker tied to a branch on the ground, but that was about all. There was a very nice little track to follow, however, which made good diversions around many obstacles that weren’t always immediately obvious. Animal tracks tend to have good ideas, though, so it was generally a good idea to follow them. I guess my only regret is that deer aren’t about a metre taller. For however much the route was relatively easy-going, everything that hit tended to be about chest and head high, and there was a lot of it. Furthermore, the track would every so often divert into a small space under a big fallen tree, or something similar, which would either require a little pack dragging or some awkward circumvention of various obstacles. Maybe things wouldn’t be so difficult if the New Zealand back-country hosted introduced herds of wild elephants rather than introduced herds of wild deer, but that also wouldn’t be quite the same.

We continued to follow the ridge until about 4pm, at which point the bearing carried us into a thick patch of something where it wasn’t quite clear whether it was best to push through it, or sidle around. Marie did some investigations pushing through, and after some fighting with a variety of dracophyllum, suddenly emerged onto the short side-track that leads down to Blue Range Hut. And this was the end of the day’s walking.

The other group of club people, who’d walked up to Blue Range Hut from Kiriwhakapapa that morning, were happily relaxing and reading in the hut, not very bothered to get out of their sleeping bags as we walked soppily through the door. The first order of business was to get a brew going, which was well worth it.

The next order of business was to get a couple of tent flies set up outside, since there wasn’t going to be enough space in the hut to comfortably shelter everyone. Trish, Richard and Tim elected to spend a night on the floor, but Marie and Alistair preferred a Huntech fly outside, and soon after I decided I’d rather have my own space. There are two or three possible tent sites outside Blue Range Hut, but all are fairly thin and not well suited to the tent fly’s we had, and so we put them up on the flat area out the back, partly anchored to the hut’s picnic table. Alistair gave me a hand with my own, and as we were threading the pole through the fly, it snapped, which is never a good sound to hear — especially when it’s raining. It turned out to be not too bad-a-break, though, and very fortunate that the fly would still go up. Still a bit of a pain, but more of a relief that it wasn’t the end of the world. Overall it worked quite nicely, with the only problem being that I wasn’t able to angle my own fly very easily with the wind, and ultimately I nearly lost a peg overnight. No matter, though.

Back inside it was nearly dinner time, and Alistair took some glee in smoking out the hut with prime steak for everyone in our group except the two vegetarians (who’d brought some kind of pasta thing). Everyone who’d been hanging out their clothes to dry probably had a meaty scent left on them by morning. Dinner was fantastic, as it usually the case when Alistair’s involved.

Cattle Ridge in the distance
on sunny Sunday morning.

The rain kept falling, and hadn’t relented at whatever time it was that I wandered back out to the fly to get some sleep. I think it’d stopped by about 2am, although recurring gusts of wind would whip themselves up in the surrounding trees as a threat before descending to the fly. I woke on Sunday to the machine gunning sound of a Whitehead in the upper branches, and noticed that my badly-angled tent fly had nearly lost a peg in one of the front corners. I lay there for a while having discovered it was 6.20am as the occasional light gust caused the corner to flap rather wildly, then decided it might be in my better interests to reach out and try to plug it back into the ground. Optimistically warm morning sunshine glinted through the lower branches, but not direct enough to dry anything out. In the distance through the gap in the trees, Cattle Ridge Hut reflected the Sun’s rays as a bright dot in the distance.

RIchard stands in front of the
sign pointing to Te Mara.

We left at about 8.15am, intent to get back to some more off-track navigation. This would begin by heading up to Te Mara — the high point of Blue Range at 1104 metres. Alistair knew of a side-track directly up the spur from the direction of the hut, which I happily managed to walk straight past — doubly amusing because there’s a sign nailed about 2 metres up a tree which I didn’t notice at all. Noticing track markers really isn’t my strong point, I guess.

Sidling around below Te Mara
after we made a minor nav error.

Te Mara’s marked by a drainpipe in the ground, and it was here that we calibrated some altimetres before navigating down the spur to the south-east, probably about 8.30am or so. It’s a very nice route to follow down, where the bush isn’t too dense, there’s plenty of space to walk, and the ground is comfortably soft. It took a while, though, and there was at least one place where we nearly fell off the spur. There’s a ribbon-marked track all the way up, though, and if we had any doubt we were able to look around for a marker. The route ends on the old bush tram line between the Kiriwhakapapa and Mickey Mickey road ends, right at the point of quite a nice picnic seat. We stopped here for quite some time, had some early lunch at 11.30am, and tried to dry out a few things in the sunshine that was by now beginning to creep through the branches.

Sunning on the tram-line route down below.

From here there’s just a cruisy walk out along the old bush tram-line route, which gradually descends down to the Kiriwhakapapa Road End. Those in the other group were sitting around in the sunshine waiting for us when we arrived, having been there for about an hour or so. All good.

Morning at Mangahao Flats.

Dates: 21st – 23rd August, 2009
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Ohau and Mangahao region.
People: Amanda, Dirk, Illona, Richard, Duncan and me.
Huts visited: Mangahao Flats Hut (1 night).
Route: From Poads Road to the Ohau River (camping a couple of minutes before it), up the Ohau River to Deception Spur (where the North and South Ohau split), up Deception Spur, down into the Mangahao River on the other side, and to Mangahao Flats Hut for Saturday night. Out at the Mangahao Dams on Sunday.
[Photos and Movie]

We began having made some vehicle relocation arrangements that dropped us at the end of Poads Road, east of Levin, at around 9pm, and from there we walked about an hour in the darkness to what’s a very nice camp-site about 2 minutes before the track meets the actual Ohau river, almost exactly at the point that a dry weather track heads up the Gable End Ridge. There’s a walk through some often muddy farm-land at first, past the moo-cows and electric fences, but after that it’s all under trees. The campsite has an open clearing with a fire pit, but the best camping spots are under the nearby trees, and there are lots of them.

Last time I visited this camp-site was with Craig, John and Paul, and at that time we had plans to do something very similar to this weekend. For various reasons, we changed our plans and I missed out on seeing the Mangahao River at the time, but on this occasion it all worked out.

Entering the Ohau.

Having woken at 6.45, we packed up and were away so that we walked into the Ohau River — the water supply of Levin — shortly before 8am. River levels were conveniently low, albeit with very cold morning water, and it was a straight-forward walk up the Ohau to the base of Deception Spur, 40 minutes later, which is where the South Ohau and the North Ohau rivers join. Each of these branches has its own hut further up, with each hut being named after the branch on which it resides. On this occasion we didn’t want to follow either, but instead head up the spur between the two.

The lower end of Deception Spur.

Deception Spur is actually really steep in places for the first 15 or 20 minutes, more-so than I remembered it from a couple of years before. There are several places where it’s necessary to clamber up walls several metres in height that at least feel near vertical, and which are steep enough to allow for quite a slide if you slipped. It still seems very safe, however, simply because there’s so much dense kruft growing on the spur that it’s difficult enough to move, let alone fall off. Although it can make things awkward to bash through, it also means there isn’t really a shortage of hand-holds and foot-holds. The biggest danger is probably getting a pack caught on something and having it spring you backwards with an unexpected great force, so there’s still some need for care in that respect.

A brief window through the trees.

Things thin out a little after about 20 minutes, and although there are patches of thick scrub to awkwardly push through, it’s easier, and becomes more typical for the 600 metre climb towards spot-height 865. There was a small window in the trees after a couple of hours, from which we could see some of the higher ridges towards the north. I took a photo for the record, but all of Deception Spur remains under the bush-line to the top, so this particular view is unusual. Perhaps half an hour after that, we reached the ridge-line at the top of the spur, and found a place just over the top, where warm sun was creeping through the tree branches to have some lunch. From here we’d be navigating down the far side on compass bearings, and when it became apparent that we used different methods for compass reading and therefore ended up with different bearings, we spent much of the time arguing about which is the more True North — grid north or magnetic north. I guess the irony is that neither of them is parallel with the Earth’s rotational axis.

Our plan, from spot-height 865, was to head south-south-west to the top of a slip (marked on LINZ’s topo map), then head roughly east down a vague spur to the Mangahao River, which we began at around 12pm. It appears very steep at first, but there’s not much alternative so it’s really just a matter of being cautious to hold onto things as appropriate and not to slide too far. The first thing to take note of when doing this is to avoid wandering west along another spur towards spot-height 660, and eventually down towards South Ohau Hut. That’s the wrong way (unless you’re trying to do it for some reason). The second thing to be cautious of is walking off the top of the slip. It’s a wide open view through a small gap in the trees above the slip. The ridge in that direction trends towards it, and it’s probably not a bad idea to stop before falling off. It was also the point at which we’d turn to the east. The route east from here wasn’t clearly marked with any obvious trail, but it wasn’t so thick and overgrown to make it difficult to push through the trees.

There was some debate about whether we should try to stay on the ridge, or sidle it in the gully to its north. Things became clearer when half way down, we started seeing blue triangle markers on the trees which were consistent with what Illona identified for us as stoat tunnels, which are used recurringly to monitor the densities of stoats that enjoy peanut butter so that DOC knows how much to budget for when it feeds them, or something like that. At regular intervals, someone will walk up the route and bait the tunnels, then come back the next evening to count the tracks of stoats left in the tunnels and get a better idea of how many there are. We followed the marker trail all the way to the Mangahao River, which ultimately took us down the small side creek to the north of the spur, and the numbering on the markers gave us a handy count-down to indicate our distance from the river at the bottom. We reached it at around 1.10pm, just over an hour after leaving point 865.

Duncan, Richard, Amanda, Dirk and Illona
on the edge of the Mangahao River.

With a hop through the river and after a short sit-down, we were now able to walk along 2 km of the track beside it towards Mangahao Hut, our destination for the evening. Although it’s generally quite a nice track as Tararua tramping tracks go, there are one or two places where the track alongside the Mangahao River gets a little hairy. Storm damage from a couple of years ago still hasn’t been completely worked around, and at least one of the side creeks had us placing rather a lot of trust in some loose-feeling branches in order to climb up to where the track continued. Overall this is just part of it, however, and we reached the sunny Mangahao Flats Hut at about 2.30pm. We expected to meet another group here this evening but they hadn’t arrived yet, so we stretched out, rinsed off, and went on a firewood collecting mission.

Mangahao Flats Hut.

Mangahao Flats Hut is a really nice hut. It’s a similar design as Waitewaewae, with 16 platform bunks and a heap of room on the floor or outside if it’s needed. When our other group showed up and we could exchange van keys, we still weren’t crowded. There’s a nice vista out over the river, which has wide banks, and it’s possible to go for a nice walk over the rocks. Still being near the end of winter months, the sun was setting by 6pm and with Dirk having built a fire, we settled into Amanda’s nicely organised dinner of smoked salmon pasta.

Mangahao River during early morning.

After 12 hours of sleep, people slowly began to rise in sequence some time before 7am, albeit with no major rush to leave. I wandered down towards the river as I muched my brekkie to take in some of the quiet morning atmosphere as the sun slowly emerged. The Mangahao River must be one of the nicest rivers in the Tararuas. It’s wide and scenic, and it’s also gorgey in places which must mean lots of good swimming holes. I’d like to walk along it in the future, keeping in mind that there would probably need to be at least some pack-floating to do it properly.

It was about 8am when we finally left, heading along the main track towards the Mangahao Dams, where our vehicle was parked. About the third major side-creek on the true right, about 25 minutes north-east of the hut, is probably the most awkward along the entire walk. Storm damage still remains from a couple of years before. To stay on the track it’s necessary to clamber up a rather steep wall, although we had an option of walking along the river if we’d wanted to.

The track sidles high above a slip from where there’s a scenic view of the Mangahao negotiating a hair-pin bend, before it descends back to the level of the river. At this point an informal sign nailed to a tree notifies those coming from the direction of the dams of the option between the wet feet and dry feet routes. The track itself continues along the river bank above some areas which appear quite gorgey, and we stopped quite often so Illona (the resident ecologist) could point out all the Bellbirds, Squeaky Tricycles (aka Tomtits) and Machine Guns (aka Whiteheads). An hour from the hut (our time), a bridge crosses Barra Stream. 30 minutes later, just before another bridge crosses Harris Creek, there’s a very nice camp-site at the flats on the river-side of the track. It comes complete with a picnic table, and we also noticed a couple of folded tarps pushed under nearby branches which probably means the site is well used.

The bridge over the
Mangahao River.

We ambled our way to the major bridge over the Mangahao River, reaching it at 11am. The bridge is currently one of the classic 40 year old swing bridge designs, but it appears DOC is gearing up to replace it with one of their more modern designs, given that both ends show preparations. 45 minutes from the bridge, we walked off the marked track and into the wide and mostly dry bed of the Mangahao River, just before it reaches the No 1 Reservoir behind the top dam. With the weather that we had, there was no need for the marked track any longer, and we left it inside the trees to follow the main route of the river out in the wide open.

The Mangahao tree cemetary.

Probably the reason the river bed is so wide is because it borders the reservoir, and at times this entire area would be artificially filled behind the dam. The region itself is a cemetary of dead trees, remnants before the time of building the dams in the 1920s, and drowned nearly a century ago during times when reservoir was filled to a higher level. Today they’re simply skeletons, surrounded by a sea of river rocks. It’s strange to think of the Tararuas as a place that would be dammed like this, yet in the middle of the 20th century there were plans for even more massive damming which would have changed the landscape of the range to an even more massive and noticeable extent. We stopped for lunch in this curious landscape, before resuming the 15 minute walk to the dam, to the parked van, and to an exit from the Tararuas early on Sunday afternoon.

LINZ has a large section of their website which describes the project in detail, explaining how it will affect people’s use of maps, GPS devices and other related systems. It’s good to see this actually happening — we’ve been hearing about it for several years now.

Everything you need to know is behind the link above, but I thought I might try to summarise the changes, perhaps to help people understand it better but as much to help myself to get a grasp on what’s changing and why. I’m doing my best to get this as correct as I can, but please keep in mind that I’m an amateur at this. If you notice inaccuracies or omissions, I’d appreciate it if you could point them out by posting a comment. If necessary, I’ll correct the post and credit as appropriate. Meanwhile if you’re keen to get more authoritative information from the source, a good place to start is the LINZ Publications & Other Resources page. The downloadable Topo50 map Reading Guide and the Where in the World Are We? booklets are especially helpful, and much of what I’ve written here is really just a dumbed down version of them.

For a long time now, LINZ has produced both the NZMS260 and NZMS262 series’ of maps, the former of which is used extensively for tramping. These maps are about as official as it’s possible to get for topographic maps of New Zealand. It’s taken decades to produce the entire series, with each map having been manually drawn. As the series of maps has been produced over such a long time, some maps don’t even match properly with neighbouring maps in properties such as colouring, especially if the maps were produced at different times. A few years ago, LINZ announced that as a major project, the map system would be changing and the various coordinate systems associated with New Zealand mapping would change with it.

There are a variety of reasons why it makes sense for LINZ to update the mapping system, but the most important is to make it work more nicely with the alternative “Geodetic Datum” that LINZ decided to adopt a few years ago. To understand why on earth this was necessary at all, let alone what a “Geodetic Datum” actually is and why LINZ cares about it, it’s necessary to understand something about how maps work and how they’re put together.

It’s all about projections

If you’ve dealt with maps before, you’ve probably heard something about map projections. A “projection” is the necessarily imperfect answer to the problem of how to represent the curved surface on a flat piece of paper.

Each of the maps in the NZMS260 series, the NZMS262 series, and probably most other series’ that LINZ publishes, is drawn on a flat sheet of paper, but the land that it represents isn’t flat. What it comes down to is that a flat map is not a perfect representation of the land it represents, and it can’t be. If every map in the series were laid side by side, the combined land area would look very skewed, and if the maps were pushed around to make the land appear closer to the correct shape, they would no longer line up properly side by side, and all of the nice, parallel lines of the overlaid map grid would no longer be parallel. In practice, the Earth is so large that the area represented by a single map is almost flat, and for most common uses (such as trampers taking compass bearings), it’s easily good enough for the job.

This is what a projection is. To ensure that the map can be displayed most usefully in a flat context, LINZ has to skew the shape of the entire country both so it’s not quite correct, and so it’s as un-obvious as possible that it’s not quite correct.

Points of reference and coordinates

Until recently, I’d intuitively assumed that things like latitude and longitude were very easy concepts. ie. With a specific coordinate, just draw a line from the centre of the Earth in whatever direction some brilliant maths indicates, and the geographic point for a given latitude and longitude will be where that line intersects the Earth’s surface. The intuition falls apart once it’s realise that to do this, just for starters, some way is needed for deciding where the centre of the Earth is. It falls apart even further when it’s realised that the Earth isn’t a perfect sphere, or even a sphere with mountains and valleys messing up the surface. It’s actually an oblique spheroid, which means it’s a flattened sphere that’s much wider in the middle than at the poles. The simplicity of projecting lines from the centre is getting less simple all the time.

You don’t necessarily need to know the centre of the Earth to draw a decent map that’s a good representation of an area, but you need reliable points of reference for which you do know the latitudes and longitudes already. The reference points can’t move, because if they do then it means you can no longer be certain about every measurement you’ve taken from them. New Zealand is a geologically active place, where the land moves around, and this is essentially the problem with the old NZGD1949 Geodetic Datum on which the existing LINZ topo maps have been based until now.

Geodetic datums define the reference system

This is where we come back to geodetic datums, because a datum is essentially the reference system on which everything is based. It might be something derived from the centre of the Earth, or it might be something else. It’s essential that it’s reliable and well understood, however, or everything derived from it becomes confused.

NZGD1949 is what’s known as a “local horizontal datum”, and also a “static datum”. It’s a reference system based on the known positions of trig stations around New Zealand that have been measured very accurately, and it also assumes that they never move. This isn’t exactly true, and the way the datum works makes it more difficult for surveyors to model geological movement without a lot of effort. Therefore this kind of system is not sufficient for use in New Zealand for some of today’s needs, because it’s not a reliable reference to the level of accuracy those needs require. Another issue with NZGD1949 is that having been designed to only fit New Zealand’s land-shape and nothing else, it’s not naturally compatible with much of the globally-aware navigation technology available today, notably GPS systems. To work with NZGD1949 and systems based upon it such as the New Zealand Map Grid, such technology has to incorporate lots of conversions. Through doing so, they waste resources and lose accuracy.

NZGD2000, the new Geodetic Datum which LINZ internally adopted in 1998 (but didn’t immediately use publicly in place of the NZMS260 or NZMS262 series’ of maps), is known as a “geocentric three dimensional datum”, and a “semi-dynamic datum”. It’s a referencing system based on a particular definition of the centre of the Earth and it’s been designed from knowledge that takes the whole planet into account. It’s designed around a model that estimates the shape of the entire Earth well beyond just New Zealand. Obviously the use of NZGD2000 doesn’t prevent New Zealand’s land-mass from morphing by about 5 cm relative to itself each year, but through its design it does help the surveyors and geographers at LINZ keep track of what’s actually moving around in New Zealand much more accurately. Otherwise it’s like trying to measure a distance while someone’s pulling the carpet out from underneath you. Also, being a globally-defined datum, it’s much more easily compatible with the GPS network, which operates in that context.

Collateral damage to coordinate systems

Being naive about the topic as I am, it hadn’t occurred to me until I learned of these changes is that latitudes and longitudes, which I’d always assumed were absolute everywhere, are really only subjective to the system used to plot them and that the systems vary in different places. When LINZ switches its maps to use NZGD2000, all places in New Zealand will be assigned a new latitude and longitude, as far as the predominant series of maps are concerned. Effectively, if you were to go to a specific position of latitude and longitude according to an old map and then again according to a new map, it will be as if New Zealand has shifted about 190 metres north and 10 metres east. (Check out the Differences section of the LINZ FAQ for more information about this.) What’s really happening, of course, is that those latitude and longitude lines are slightly offset from where they used to be because New Zealand is properly aligning itself with the same reference point used by much of the rest of the world.

The New Zealand Map Grid (NZMG) will also disappear, to be replaced by a new grid called the New Zealand Transverse Mercator projection (NZTM2000). This happens for the same reason, because the old NZMG was projected onto New Zealand using systems derived from the old NZGD1949 reference system. With NZTM2000, drawing the old map grid doesn’t quite work any more.

Even though LINZ has been doing its surveying using the new NZTM2000 for more than a decade now, it’s certainly possible to hack together maps with the old grids on them and use the old numbers and draw the old lines. In fact, this is what’s been happening over the past decade. During all this time LINZ has still released newly surveyed editions of their NZMS260 and NZMS262 topo maps with all the internally surveyed new coordinates converted back to the old coordinates for publication. This has been so that the new maps would be compatible with those already in circulation, giving LINZ more time to prepare for the change-over which is now here. Ultimately though, this is inefficient and leads to more and more complications and maintenance problems. Sooner or later, it all has to change.

Change happens on 29th 23rd September 2009

On 29th September 2009 (edit: 23rd September 2009), LINZ will finally release its new series of maps into shops. The old NZMS260 and NZMS262 series’ of maps are no longer being produced, and they’ll be completely withdrawn on that date. At the same time, the complete series of all Topo50 and Topo250 maps will be released, and LINZ is taking the opportunity to make several additional changes to the production system of its maps. Notably,

• The standard printed size of map sheets will become smaller and more consistent. In the NZMS260 and NZMS262 series’, maps were printed on a non-standard, and very large, sized sheet. Some maps were even sized inconsistently with their neighbouring maps, especially if a small segment of land existed off to the side, and making an existing map slightly wider would remove the need to print a new map of mostly water. With the new Topo50 and Topo250 map series’, all map sheets will be produced as metric A1 size. In cases where a map will only have tiny amount of land to be nearly useless for land navigation, LINZ will overlap the maps with neighbouring maps to ensure that every map displays a useful amount of land. Therefore some land may be duplicated on multiple maps, but will also do away with maps that are 95% water.
• Maps will be cheaper. LINZ really wants to encourage people to switch to the new Topo50 and Topo250 maps as soon as possible. Part of this encouragement is to make them available to anyone at the wholesale price of $3.50, as long as 20 or more maps are purchased. (ie. A minimum of $70 spent.) This means you could potentially replace your entire map collection relatively cheaply, or alternatively you could put together an order with several friends. LINZ is switching away from sub-contracting the printing of maps, and will now print them in-house, and this is contributing towards the cheaper costs (as I understand it, at least).

  To help people figure out which maps they might need, LINZ has provided material that compares the NZMS260 and Topo50 Map series’, including diagrams showing how grids of the map sheets overlap each other. If you have a collection of NZMS260 maps and need to know which Topo50 maps to buy for the same areas, it’s a good place to start.

The Topo50 maps are already accessible, in a sense. The complete database from which they’re produced is available using NZTopoOnline, part of the LINZ website which can be used to generate and print maps of sections of New Zealand on the fly. Presently the maps from NZTopoOnline don’t come out quite the same, however, because it’s an automated system that only has raw mapping data to generate from. Apart from having been printed professionally and with predictable consistency, printed LINZ maps, once available, will all be rendered more nicely as a consequence of people having gone through the data to ensure it looks readable, notably by doing things such as ensuring labels of features don’t overlap each other, and that kind of thing. With the natural move towards a more digital and centralised storage of all the information, however, it may become much more feasible in the future to print maps on demand, or have agents do so on LINZ’s behalf rather than require retailers to stock hundreds of different maps just in case someone might walk in wanting one. This is more towards the future, however.

Consequences for old maps

Obviously the old NZMS260 maps will still work, and it’s not as if geography changes simply because the New Zealand government decides to draw a new set of lines over it. There’s an underlying theme of encouraging people to stop using their old NZMG maps, but it might take a while for them to disappear completely. I certainly won’t throw out my maps simply because they’re old, and I doubt many of my friends will. Old maps are a great source of information about things like old tracks and routes that are no longer officially marked. Some people have lots of lines and marked up information drawn over their existing maps which is great for reference material when visiting somewhere, and that won’t be thrown out quickly. What I expect to do, however, is to move towards the Topo50 series of maps and take them out tramping with me.

The real problems will occur when communicating information about maps using two different systems, however. For instance, the potential of confusion if someone gives an NZMG grid reference from a 260 series map, which another person tries to apply to the NZTM2000 grid of a Topo250 map. New Zealand’s Land Search and Rescue is taking this seriously, and at the change-over date, all of SAR will immediately switch to the new mapping system in an attempt to avoid confusion when communicating between each other.

The confusion between the two map grids has been of particular concern, and a decision made to reduce confusion has been to design the new NZTM2000 grid so that the New Zealand land mass which it describes does not even overlap the same land mass in the NZMG when the reference numbers are the same. In other words, a grid reference in either system for anywhere in New Zealand will appear as if it’s pointing to open sea if it’s applied back to the wrong system.

Now it’s just a case of waiting

Hopefully this is a reasonable summary of not just what’s changing, but why it’s changing. The “what” part is easy, but having written this up I now feel as if I’m getting a better grasp on what the reasons and problems are. As I wrote earlier, I’d appreciate feedback and corrections, and whatever further thoughts or comments anyone might have on this.

I guess the most important thing to keep in mind is that it’s coming very soon. It seems like a very significant and important change in the use of maps in New Zealand, yet to date I haven’t seen much publicity of it outside tramping circles. I’ve wondered if there may be large clusters of people whom it might affect, who aren’t even aware that the entire mapping system is about to change.

For several months I’ve been using a baseplate Coleman compass that I found at Rebel Sport for a quarter of the price, and for me at least it works just as well as the Silva Field 7. It’s slightly larger though, if only because it includes extra features like a magnifier that I never use, and ultimately that’s why I decided to replace it. It’s only after I’d been using a smaller Field 7 compass for a while that I noticed the Coleman compass was actually quite heavy, and that’s why I bought myself another Field 7.

It’s a shame they’re priced at about $35 for something so basic, which I think is more of a branding thing than anything else. If I could get a cheap un-branded compass of similar specifications then I would, but they’re hard to find on short notice. I suppose that all you really need is a magnetically sensitive needle inside a nicely divided circle. It probably helps some people to have a few features like a better grips on the dial thingee and a magnifier for maps (which I’ve personally never used), but I’ve yet to see anyone using something like a typically expensive sighting compass for tramping navigation in New Zealand. Perhaps it’s a consequence of the circles I associate with. They’re in the shops a lot so they must sell, and I’m quite interested to know what sorts of activities people use them for.

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.

It’s almost dinner time, I think. There aren’t any pure vegetarians or vegans on this trip, but we’re all what I’ll call “transitive vegetarians”, which means that it’s okay to eat meat as long as the animal it comes from was itself either a vegetarian, or a transitive vegetarian. As I write this, Peter’s busy cooking us some kind of sausages, which are a good bet for transitive vegetarians even if we don’t know exactly which animal or animals they came from. Fraser’s directing the pasta cooking, Craig’s fighting with the smoke pouring out of the fireplace, and I’ve been assigned the noble job of trip historian which is why I’m here writing notes.

We might have had nothing to do for the whole afternoon, but luckily a thoughtful nomad has passed through and left a copy of The Calling by Paul Block. It’s a work of literary genius that we assumed was published by Mills and Boon until we looked more closely. Three people (the original owner, the second-hand dealer, and the person who paid a whopping $2 to the dealer) have wanted it already, and that’s only for this particular copy, so it must be in high demand. Previous visitors to this hut have already used parts of the book as fire-starting material, and who could blame them? Its pages look much more flammable than the copies of FHM and New Zealand Pig Hunter magazine that were hidden above the doorway. This book is very practical.

Since we arrived, Fraser’s found yet another use for its remains, proving once again that it was money well spent by someone. We now have a deck of cards made by cutting up the pages, and he’s gone to a great effort to accurately represent the royalty. Cuts of the cards also caused random words to be removed, sometimes changing the meanings of sentences in intriguing ways. An hour ago we played Last Card with some adjusted rules that included reading inspiring out-of-context passages as we played our hands.

6 of Diamonds: He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.

Last night, a slip on the road prevented us from reaching the overnight parking area at Otaki Forks. The slip was the usual one, about 30 minutes walk from the end of the road. Our rental van arrived at 8.15pm, and Fraser showed up in his own car shortly afterwards. Fraser had already been here much earlier, but ended up ferrying two people back to Otaki soon after he arrived. The couple had reportedly spent 2 hours walking from Parawai Lodge, in the rain, in complete darkness, without torches, and without much useful walking gear. They were optimistically aiming for Otaki Beach, but had unexpectedly found themselves in trouble and were by then simply struggling to avoid stepping off the edge of the road. They were extremely relieved to have met Fraser, and to be given a ride back to civilisation. They also stressed to Fraser that conditions were just horrid, and that if we intended to go anywhere we would definitely need “spikes”. None of us were sure exactly what that meant.

Alistair and Steve, who were sharing our van, left on their Fit trip immediately to get up to Field Hut. We’d also planned to walk to Field Hut last night, then continue to Vosseler from this morning and navigate down the nearby spur to Penn Creek Hut. That idea no longer seemed likely with the forecast, since rivers would probably be up. Consequently, Craig proposed last night that we should only walk to Parawai Lodge, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. None of us had “spikes” with us, but we decided to take our chances on that one and assess the ground conditions as we met them.

Having reached the picnic area and crossed the new bridge, we could see the torches of Steve and Alistair high up on the hill to our right. With the new bridge in a new location from the old temporary bridge, and with it being dark, we had some trouble actually figuring out how to get to Parawai Lodge, and after a minute of thinking we decided to just keep going to Field, especially since we were already enjoying the walk.

The two hitch-hikers were probably exaggerating or badly informed, but it was true that the track up to Field was badly damaged by the recent storm. Finding trees over the track was frequent, often requiring scrambling over and under branches, or major detours. Even so, walking to Field Hut at night is so common that we didn’t have any concerns about problems getting there. Actually, it’s very common, and the likeliness of anything going wrong was next-to-nothing, especially getting lost. If anything had gone wrong, we should have been very embarrassed.

8 of Spades: In his early thirties, he was raggedly handsome with a firm jaw, thick brown hair, and penetrating pale blue eyes.

On a related topic, somewhere within 30 minutes of Field Hut I was surprised to hear Alistair swearing quite loudly from not far ahead, and Steve’s voice wasn’t far behind. Hearing Alistair swearing doesn’t usually bother me, but the two of them should have been at Field Hut by now. Actually it sounded as if they’d met Fraser up ahead, and that Alistair wasn’t happy to see us. Was the track really so bad that we’d caught up? Should we have brought our tramping “spikes” after all?

What had actually happened was that two minutes from Field Hut, Steve and Alistair had found their way around the outside of another big pile of broken trees, only to have ended up walking back the way they came. They must have gone for about 10 minutes without actually noticing the inverted effect of gravity on their trajectory. Alistair’s reaction at meeting Fraser was probably one of gratitude in helping them to realise the error, but maybe it just came out wrong. To a chorus of mocking, all six of us arrived as a group of happy trampers at Field Hut at about 11.30pm last night, and went straight to bed. Nobody else was demented enough to visit Field last night.

Steve and Alistair left quietly this morning before the rest of us had properly woken up. They’d decided there was a good enough weather window to get past the Tararua Peaks and to Anderson Hut by tonight. For ourselves, we barely heard them leave at 6am, and weren’t up until two hours later. There wasn’t much point, anyway. We probably could have gotten up Vosseler and navigated down the spur to the NNW without a problem, but the constant rain and forecasts of more rain meant we’d have to expect a risky river crossing at the bottom, or a very bad camping experience, literally a few minutes from where we are. We decided during this morning’s breakfast that we’d be better to come straight here via the track from Table Top. It was sad because it meant only three hours of walking on what was supposed to be a Medium-Fit trip. Still, having seen Penn Creek when we arrived here, I’m glad we didn’t bet on being able to cross it. I’m a closet hut-bagger, and at the very least this one is another hut to tick off my list.

So we left Field Hut at 9.20am this morning, and there’s not really a lot to talk about. The track down from Table Top was very muddy, indicating (as Craig pointed out) just how much water was still waiting to drain out of the hills. A couple of side-creeks and a lot of down-hill later, we reached where we are now. That was at 12.30pm, now it’s closer to 6pm, and there’s been a lot of sitting and lying around in between. The room’s becoming increasingly smoky because the fireplace doesn’t seem to be venting very well. I think we’ll give up on the fire.

4 of Hearts: “If you refuse to perform, I’ll be forced to take invasive measures.” He did not elaborate but held up an enormous pair of ominous-looking birthing forceps.

To summarise, we’re stuck in a hole and it’s raining and the roof leaks. I should add that there’s also an annoying tree branch near the door of the long drop which is hard to see when wearing a raincoat. I’d already hit my head on it twice, and the third time I was certain that I wouldn’t, but somehow I still forgot about it two seconds before it mattered, and now my head hurts. On the positive side we have sleeping bags, a deck of cards, an enlightening copy of New Zealand Pig Hunter magazine full of high quality articles to interest today’s up-and-coming hunting community, and dinner’s looking tasty.

Sunday night, prior to which we were cold and wet: That was a very exhausting day, for me anyway, even though we didn’t really spend long walking by fit trip standards. I think everyone else handled it better than I did. Steve dropped me at home back in Wellington tonight and my head was still spinning enough that I grabbed his pack from the van instead of my own. They do look kind of similar in the dark, even though Steve’s pack was much cleaner and nowhere near as saturated. I think I’ll go and collapse soon. I’ve developed some kind of cold, and felt the day really badly.

Last night I spent long periods of time lying awake in the bunk, and can confirm that while the rain went away for a few hours and I hoped we might have a typically clear and sunny Tararua day, it started bucketing down from about 4am and was still going during breakfast. Last night I was on dish-washing duty (the trip historian doesn’t gain much prestige when others are cooking), and after looking at the rocks near the river this morning, I think Penn Creek came up by another 5 centimetres overnight.

We left Penn Creek Hut just before 9am this morning, heading back to Table Top, and we almost lost the main route out straight away. It climbs up the bank for a while shortly after leaving the hut, but we kept going along the edge of the creek for a few minutes without noticing the junction. I’d stayed behind for a minute to sweep the place out and if I hadn’t gone the same wrong way as everyone else, we could have had a confusing beginning to the day. We figured it out, though, and all was well for the next 25 minutes until we reached the second side-creek that crosses the track which has a fairly large catchment. This is the creek which crosses the track at about point S26 025307, but you can also identify it as the part of map S26 with the contour line that looks like a wonky piece of string. 5 centimetres in Penn Creek translated to much more in this side-creek. Instead of the dainty waterway we’d waded through yesterday, it now looked more like a rapid ready to drag away anyone sorry enough to dampen their toes. We decided not to dampen our toes, at least more than they were already, and instead figured out an alternative plan.

3 of Hearts: “I love this child!” Rachel exclaimed, kneeling and hugging the surprised little girl. “You could have been born a salmon!” she added, kissing her cheek.

There appeared to be a really nice looking spur that might offer a good alternative route up to Table Top. It’d start heading up to the west from almost exactly where we were standing, then briefly north-west to join with another spur that comes down closer to the hut, then west again before heading into the dreaded light-green zone that symbolised things like leatherwood. We set off on a compass bearing, and within a few minutes a nicely made track became very obvious. After twenty minutes we were only checking bearings every so often to confirm it was still leading us to where we expected. Presumably this spur is a commonly used escape route from Penn Creek Hut during heavy rain, or at least from where that side creek crosses the track. Fraser aptly referred to the route as the “Tramper’s Superhighway”, not to be confused with the “Hiker’s Superhighway”, which is the Abel Tasman Coastal Track and is far less interesting than any random spur in the Tararuas when it’s raining.

Despite the clarity of the track we were following, there were no artificial markers until we reached what we think was the junction with the other spur at point S26 018308, or thereabouts. (You can also identify it as the part of map S26 with the contour line that looks like a flattened paper-clip with a dent in it.) Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to nail white tags on about 15 trees at this point. They were all facing up-hill for people coming down. The only casualty during this section was Craig’s Oringi raincoat, which now has a small tear in the back. The Tramper’s Superhighway only lasted until we reached the line of thick scrub and leatherwood, and then any illusion of a pre-existing route stopped very suddenly.

We must have missed a better route, but never found it after a lot of searching. Ultimately we spent the next 2 hours travelling at a snail’s pace, clambering and pushing and yanking and kicking and dragging and scraping our way through some very stubborn and very thick and very waterlogged vegetation, which annoyingly made very little effort to keep the water to itself. Personally I was sopping wet, having made a silly decision to remove my raincoat before we reached it, and the slowness with which we’d had to move ensured that my fingers were very numb, and I was finding it difficult to perform any delicate actions. Fumbling through my pack to find mittens and over-trousers took a good 5 minutes, most of which was very slowly trying to put them on. It was 1pm before we’d escaped into the liberty of a slightly more tussock-laden landscape from which there might have been a reasonable view if it hadn’t been in the cloud, and it was finally possible to start moving and get blood flowing again. Even then, we still had another 30-40 minutes of negotiating around recurring patches of leatherwood before reaching the actual peak of Table Top, marked by a triumphantly white pipe poking out of the ground.

7 of Diamonds: The deafening roar of the crowd was punctuated by dozens of explosions as additional rockets hurtled aloft, setting the sky ablaze with colour. Aidan and Rachel, sharing both the statement of the moment and their own private joy, continued to embrace and kiss.

Until now I’d never considered Table Top as anything except a flattish area that might have been similar to the top of a table. The idea that it was actually a mountain peak with a pointy bit poking out of it hadn’t crossed my mind. Arriving at this peak from the side opposite what I’m used to was confusing. This was a state of mind more than anything else, and to be fair to everyone else in the group, I think it only applied to me. Standing in the cloud with next to no visibility, feeling cold, damp and tired and in a confused state of mind, it wasn’t obvious where to go from here, even though we knew exactly where we were and exactly where we wanted to be.

The map made it clear that the main Southern Crossing track we wanted was literally 50 metres south-west of exactly where we stood. With limited visibility, though, the bearing looked as if it was just leading into another steep leatherwood-laden hell-hole. I personally had trouble convincing myself to go that way. It’s a good thing that people other than me were in the group that weekend, with minds that were working much more rationally, and we eventually found a way down the small spur to the north-west, finally locating the main track towards Otaki Forks via Field Hut. That was a really good feeling.

By now we were already going to be at the van at least 2 hours late, but were still hoping that Steve and Alistair wouldn’t be waiting too long. They had several rivers on their route, and we’d been seriously considering the possibility that they wouldn’t make it back by tonight at all. We had the keys for the van, however, and felt a responsibility to get them down as soon as possible just in case. So we split the group, with the idea that Fraser and I would run ahead to try and get down sooner while Craig and Peter would follow behind. Despite my state of mind, I was also convinced that the only way I could keep myself sane after freezing in the Leatherwood was to actually try and go somewhere quickly.

We stopped briefly at Field Hut so we could get something to eat (until now we’d skipped lunch) and so I could replace my completely saturated clothes with something dry, and then hopped on. Actually Fraser did most of the hopping, since by that point I felt as if I was carrying an angry elephant on my shoulders with sharp needles poking out of its hooves, and not even the good kinds of needles that pump in stimulants. The state of the track didn’t help much, either. Seeing it in the daylight just re-inforced how much it’d been pummeled by recent storms, and in one instance it took us a good 5 minutes of searching around in circles to figure out where to go next. It still took us more than 2 hours to get down, mostly thanks to me and my pack-elephant that refused to walk anywhere on its own.

6 of Hearts: “If only I had my full surgical kit”, he mused as he removed the scalpel from its box and used it to cut away the man’s pants. He felt a fine spray of water against his face and looked up.

Fraser and I left via Parawai Lodge, and also via the Ranger Station, writing in both intention books in case Steve and Alistair would check them when passing through, assuming they weren’t already waiting in the rain outside the van 30 minutes up the road. Actually, Fraser wrote in both books while I took a chance to collapse outside, not feeling too well. We hoped the Ranger might be at home so we could exert our charm and beg for a lift back to where we’d parked, but there was no such luck. By the time we reached the van 30-40 minutes later, we found that Craig and Peter had overtaken us, probably during our detours via the intentions’ books. Craig was ready to send Peter and I back to Wellington in Fraser’s car while he slept in the driver’s seat waiting for Steve and Alistair. In a coincidence of timing, however, Steve wandered up the road just as we were re-packing our gear.

So I suppose the whole weekend worked out well, apart from me planning to take at least tomorrow off work. As I’ve already said to several people, this is one of those trips that I’ll be appreciating much more tomorrow than I have today. Right now I think I want to go to bed, just as soon as I’ve figured out what to do with Steve’s pack.

As far as club trips were concerned there were several out this weekend. Paul C was organising a relatively ambitious trip over to Dundas Hut, Bronwyn was heading to Roaring Stag Lodge, and Paul J was going up to Herapai (before later deciding to beat Bronwyn to Roaring Stag and snatch the best bunks). For ourselves, we planned to head along Cattle Ridge, which I hadn’t done before and was personally looking forward to.

Dates: 9th – 11th May, 2008
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Putara Road End to Ruamahanga Gorge Road.
People: Sam, Paul, Marie H, Marie S, Jen, Harry, Enrique and me.
Huts visited: Roaring Stag Lodge (0 nights), Cattle Ridge Hut (1 night).
Route: Putara Road to Roaring Stag (via track), up to Cattle Ridge Hut, along Cattle Ridge and down to Cow Saddle, then back to Raumahanga Gorge Road via the Ruamahanga River Track.
[Photos and Videos]

We arrived at the Putara Road End at about 9.30pm on Friday evening, with the prospect of a damp night. It’d been raining consistently during the drive from Wellington, but the showers conveniently stopped at the most useful time, giving us a chance to set up some tent flies next to the vehicles. Marie and Harry set off to camp near the first foot-bridge, but the rest of us stayed at the road. I was tucked in under the fly fairly quickly after we had it set up, but I heard rumours that Sam had managed to get a small campfire going for a time in the damp conditions. It did rain overnight, too, but the wind stayed away and apart from a little dampness seeping under the flies we got through the night pretty well.

Everyone was stirring at about 7am, and after a casual breakfast and packing up, we’d left by about 8.15am. Marie H had already gone ahead to Roaring Stag before we left, but Harry came back from the foot-bridge to meet us, proudly sporting his external frame pack which he’d brought so he could appear as trendy as Sam and his mountain mule.

We reached the second footbridge just before 9. After a quick re-grouping, we began the climb up to the junction, which is the first significant climb of the trip. By 9.40am we’d reached where the track splits between heading towards either Herepai Hut or dropping back down to Roaring Stag Lodge, about 3.5 kilometres away. The creek just before the lodge, through which the track runs, was full enough that at first glance I was glad I wasn’t there by myself, although checking up and down it there were several good crossing points, and we were at the lodge a bit after 11am.

Unpacking at Roaring Stag Lodge.

Marie H was at the lodge to meet us, drying out her tent fly on the bench outside. It was still very early, but Roaring Stag is a nice place to stop, and we decided to have an early lunch. My feeble attempt to dry out my own huntech fly didn’t work very well, but that was okay. We lazed around at Roaring Stag until mid-day’ish, then in the light rain we crossed the bridge towards the final leg for the day, up the spur to Cattle Ridge Hut. And it was nearly all up, for the record, albeit with a few undulations near the top, for almost the next couple of hours.

Cattle Ridge Hut.

Cattle Ridge Hut was the planned stopping point for the night, but we still had some time to burn having reached it by 1.45pm. Sam suggested a short wander outside around the tops in the cold, and eventually managed to convince three of us (Jen, Paul and myself) to follow him. There wasn’t much to see at the time because the tops were clouded in and there was a biting cold wind, unless you happened to be Jen, who didn’t feel the cold. It was good to feel as if we were doing something rather than sitting inside for the rest of the afternoon, though. We collected some dead leatherwood on the way back, with the idea of testing the claims that leatherwood burns really well.

Cattle Ridge Hut used to be a 6 bunk hut, until recently. It’s now a 5 bunk hut thanks to the unfortunate Department of Conservation bureaucracy (tied to the NZ government’s bureaucracy) which requires DOC to meet building codes that were presumably designed primarily for metropolitan zones. Under the rules, any hut with 6 or more bunks is now required to have a second fire exit, and in many cases it’s easier for DOC to remove a bunk than figure out how to meet this rule in a tiny cabin. This is ridiculous in the back-country context because huts exist as much for safety, and 6, 8, 10, 12 or 14 people will quite happily cram themselves into a 6 bunk hut as well as they’ll fit, sleeping on the floor when the bunks run out. (Three months ago we had 12 people sleeping in a 6 bunk hut because it was necessary.) All that removing a bunk does is reduce the overall comfort, as well as potentially reducing the number of people who can fit.

Thanks to a similarly illogical decision, the hut’s fireplace has been removed. To illustrate the conflict between DOC (who’s responsible for maintaining the huts) and back-country hut users, however, someone has carried up an adapted rubbish bin and left instructions in the hut book about how to use it for a nice substitute fireplace, albeit an outdoor one. As it turned out we didn’t get the entire bin operating according to the instructions, but by 5pm we’d borrowed the lid as a base and there was a good campfire going, mostly thanks to Sam. The inflammable properties of leatherwood lived well up to their reputation in the damp conditions. We used the fire to boil several billies full of water prior to cooking dinner, as well as just to mingle around and keep warm.

Dinner was a pasta, salami, veggie and butter delicacy full of tasty cholesterol, followed by a sweet dessert of cake, custard and marshmallows, which we’d been unable to toast properly having run out of dead wood. It was still very nice for a tramp. Harry, Paul and I shared the floor while the others figured out how to shorten themselves enough to avoid kicking each other’s heads. (Like several other huts in the area, the bunks at Cattle Ridge are built for small people.)

We aimed for a 7am wake-up on Sunday morning, but everyone was up and about earlier than that. The day outside was exceeding expectations to the extent that we could actually see the sun rising. Cloud was still wafting over Cattle Ridge from the west and obscuring it in a recurring pattern, but it was thinning and by the time we left at about 7.50am to walk along the ridge, we had a relatively clear and sunny view over to Dundas Ridge.

Paul C’s group, who’d been planning to visit Dundas Hut, were scheduled to be over there right now. Compared with our own day ahead, mostly coasting along flat and downhill routes, they had a steep descent of about 700 metres to look forward to, before a steep climb of another 700 metres to roughly where we were now standing. We picked out the location of Dundas Hut from a distance, but despite some effort we were unable to see any figures departing from the hut, and so we couldn’t point and laugh at them.

Sam and Harry about to enter
the dip in Cattle Ridge.

I suppose the most prominent feature of Cattle Ridge is the dip between Pukeroa (1318) and Pukekino (1370), with a drop to about 1260 metres between the two. It’s not a huge drop but it is steep, especially on the Pukekino side, and the most annoying part is that this whole section is full of spiky Spaniard, which pricks through gaiters and is very difficult to avoid — especially given the frequency with which it’s necessary to grab vegetation to avoid slipping. We began to negotiate the dip at about 8.35am, and as the group spread out we arrived at the other side between about 8.50am and 9am.

With the Cattle Dip negotiated, we continued along the ridge to the south-west. The sunshine we’d enjoyed on the tops so far was now fading, and by the time we reached point 1360 near the edge of the ridge, at about 10am, visibility had deteriorated to about 20 or 30 metres.

For a weekend that had looked as if it could be full of miserable weather, we’d had sunshine and clear skies exactly when it mattered, when we were on the tops. Furthermore, a bit of reasonably safe navigation to find our way down the spur to Cow Saddle made the trip more interesting. After Marie H pushed me up the front, I got a kick out of following my 160 degree compass bearing for a while. Not having been here before myself, I was a little concerned about the possibility of missing the turnoff at point 1130, where the main route down to Cow Saddle veers off towards the east. This concern was unfounded, however, because an orange triangle route is well marked from some way down the spur, and the track is heavily enough walked to the extent that we had already veered off by the time I realised it.

Paul and Harry below the tree line.

Below the tree line, the route became quite steep, and there were several occasions where it was necessary to climb down sections using all four limbs. We got down without any problems though, and were at the junction on Cow Saddle (665 metres) at 11.30am. The saddle isn’t too far from Cow Creek Hut, but we didn’t visit the hut today, instead taking the left turn towards Cleft Creek, and eventually to the Ruamahanga River which would lead us to the road-end where we planned to exit.

The track sidled around the hillside for a short distance, but within 10 minutes we were walking down Cleft Creek, which I found very nice and scenic creek to walk along. At midday we still hadn’t left the region, and stopped for lunch. As well as our own standard lunches, Marie H still had an entire bag of marshmallows that we had to eat, and we also had a substantial chunk of fruit cake that hadn’t been eaten during dessert the previous evening.

We were away again at 12.40pm, and shortly afterwards the track climbed above the true right side of the Ruamahanga River. I found my terramap to be a little deceptive during this section, because at first glance I’d thought the Ruamahanga River track followed the river almost at river level. This was wrong, of course, and the track is actually located a good 40 or 50 metres above the river for much of the distance.

At 2.10pm, we reached the most significant creek crossing, which is the junction of what Harry called Unnamed Creek, and according to Harry that’s also what everyone else calls it. He was a bit miffed to see Sam’s LINZ map, which claims the creek is actually named Paddy’s Creek. The other significant feature, which we reached at about 2.40pm, was a miniature gorge that surrounded one of the side creeks on the true right of the main river. This was notable because the track took us right to the bottom of the gorge, perhaps 10 metres down, via a track that appeared to be slightly dodgy. Being tall would have helped. We got past it, though, and were soon into the final section towards the road.

By 3.10pm the track had widened into a broader 4 wheel drive track, or possibly a quad bike track. I think we officially left the park during this time, particularly since we passed a big sign in the middle of nowhere in particular, which announced “Tararua Forest Park”. 10 minutes later we were on proper farm-land, complete with an old rusty bulldozer, and from there it was a walk over fields between cows and sheep to locate the van where we hoped Paul Jeffries had left it.

It was good to finally see the van, especially with the overcast and slightly murky conditions, and we exited the farm-land shortly after 4pm. It was a great trip and very worthwhile, I think. It’s always nice to go somewhere where I haven’t been before, and this was no exception.

Dates: 11th – 13th April, 2008
Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Rangiwahia road-end.
People: Alistair, Sarah, Illona, Jane, Amanda, Dirk, Paul, Harry, Craig and meeeee.
Huts visited: Rangiwahia Hut (1 night), Pourangaki Hut (1 night).
Route: Past Rangiwahia Hut to Maungamahue, over to Te Hekenga and around to Taumataomekura and Tiraha. Over Sawtooth Ridge to Ohuinga, then along to point 1632 and down the official track to Pourangaki Hut for Saturday night. Straight up to point 1614 on Sunday, then back along to Maungamahue, and out via Rangiwahia Hut.
[Photos]

We met at the Railway Station at the usual time on Friday night, except for Jane, whom we later collected with a short detour through Paekakariki. Everyone except Illona and Jane (the two vegetarians) had been on recent hunting trips through the respective chilled meat sections of their local supermarkets, and we were looking forward to a brilliant carnivorous dinner on Saturday night. It was going to be great. This wouldn’t help us for Friday’s night, though, and we stopped for takeaways at Levin. Harry quickly ran off to find his favourite Levin-based Chinese Takeaway joint, which he’d been raving about for the entire ride until now, and Fish & Chips was also a popular option. Sarah, Illona, Paul and I visited the Thai Taste Express restaurant a little further down the road. (They’re very fast and have great food, in my opinion.)

We reached the Rangiwahia road-end at about 9.30′ish, and split into a couple of groups at Alistair’s suggestion. We walked under a crescent moon with the lit-up metropolis of Palmerston North visible to the south, and were at Rangi Hut 90 minutes later. Three hunters were already in residence, but they didn’t seem to be too disturbed. Within minutes they were up and chatting with us about our plans for the next day, as well as correcting our bad pronunciation of “Pourangaki” (which has a silent ‘g’).

Alistair’s plan was for us to be up at 5.30am and out the door an hour later, and I quickly built my fort on the floor under the bench. Everyone else found a bunk except for Craig, who’d missed a lot of sleep lately due to a work-related call-out. He set up his things outside in hope of a good, isolated rest. I did sleep really well that night, but unfortunately it wasn’t so for everyone. Harry hadn’t been feeling well after the walk, and was reportedly up and roaming around on several occasions during the night, manifesting his illness outside in all its glory.

Leaving Rangi Hut on
Saturday morning.

Sarah’s cellphone alarm awoke us at 5.30am on Saturday morning, and soon after Harry made a decision that he wasn’t fit to continue, and would instead stay at Rangi Hut. He might get to Pourangaki Hut via the short route to meet us in the evening if he felt well enough, and with any luck the meaty temptation of some great food would be enough to overcome his weakness. We divvied up the important things, however. At 6.30am, Jane began walking and within a few minutes we followed her lead towards the soon-to-be-rising rising Sun.

For some reason Paul was pessimistic
that the cloud might dissipate.

Dropping into the cloud.

It took us 45 minutes to reach the route junction just north of Mangahuia. As we approached we gained our first views of the thick cloud that the weak nor-easterly had been depositing in the valley just below us. Our route north dipped into the hazy cloud giving perhaps 50 metres of visibility, sparking a debate about the likeliness of walking through this kind of fog all day. Alistair was enthusiastic that it’d be gone by 11.30am or so, but not everyone was so sure.

The ridge towards Te Hekenga,
from near Maungamahue.

The cloud did visibly come and go around the range as we sidled around point 1635, but never completely disappeared. Sawtooth Ridge stayed covered in the distance. It was about now that Jane realised that she also wasn’t feeling well enough for the prospect of a ten hour walk, and after some quick discussions she decided she’d prefer to head straight down to Pourangaki Hut from Maungamahue. At 9am with a brief pause, Jane swapped some items with Illona, and waved goodbye as the remaining eight of us continued east along the ridge towards Te Hekenga, into fog.

Shelter from wind and sunshine above the clouds had kept us warm until now, but things changed heading towards Te Hekenga, which was exposed to a cold but annoyingly inconsistent breeze. I think I stopped three or four times to play with how many layers I was wearing. The second part of the route towards Te Hekenga dips into a deep saddle, and we stopped at the lowest point for some scroggin and snacks before the climb. It was also about now that Craig began to show some early signs of also not feeling quite right, having uncharacteristically fallen about 5 minutes behind everyone. We all wrote it off as minor ankle problems when going down-hill, and Craig himself thought it was probably just a consequence of not having done a lot of tramping in the immediate past.

Climbing to Te Hekenga.

We left again at 10.20am, and 45 minutes later we sat near the top of Te Hekenga. The next goal from here would be Taumataomekura (near the start of Sawtooth Ridge), but the most direct route would mean heading south-east over a vertical drop, and that wouldn’t be possible without suitable climbing equipment and experience. Fortunately Alistair had researched it, and knew that it’s straightforward to detour around it by heading slightly west for a couple of minutes, dropping down, and sidling over some significant (but stable) slips below the ridge. I was beginning to feel lop-sided because most of the morning’s sidling had been on the left foot, but that was a cosmetic preference compared Craig who was starting to have some real problems. We hoped it was just an effect of the sidling, the two of us fell back some way before getting to the top of the ridge at about twenty to twelve, probably 5 minutes after everyone else.

The blanket of Sawtooth Ridge.

We reached Taumataomekura a few minutes after 12, about 1 km south-west of the beginning of Sawtooth Ridge, also known as Tiraha (1668 metres). The view was clear nearly everywhere except for the thick white cloud hanging directly over exactly where we were aiming. It was also becoming more obvious to Craig and everyone else that Craig wasn’t feeling too healthy, and we distributed around a couple of things from his pack in the hope that it’d help. We carried on to reach Tiraha, and stopped there at 12.30pm for lunch within the low cloud, and a very limited view down the ridge. We left into the misty grey clag of Sawtooth a little after 1pm, and with Craig struggling the two of us were already hanging back near the end within a few minutes.

I’d been waiting to walk along Sawtooth Ridge for some time, but hadn’t been sure what to expect. Sometimes names can be misleading, and I didn’t really know if the name came from the jagged profile view from a distance, or if it was as much to do with the close-up experience of walking it. In the back of my mind I was really hoping it wouldn’t be one of those horrible ridges which is 20 centimetres wide with steep sides in places, occasionally held together by nothing more than a wobbly clump of leatherwood. I’d asked a friend’s advice before we left, and he’d suggested that it was fine as long as you go over everything rather than around it. In any case, we discovered that it wasn’t too bad to walk along. The ridge certainly has the occasional jagged peak in the middle to which the LINZ-issued topo map doesn’t do a lot of justice, but the routes over these are fairly easy to negotiate.

More of Sawtooth.

The ridge itself lines up with a bearing of about 20 degrees. Parts of it were deceptive in the low cloud though, and I was glad I had my compass handy. Craig and I almost found a deceptive side-spur accidentally, having neatly sidled around the eastern side of one of the steep undulations. I felt quite pleased with myself to see the ridge continue on the far side, until I checked my compass for reassurance and ended up shouting over to Craig to ask if he knew of any strongly magnetic rocks in the area. Somehow we were a disturbingly long way out, with the bearing being almost directly over my left shoulder behind us, and no matter how much I tapped on and jiggled my compass I couldn’t get it to state otherwise. Looking more carefully, I finally saw three figures looking down on us from above, and it was suddenly obvious that we’d been deceived by the fog and the temptation to sidle.

Craig approaching Ohuinga.

At about 2.45pm we reached Ohuinga, at the northern end of Sawtooth Ridge. Craig and I were now behind by 5 or 10 minutes, with Craig feeling quite sick. As far as I was concerned, we were almost at our destination. We had another 3 km of ridge to cover towards point 1632 in the north east, and then we’d be going down a spur which I already knew was easy from past experience. I think everyone else was daydreaming in a similar fashion, and we stopped for a while before continuing.

Resting on Ohuinga.

Anyway, those 3 km between Ohuinga and point 1632 were the worst part of the day, and after all the satisfaction I’d dreamt up by getting over Sawtooth, I was about to find several of those bits of hideous ridge that I’d been dreading. We started it at 3.30pm, heading back down into the misty ridge ahead of us towards point 1584. The first section was fairly straightforward, but it gradually started involving thin ridge-tops which sat above steep drops without much margin for error. Some people quite happily scoot over the top of these kinds of things without batting an eyelid, and that’s probably an experience thing as much as anything. Personally I’m still at the point where I absolutely hate it, and I’d easily go without. This was why I tried to stay near Dirk for a while, because he’s one of these people who’s good at playing hopscotch on ridges and can find a good route really quickly.

Paul scales one of many undulations.

After about 20 minutes, we noticed that Craig was really suffering. We all had long sleeved tops on by now, but Craig didn’t, and he was still feeling very hot. We kept going but I dropped back for a while, and within the space of a few minutes it was just Craig and I at the back of the group once again. The ridge was getting progressively harder which didn’t help, and this just added to the amount of time that it was already taking Craig and I to carefully survey the route ahead and get through it okay. (Craig probably knew what was going on in his head better than I did, but I was a little concerned that he might not be in an optimal state of mind for staying completely upright.)

On the worst occasion, I made a particularly bad decision about which side of the ridge to straddle, and we both ended up hinged on the edge of a fairly steep, rocky slope without much below us, balancing on rocks of dubious stability that hung over the top of the ridge. I reached the far end of it some five metres from where we’d begun, and looked back slightly annoyed to see a clear track on the other side, which I hadn’t noticed at all from the other end despite having spent a lot of time trying. Another concerning moment was when I actually did begin slowly sliding, and it was only when the logical part of my brain reminded me to place my one remaining limb somewhere on the ground for a bit of extra surface area, which stopped me sliding for long enough to decide what to do next.

At some point Craig and I straddled another peak which I think was about point 1584, though to be honest I wasn’t paying much attention. On the other side of this we followed an obviously walked route about 30 metres below the left side of the ridge. This confused me a little, until Alistair yelled down from the ridge 30 metres above us, shouting that we’d gone the wrong way. We weren’t supposed to be sidling this area at all, but should have instead been continuing along the ridge at the top.

By now it was near 5pm and we only had about thirty minutes of sun remaining in the day. Alistair was concerned, and once we reached the others waiting at the top, we pulled nearly everything from what remained in Craig’s pack and spread it around. Craig and I struggled on at the back, wondering in hindsight if perhaps we could have gone down one of the earlier spurs instead, which would have dropped us further from Pourangaki Hut but also gotten us off the top more quickly. Alistair’s point however, which made sense, was that at this stage in the day and in our condition, it was better to be going down a spur that we knew rather than one that we didn’t.

Craig and Alistair at point 1632.

At 5.15pm, Alistair appeared in the distance ahead. He’d dropped his pack and come back to check how we were going. This was excellent news, and within five minutes we were standing at two glaringly obvious DOC signposts directing us down the spur. I reached out a hand to tap one, which in my own head symbolised my having reached this point from both directions, and it felt quite good. There wasn’t really much time to waste standing around, though.

By now Alistair’s only goal in life seemed to be that of getting Craig off the exposed tops, probably because if we ended up having to camp somewhere, it’d be much safer to do so below the bush-line, especially when compared to camping on a ridge exposed to a nor-easterly, which could potentially get stronger overnight. Craig was utterly wasted in his condition by now, and had a brief sit-down before Alistair convinced him that it’d only take another 15 minutes to get to the leatherwood at the bush-line and after that it really didn’t matter. Looking down the spur to the east we could see Dirk and his bright yellow coat, standing almost exactly at the point where we were aiming. It was a good beacon on which to set our eyes. We took 25 minutes to cover that distance and it felt painfully slow. I have to admit, though, that it was also really impressive having spent much of the day with Craig and seeing just how absolutely frazzled he was overwhelmed with headaches, high temperatures and legs that really didn’t want to move, yet still having the endurance to keep going – so far for eleven hours and with still more to come.

Beginnings of the bush-line.

We finally reached the bush line at half past five and the prevailing leatherwood was conveniently well tracked, as I knew already. I paused to take a photograph of Craig hobbling ahead of me with Alistair following closely behind, and then turned to glance towards the final view of the Sun on our right. For a moment it had emerged from a gap just below the settled horizon clouds, and just as quickly it was absorbed. I looked back towards Sawtooth in the distance, with its visibly jagged edges now only partly obscured by a fluffy grey stream of cloud that was only dissipating after it had rolled over from the east. Glancing at where I stood, I was now surrounded by the same leatherwood that had been a welcome shelter from the wind last October, and I chuckled. This really was the nicest leatherwood in the world. It was briefly caught in a slight breeze and it chuckled back, and from then I knew that there would be no more problems from here on. Keeping this thought in my mind, I stood up and kept going after the other two down the hillside. We still had about 20 minutes to go, after all.

At ten to six on Saturday evening, Craig was clearly sick with a feverish temperature, Alistair was getting sick, and personally I was getting hungry. We stood just below the bush line on the final spur from point 1632 in the east down to Pourangaki Hut. I’d been here before and I was happy because I knew it all from this point on. It’d be easy compared with what we’d been through earlier in the day, and all that was left to negotiate was some mildly slippery down-hill for a while under trees. I confidently informed Craig that there wasn’t much further.

Craig not far below the bush-line.

Twenty minutes along, the surrounding scenery hadn’t changed much and nor was there any sign of the river below. It was getting darker under the tree cover which was causing problems with the slippery tree roots on the steepish slope, and we stopped for a moment to find torches. It occurred to me for a moment that Craig’s head-torch might have been indiscriminately taken from his pack by somebody earlier in the day, but fortunately they’d been careful to leave that item behind. It’s a shame that it wasn’t until now that I finally remembered that I had some panadol in my pack, and I offered Craig a couple.

In any case, we were still walking down-hill and there wasn’t an obvious end to it. At some point Craig tripped from the top of one of the tree roots just as the track was switching. From where I was watching directly behind him, I’m positive he accomplished an impressive double twist before landing in the ferns. Realistically he was lucky to walk away without any obvious scratches, but I guess it was a reminder that we still needed to be careful, and fortunate that it’d happened now rather than earlier when there hadn’t been as much to land on.

We continued down-hill, and although I didn’t realise he was serious at the time, this was about when Alistair first suggested that he was also beginning to feel unwell. It was a full hour after we’d left the bush line before we finally made it to the river at the lower end of the spur. There’s a nice camp-site at the level of the river and we wondered for a moment why we hadn’t just decided to set up camp here. As it was, there was still some distance to go. Alistair took us around to the small swing bridge nearby before going ahead to find the hut, leaving Craig and I to get through the last part on our own.

Pourangaki Hut is now well
marked from the main track.

If I’d bothered to properly consult the map I’d have remembered that there’s actually about another 80 or 90 metre vertical climb involved before reaching Pourangaki Hut, so even after reaching the river it still took longer than I’d expected. My main concern was that we might walk straight past the hut in the dark, which is in a clearing about 50 metres to the left of the track, and the last time I was here the short path through the trees hadn’t been marked very well. When we reached it, however, we found that DOC has now placed two very obvious signs smack in the middle of the main track, directing people to the hut in the opening on the left. We finally rolled into Pourangaki Hut at about 7.30pm, and it was a relief to see the end of the walking for the day. This final section was nothing like the relatively easy, muddy slide that I remembered from a few months before. It had been a long day.

Craig and I sauntered through the door of Pourangaki Hut at 7.30pm on Saturday night, to a anticlimatic welcoming. With a quick glance around the room I noted at least a couple of people from our group stretched out motionless on the bunks, with others sitting and standing in what space was available. Jane had arrived safely after her decision to take the short-cut earlier in the day, and had in fact been there for most of the afternoon. She’d even begun to worry about us, with our expected time having been an hour before anyone showed up. Harry wasn’t there, but we hadn’t really expected him to leave Rangiwahia anyway. Amanda, Sarah, Dirk, Paul, Illona and eventually Alistair had all shown up within the previous half hour. Craig and I expected everyone would be wanting to cook by now, and I quickly began pulling things from my pack, throwing them all over the floor in search of whatever dinner ingredients I’d ended up with. This included some of Craig’s chicken, some of Harry’s chicken, and a collection of miscellaneous vegetables, rice and lots of milk powder for dessert.

Preparing dinner ended up being less urgent than we’d expected, since everyone was feeling so exhausted. By the time the two of us had arrived, there wasn’t even any water being heated for a brew, and getting this started was the first order of business. During the moments when he wasn’t feeling too sick, Craig busied himself searching for his second bright yellow croc, the first of which had been handed to him by someone who it had been given to earlier.

We eventually got started on dinner, and it was a bustling time inside the small room. Pourangaki Hut has a good stash of cooking gear, and we also had three gas cookers between us. I chopped some meat and scrubbed a few utensils, but I wasn’t sad to end up outside for a while. With almost nowhere to sit in the hut, it was an opportunity to actually get away from the bustling efforts inside, and relax for the first time since arriving. Illona was also outside, and stretching out on the steps while absorbing the soothing and regenerating effects of green tea, we chatted properly for about the first time on the trip. I reminisced about my bad habit of underestimating times and distances. Before today, my net memory of the spur we’d descended had been a collection of a few slippery tree roots with a crazy-looking landmark tree about half way down, and in my head I’d come up with an estimated time that was quite inaccurate. If I’d taken a more objective approach and consulted the map, it might have been clearer that it was going to take longer.

This was all in the past by now, and for the seven meat-eaters who’d reached here, the Louisiana Jambalaya followed by cake and custard was awesome by the time we finally got to eat it. Jane and Illona, both vegetarians, had some time ago finished consuming whatever plants they’d prepared. They patiently waited for us to hurry up so they might have a decent sleep. As we found out later, back at Rangi Hut where we’d abandoned him, Harry was this night feasting on a couple of wholesome biscuits, while still not feeling the best.

We finally drifted off at 10.30pm, when I reached up from my position on the floor to extinguish the two remaining candles, forgetting that Sarah, Paul and Dirk were still hard at work outside washing dishes. They stumbled into a darkened and silent hut several minutes later, and quietly made their way to bed.

All nine of us spontaneously woke at 6.30am on Sunday morning. This was actually a couple of hours earlier than what we’d planned after being exhausted enough from Saturday. Amanda pointed out that she’d been lying awake for at least an hour but didn’t want to bother anyone, and a quick survey found that several others had also been quietly awake for the same reason. Being the only person on the floor, I pulled my things together to be out of the way, wandered outside for a stroll on what was looking to be a calm, clear day, and tried to identify the birds fluttering around high in the treetops.

Today was going to be cruisy after yesterday and we were essentially home-free, but it’d still take a while. Nobody was feeling very energetic and if anything, Alistair was beginning to feel worse. From here, we’d be following the orange triangle track up to Pourangaki (the peak), over a brief saddle to point 1614, and then straight back over Maungamahue, on to Rangiwahia Hut and down to the van. Jane left before everyone else at about 8.10am so she could get a head start with the initial climb, and everyone followed casually afterwards.

Pourangaki Hut on Sunday morning.

I ended up at the front after a while, probably because I prefer to get climbs out of the way and then recover at the top. Alistair still hadn’t gotten over whatever kind of sickness he’d contracted last night and I suppose that having gone ahead, I escaped the burden of being asked carry a bit more. I found out later that Alistair had off-loaded some of his gear to several other people — particularly Paul who somehow managed to cram the large club tent fly into his miniature pack, and Sarah who liberated Alistair of a heap of other things to the point that her pack was now reaching a full hand-span above the top of her head. Craig was fortunately feeling a little better, and back to carrying all of his own things once again.

The wind-swept sign at the top.

From above the tree-line there was suddenly a lot to look at, and I slowed down to gaze at Sawtooth which now had its clear profile in the distance, in stark contrast to what we’d experienced when we were there. Ruapehu was clear and vivid on the other side, as was Egmont and Kapiti Island in the far distance. It was about 10am when I reached the top, and sat on the windy northern side of the ridge. Alistair, Paul and I had been exactly here on a nice day six months before. This time wasn’t obviously different, except that there was a shifty wind from the north east, and it was gradually shunting clag over the tops of the distant ridges. Even in the space of an hour, the teeth of Sawtooth Ridge were once again encumbered in mist.

Jane rolled up 5 minutes later, followed by everyone else not long after, and we hopped over to the more sheltered southern side of the ridge to consume a few snacks and catch up on gossip. From where we sat near the unnamed point 1614 we could easily see Maungamahue, which was where we were next headed, on the far side of a shallow saddle. Once we’d reached that, we’d be re-tracing our steps. Jane had already been here the day before, when it hadn’t been so clear. As we lazed around she explained how she’d almost missed the saddle in the cloud on her way down to the hut. It had all worked out nicely in the end, though.

Jane enters the saddle.

We left again at 10.45am, following several parallel routes into the wide and shallow saddle and then converging at the base of Maungamahue about a kilometre away. I didn’t immediately recognise the familiar terrain from the other side, even though by now we were almost on to of where we’d been on Saturday morning. Somehow it looked different from the other side, and in the sunshine. My feet were also beginning to feel quite sore by now, which was distracting. The only reward at the top of Maungamahue was the sight of a short post which extended 30 cm from the ground. To rub it in, the silhouette of Dirk in front of the clouds below us on the eastern side indicated that he’d found a much more intelligent route to coast around the edge on a nice track without any extra climbing at all. If I found any satisfaction, I think it was from knowing that everyone else had come the same way as me, either because they wanted to or because they’d followed me. (Ha haaa, suckers!)

Looking back from half way
up Maungamahue.

We invented a route down the other side, before negotiating the flat area (full of sink-holes) towards point 1635, stopping on its eastern fringe for an early lunch at 11.30am. Alistair was still feeling quite bad, and as I fused together my cheese, pita bread and other bits and pieces, Sarah produced some remains of last night’s dessert which she’d cunningly smuggled into her pack, and secretly handed some to Alistair. Our lunchtime chatter initiated a debate about the benefits of vegetarianism and Jane’s experimental raw food diet that she was trying, and from that the debate ensued for the rest of the day.

We left again at 12pm or thereabouts and headed towards Rangiwahia Hut, sidling around the eastern side of point 1635. If the wind had been coming from the south-west, we might have detected a wafting scent of Cash Converters much earlier, but it wasn’t until there was a direct line of sight at about 1.30pm that we finally spotted Harry in his faded red jumper and red shorts, leaning against the sign at the top of the spur which led down to Rangi Hut. He’d been waiting for a while. It turned out that he hadn’t made it further than a 10 minute walk on Saturday before deciding that he couldn’t continue, so he spent another night at Rangi Hut rather than continuing on to Pourangaki.

Back at Rangiwahia Hut.

At Rangi Hut we stopped for another 30 minutes, using the gas facilities to heat more water for a well deserved brew, before settling down on the deck outside. Lazing in the sunshine, another exciting discussion ensued on the topic of raw food. The climatic event was when Jane passed around some real coffee beans for people to try. They went down quite well as a curiosity, but not as well as the chocolate that Craig passed around immediately afterwards. Having left the hut at 2.30pm, there was only a 70 minute uneventful jog down the hill to the van. As rewarding as the weekend had been, I was glad to finally be out again. It was especially impressive from Craig’s point of view, I think, who’d been feeling quite awful for most of Saturday and yet still gotten through it. All that remained was a happy drive home.

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.
[Photos]

Marie and I wandered down to the toilet block at another nearby campsite (woohoo! flush toilets!) and collected a couple of billies worth of water for the next morning. Everything was set up within half an hour, and 8.30pm signalled bedtime. It wasn’t really bedtime. We had a brew. Actually, we were probably still yakking to each other under the fly at 11pm.

A hunter (presumably) drove up some time early on Saturday morning, and disappeared while we were still lying in sleeping bags, leaving a ute behind. The weather looked a little overcast by the time we were up from about 6.15′ish, and it didn’t change a lot during the next 90 minutes of our relaxed brekkie and packing up.

We began by heading clockwise up the tourist loop track known as the Fenceline Walk. Roughly 100 metres vertically up the hill, we left the main track, onto a well walked route up a spur which ends just north of point 476. The route up this spur switches quite a bit, but generally it’s heading north west. We ended up standing around in a clearing at about point 476, or nearby it, checking the map and trying to think of ways to confirm that that was about where we were, since it wasn’t completely obvious. We’d really wanted to go south-ish from here, but there wasn’t any clear way to do so through a dense barrier of trees. The most obviously walked route seemed to be continuing north-west. This issue was quickly resolved as soon as we noticed that the track in front of us turned abruptly south into a gap, followed by a wide open clearing, after about another 20 metres.

The Terramap for the Tararuas also indicates a small tarn near here, which we walked past at about 8.45am, even though it resembled more of a mud pit with extra high grasses. The route continued straight from the opposite side of the clearing, and for some time we were able to continue along the ridge in what was a fairly good track, both out in the open and when it went under trees.

There are a couple of places along this bit of ridge where it’s necessary to veer around towards the west, rather than the usual south-west, and fortunately this was where the track led us although for me at least, I was trying to keep an eye on my compass bearing to make sure we were going where I thought we should be going. The most difficult part of the stretch was in the vicinity of Pukeatua (point 812), at which point we wanted to go straight west rather than accidentally heading down any of the spurs that surround it.

Allen looks for an opening.

By 10.30am, the unofficial track that we were on had led us to a small clearing surrounded by dense growth, and no apparent way out. At this point, Allen dropped his pack and climbed a short way up a tree for a look around, but was unable to see anything obvious, so we decided to back-track a little. This wasn’t too concerning because we already knew there was at least one other possible side-track that led west-wards not far back. I’d almost walked up it accidentally, without even noticing that the most heavily walked track had continued over the top of a gully (shown on the map as the head of a stream) just north-west of Pukeatua. We didn’t even have to go back properly, because as soon as we’d withdrawn from the clearing the trail of occasional snapped branches indicated that others had already bashed through in the general direction. At 10.45am we were back in a place that looked quite familiar to where I’d reached before, and noticed that it’d even been marked with a couple of orange ties on nearby branches. After a short break for some scroggin, we picked up the trail once again.

The ridge west of Pukeatua briefly took us into the open, and I made an embarrassing mistake of following a ridge almost directly south. I’d even been following my compass bearing at the time, but somehow had momentarily gotten into my head that I was supposed to be going south rather than west, and I didn’t realise this until Allen and Marie yelled out to ask where I was actually going.

Our destination from here was Kapakapanui, which means it’s necessary to head south after about 1.5 kilometres. On the map it appears that the westward ridge runs out at just about the right time to turn south, but we did still find several places where other side tracks wandered off in alternative directions, presumably down other spurs to the north and so on. Consequently it turned out to be necessary to keep a close eye on the bearing when following the route, and occasionally check ahead to find out where the various off-shoots were actually going before making a proper decision. The point that we needed to head south was very clearly marked by no less than 6 markers of various types on nearby trees. This was very helpful too, because the obvious route continued to the west, probably about to veer slowly north-west and then north, towards another ridge in which we had no interest.

Geographically challenged just
above Kapakapanui Hut.

By now the overcast sky had turned into a consistent drizzle, no doubt a sign of things to come. Even though we were sheltered to an extent underneath the trees, we were starting to get very wet by 12.45pm when we stepped out in front of a large orange triangle along the loop track just above Kapakapanui Hut. 5 minutes later we were entering the hut, and sat down for some lunch and a short brew. It was an hour of sitting around and chatting before we left, following the track up the hill to Kapakapanui Trig, at which we arrived 40 minutes later. Typical views from the Kapakapanui Trig are expansive both towards Kapiti Island on once side, and over in the direction of Kime Hut on the other side. Today it was just white in all directions, and also windy. Immediately after the trig, we arrived at the signposted turn-off down along the ridge towards Renata Hut.

The route down towards Renata is clearly signposted at the top, and it’s an orange triangle route the entire way down, beginning out in the open before descending underneath a tree canopy for the majority of the ridge down towards the saddle. I was a bit surprised, however, to find that for an orange triangle track it was probably the most overgrown route we’d walked on all day. It did get better after the first part though, once it had flattened out a bit. Having left the turnoff at 2.25pm, this part of the walk lasted nearly a couple of hours before we reached the saddle, which is also an intersection between our own track towards Renata Hut and the 4 wheel drive road that comes in from the Akatarawa Road towards Waiotaru Hut. Allen commented that this specific area had once been surveyed for a school, back when Odlins owned the land and had plans to build a logging settlement. The initial road was built, but the settlement never went ahead after it was decided that the timber in the area wasn’t actually worth that much anyway, or something like that. My recent Terramap shows that the road becomes a walking track between the saddle and Waiotaru Hut, but it’s actually a 4 wheel drive road for that entire distance. It was raining steadily out in the open, so rather than hang around getting wet we quickly hopped over the road into the track on the other side, and we were back on our way to Renata Hut.

Renata Hut.

The three of us finally reached Renata Hut at 4.50pm. After hanging up our soggy raincoats and soggy socks and soggy shirts and soggy gaiters and soggy shorts and soggy undies and putting out our soggy boots, we eventually got some dinner sorted, which was an assortment of mixed vegetables, bacon and soy-based vegetarian bacon pig-flavoured dog biscuits… which weren’t actually too bad. It was starting to get dark earlier by this time of year, despite the extended daylight savings, and we went to bed not too much longer after dinner, continuing to gossip for another hour or so as the candle near the window slowly burned down and went out.

The rain continued all night, almost persistently. I woke up on one occasion and it sounded as if it had died off, but this didn’t last for long and it’d started again the next time I was awake. When the light finally did begin to seep through the roof, I didn’t feel very inclined to drag myself out of bed at all, but I convinced myself once it became clear that Marie and Allen were both slowly getting themselves sorted out. So after a quick and informal breakfast, and after putting away the dry clothes and putting all our soggy clothes back on, we eventually made it back out the door.

It now seemed unlikely that we’d be able to go through with the day’s plan, which was to head towards Eldar Hut and then walk along the ridge from point 925 towards Waiotauru Forks. Instead, we started thinking about alternative plans. The most obvious idea was to try to get around to the Forks via the main track instead, past Waiotauru Hut. Another obvious way out was along the 4 wheel drive track towards the Akatarawa Road, although then we’d need to try and get a phone call out to get collected, or wave down a passing car.

Both of the maps we had (the LINZ map and the Tararua Terramap), the latter of which is only a year old, show a footbridge right next to Waiotauru Hut. Allen, however, who gets around a lot and is generally more reliable than a map, was very sure that there was no such bridge. I still haven’t been there to check but after asking around a couple of other reliable sources since we returned, it sounds as if he’s correct. At the moment at least, there’s apparently nothing more than the remains of a washed out bridge next to Waiotauru Hut, despite what is indicated on the maps.

Allen gazing at a dirty river.

Having left the hut at 9am or thereabouts, it wasn’t much more than a 30 minute climb back to the saddle intersection with the 4 wheel drive track, and the first place where we’d need to make a decision. We had the entire day ahead of us at this point and it was preferable to get ourselves out if we were able to, so we began walking down the hill towards Waiotauru Hut. After an hour of walking though, we got our first view of the river and decided there and then that we did not want to try and cross that river. With the amount of brown much flowing through it, there was no way we’d get through it safely.

Returning to the saddle (again).

Once we reached the saddle again at 11.35am, it was the third time we’d visited it in the past 2 days. On this occasion, we continued to follow the 4 wheel drive track generally south, down the other side, hoping that at some point we’d get some mobile reception and be able to call someone in town to arrange for a collection in about another 3 hours or so. Literally 5 minutes after we left the intersection, though, there was a face poking around the corner. We hailed the guy, noticing as we approached that he had a rather big Toyota Landcruiser parked just around the corner. A few metres further, and we discovered that it wasn’t just him — there were more of them: 3 vehicles and 6 people out playing in the mud with their big grunty snorkel-equipped toys. It was an unofficial trip by several members of the Wellington Cross Country Vehicle Club.

Walking out to the Akatarawa Road.

The 6 of them were on their way up to the saddle and planning to do some other side tracks, but offered us a backup plan to possibly give us a lift back to civilisation if we were still stuck by the time they’d turned around and come back. We’d thought we might have actually been out at the road by the time this happened, we must have been only about half way. We were all a bit sick of walking by this point; besides the general enjoyment of tramping, I personally find walking along roads to be a bit boring. So we took up their offer of a lift, and some visits down some side tracks, and got a neat ride out in a genuine 1980′s Toyota LandCruiser. This was a treat, and personally I enjoyed seeing 4 wheel drives vehicles actually being used for what they’re supposed to be used for, instead of just burning fossils to collect children from school and blocking my view on the road. The two people who collected us had been in the country for 6 months, had been up here 3 times now, and have apparently collected trampers every time. Perhaps this has something do with their like of mud and visiting the place after heavy rain, but that’s just a guess.

We were expecting to just get a ride out to the Akatarawa Road, or at best to Waikanae, but in the end they were kind enough to give us a ride all the way back to Allen’s car at Otaki Forks. It’s great how people will help out in situations like this, and it was an unexpected end to an interesting weekend trip. At least there was no need for a shower when I got home.

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.
[Photos]

The previous time I’d visited the Ruahine Range, it had been extremely windy, and forecasts for this weekend were threatening something at least as bad. By some coincidence, we were even heading back to a similar part of the range, only a few kilometres south of Pourangaki and even with plans to cover some of the same region if things went well. The six of us who hadn’t abandoned the trip briefly threw around ideas of possibly going somewhere else, perhaps a place which might have been a little more sheltered from the front and less likely to be exposed to the kinds of severe winds that the Ruahines tend to attract on windy days. Ironically for a weekend when a severe rainfall was expected, parts of the Tararuas actually seemed like a feasible haven by comparison, simply because there was more space not on the tops which might be available for shelter. In the end however, we decided to head to the Rangiwahia road-end as planned. It was possible that we might spend the entire weekend at Rangiwahia Hut, which sits right on the bush-line, but Alistair (as the organiser) was keen to ride his hope that we might just get what he called a “window of opportunity”, if the front was polite enough to hold off for at least a few hours into Saturday.

So we packed into the rental van and left at about 5.30pm on Friday night, two people less than what we’d expected an hour or two earlier. After a brief stop for dinner at Bulls, the weather was still very calm as we approached our destination. Near the Rangiwahia road-end, Alistair attempted to singlehandedly save the New Zealand bush with our 11 seater rental tank by running over a possum that had strayed out onto the road. He missed. Egged on by accusations coming from the back of the van that he was a vegetarian (one of the worst insults you could direct at Alistair), he got the second one a few minutes before we arrived at the road-end, confirmed by a good two thumps below the right-side wheels.

DOC is ever helpful with the
signage on the Rangiwahia Track.

The people of the club’s easy-rated group, who were planning to camp there that night, were already unpacking their things. We still had a bit of walking to do, so after some quick preparations and goodbye, we were on our way at about 9.45pm, not long after Steve and Sylvia (who composed the club’s medium-rated group). DOC labels the Rangiwahia Hut Track as a 2 – 3 hour track, but for anyone who’s reasonably fit and without much reason to stop and look at the scenery, it could probably be done in a little over an hour. We were walking it in the dark so there wasn’t much scenery to see. It took us about an hour and 20 minutes, and even that wasn’t too stressful-a-pace. (We stopped and regrouped several times on the way up.) It’s a very popular track however, and presumably attracts all levels of trampers, which would explain why DOC would be conservative about promoting the estimated time. The track is mostly even except towards the end where it starts switching up the hill a little more steeply, and where it diverts steeply to get around an active slip. The slip, which we reached about 20 minutes in from the road-end, is very large. Although the detour over the top of it is very clear and doesn’t look very dangerous if taken carefully, it does turn what would have been a 4 minute walk into a 15 minute walk (or maybe 10 minutes into 30 minutes, depending on the pace of a group).

There was still no sign of the incoming weather on the way up, and without much turbulence in the upper atmosphere (according to the stability of the stars), it was beginning to look as if we might still get one of Alistair’s windows of opportunity the following day. As we looked south from near the top, the horizon was dominated by the pollutive glow of Palmerston North’s glittering night-life.

We arrived at Rangiwahia Hut a little after 11pm, at roughly the same time as Steve and Sylvia. There were already a couple of people asleep in the bunks at that time, so we made an effort (perhaps not one to be ultra-proud of) to get settled into bed as quickly and quietly as possible. The final candle was out about 15 minutes after we arrived. It would have been out sooner than that except nobody had taken the responsibility of putting it out. By the time we were settled into our bunks, the blowing efforts of Steve, Alistair and myself turned out to be more comical than effective.

Ruapehu Sunrise from Rangiwahia.

Somebody’s cellphone alarm went off at 5.30 that morning, and I think it belonged to one of the two people sleeping in the other side of the hut. They didn’t drag themselves out of bed, though, and it worked out that we never actually met them. We began to stir ourselves out of bed about half an hour later, welcomed to the day by a nice sunrise. The sunrise was dominated by a red sky, suggesting the on-coming front with rainy weather, but the mountains of Tongariro National Park were clear in the distance. For now it was still calm with no sign of the predicted onslaught. We were definitely going to get to walk somewhere today, and that was a great feeling considering what everyone had been telling me before I left.

Our group left Rangiwahia Hut very shortly after 7am, heading west towards the Whanauia Range. Sawtooth Ridge, the day’s golden destination, was almost immediately visible in the distance, very clear against the backing of the rising Sun. It took about 50 minutes to get to the first clear waypoint, which was the top of the spur we were on, a couple of hundred metres north of Mangahuia. This point is also marked by a clear DOC sign which points back to Rangiwahia, on to Triangle and Pourangaki, or (towards the south) to the head of Dead Man’s Track, which is an alternative route down to the Rangiwahia road-end.

Dirk, Sarah, Alistair, Marie and Jeremy
at the top of Dead Man’s Track.

We stopped briefly for about 10 minutes to re-group, and Alistair used the time to explain the several alternative plans he had for getting off the tops at different stages, depending on when the front came rolling in. We had possible exit points going straight down to Triangle Hut, down to Pourangaki Hut from Maungamahue, or back down to Triangle from Te Hekenga. If we got past there we’d be onto Sawtooth and would pretty much need to be confident to be able to finish it. That was all a decision for later however, and still having no sign of the incoming storm, we began our trek north-west for another 3 kilometres along the ridge towards Maungamahue.

We passed the main turn-off for the poled route down a spur to Triangle Hut at roughly 8.30am, and shortly after we began to sidle around the eastern side of point 1635, stopping shortly after a tarn (which is marked on my topo map) for a rest. The scene of the curving spur towards Maungamahue from this point was impressive, so much so that I think it might have distracted me when I accidentally put my right foot into a half-metre sink-hole that was hidden beneath the grass. It hurt quite a lot at the time, but I could still stand on it and thought I’d try walking on it a little longer to see how it went. 15 minutes later though we’d stopped again, and I was strapping it up because it didn’t feel as if it was getting better quickly. It wasn’t just me having problems, either. Marie was beginning to find that she was getting unusually exhausted and falling behind, and we later decided that she might have picked up some food poisoning or something similar, possibly even from dinner the previous night. Despite these issues, the weather was still holding off and our window for walking was extending ever further. We reached the top of Maungamahue at about 9.30am, and pressed on.

Dirk, Alistair and Jeremy
below Maungamahue.

From Maungamahue we turned east again, aiming towards Te Hekenga along what was a bit of a wonky ridge. Looking back towards Ruapehu, however, it was still very visible, meaning that the weather was still some distance away. Over time I figured out that I could still walk on my ankle as long as I was careful, and that it was mostly only side-to-side movement that was having problems. During this stretch, we were able to look over to the left and see Pourangaki Hut below us, where I’d been on my previous trip into the Ruahines, and which had been one of our bail-out options for today. By 10.50am we’d made it to the saddle between point 1493 and Te Hekenga, and we stopped for a snack and a rest for a quarter of an hour.

The saddle where we stopped is quite deep, and looking up towards Te Hekenga about 300 metres higher was a little daunting from the bottom. What was a little more concerning though was that half way up, we began to feel light spots of rain. Marie was really struggling by this point, being completely drained of energy from whatever bug it was she’d picked up, and the group became separated for little. Alistair, Dirk, Jeremy and myself ended up at the top a little before mid-day, while Sarah and Marie hung back and took their time. Eventually, Alistair decided to go back down the hill to give Marie a hand bringing up her pack. Meanwhile the remaining three of us found a sheltered spot on the southern side of Te Hekenga and grabbed a little lunch while we waited for them to return.

Marie, Alistair, Sarah and Dirk regrouping
below Te Hekenga.

By the time we’d regrouped just past Te Hekenga at about 12.30pm, it really looked as if it’d be a good time to finally get off the tops rather than continue around Sawtooth. The wind had come up a bit and some light rain appeared to be a precursor to what was coming. To add to things, Marie was feeling sick and my ankle was still quite uncertain. As a consequence, we divided up some of Marie’s things, which helped immensely, began the scoot over point 1523 and down to Triangle Hut.

Marie getting through Leatherwood.

There is a track down the spur that we followed, but it gets a little lost in places. Getting to the bush-line is easy enough, and we were well into the leatherwood by 1.55pm. The track through the leatherwood is manageable enough, and there was only one small clearing in which we weren’t entirely sure where to push through next. After a short look around there were only a couple of possible options, and further investigation found the track again fairly quickly. Within a few minutes we reached taller trees and although we used a compass from time to time to ensure we stayed on the correct bearing down the spur, the track was still quite easy to pick out. The only real hindrance was patches of Bush Lawyer, which we came across in increasing amounts on the way down. From about 3.20pm, the spur started to get much steeper and less clear. It’s possible that we may have lost the best track somewhere along the line, because by now we were pushing down an area that looked increasingly as if it was turning into a bluff above the river near the hut below. When it really began to run out however, we did find it possible to bash further around to the front of the spur. Alistair and Dirk found a way straight down to the river from there, while Sarah, Marie, Jeremy and I managed to find a much more definite track that went straight down to the river, after a little hunting around. By now it was raining quite steadily, but with a couple of quick hops over the river, we were at Triangle Hut just after 3.30pm.

With the six of us all trying to unpack and hang our wet clothes and gear within the limited space under the verandah of the six bunk hut, things became a bit complex. In the rush, Alistair managed to drop his spoon between the cracks in the deck, which was a real pain. Fortunately Dirk turned out to be an expert at hanging a loop on the end of a pointy stick, managing to fish it out after about ten minutes of trying.

With it still being a little to early for dinner, we spent the time relaxing on the bunks, washing up in the river, and catching up on sleep. Six people fit very nicely in a six bunk hut, which is why it was marginally concerning an hour later when we heard a couple of voices approaching from the river outside. It turned out to be the first two of a group of nice happy people from the Wanganui Tramping Club, who’d walked up the river from the Heritage road-end. They were a little concerned to see us, too (albeit not in a mean way), because we quickly discovered that there were eight of them. Considering the forecast, it didn’t seem to be a good night to be outside. Although I think it’d have been possible to get 10 people over the floor of Triangle Hut in a desperate situation (17 if there were a rotation system of visits to the long drop), even getting 14 crammed into the hut was going to be cosy. They still did have one tent for a couple to sleep outside, though, and we loaned the rest some of our inflatable sleeping mattresses to go on the floor.

There was a little coordination required to make sure our respective dinners didn’t overlap, but before dark we were into a nice dinner of pork and veggies, thanks much to the cooking efforts of Alistair, Dirk and Jeremy, followed by custard and fruit cake for dessert which was prepared by Sarah. The climax after dinner was when Alistair’s new MSR cooker wouldn’t switch off, requiring a swift but careful action to get it away from the hut, and dowsed with water as quickly as possible. (I understand it’s now going back to the shop.)

12 people were now in the six bunk hut, and the door and windows remained wide open that night. A first for me was that with such a crowded hut, there was no snoring. Or, at the very least, and hint of snoring was quickly overwhelmed by the sound of rain on the roof which began about 11pm, and soon after the sound of the torrent of water coming down the now flooded river outside the front door. I was on the top bunk under a clear section of the ceiling, and during the several times that I awoke through the night, I actually thought it’d stopped raining. In hindsight I no longer think it had stopped raining on the roof at all, and that I had simply been deceived by the roaring sound of the river outside, which made it difficult to hear much else.

Saturday night.

Sunday morning.

As it got lighter it was easy to look out the door and see the river not far away. It had changed completely from the trickle the previous day, and I have to admit that I was concerned we wouldn’t be able to cross it in that state. After breakfast and some further consideration, however, we ended up leaving at about 8.30am, taking Peter with us (from the Wanganui group), because having decided that walking down the river would be a bad idea, they were keen to relocate their van. I decided to leave my long johns on under my shorts for Sunday, partly because it looked like it could be cold and windy at the top, and partly because I’d accidentally put my boots and gaiters on without remembering to take them off.

As there are actually two rivers which come down from separate regions, and join directly outside Triangle Hut, we were actually able to cross it in two parts. Even just the first half the river looked quite daunting in its flooded state though, and this was going to be the first time it’d actually be necessary for me to be part of a proper arm-linked river crossing since I completed a practical course about a year before. Nevertheless we went ahead and eventually got across with six of us linked, not including Dirk who had somehow snuck over on his own with his walking pole during an instant that I’d blinked. Once over the first half, we were able to walk about 30 or 40 metres back from the confluence, and get over the second half by sliding along a tree that had fallen over the width to the other side. From here it was a bash up through the trees of about 100 vertical metres, and shortly before 9am we discovered the official DOC track up the spur marked with orange triangles.

The crossing itself was an interesting lesson in the multitude of different and conflicting methods that people have learned and been taught for crossing rivers over the past several decades, but I might leave that for another story because there’s a lot to it. Suffice it to say that I was very relieved to reach the other side, having worked myself into quite a nervous state beforehand for a variety of reasons, because I knew that from here we were basically home-free to the road-end by comparison. To add to my relief, my damaged ankle had by now descended to being a figment of my imagination, which was a relief. I could barely feel it hurting at all.

Peter (from the Wanganui club)
near the top of the spur.

The track from here back up to the spur was a very good track, of course. At a very relaxed pace with the entire day to cover a relatively short distance, we reached the leatherwood near the bush-line (with a good track cut through it) about 45 minutes later. The rain had now stopped, and the hills throughout the range were starting to become clear from behind the cloud. I have to admit that this is my favourite tramping weather, too. It’s quite cool but not too cold, and and the scenery with the nearby clouds wafting through the hilltops is a great thing to walk through. Jeremy was hanging back taking a lot of photographs, and after seeing some of them I can agree they came out very well. For a weekend whose forecast had begin so horrendously that a quarter of the people on our trip had elected to pull out an hour before we left, we’d had a very successful time.

Dirk and his magical pole.

Having made our way onto the tops properly, the track turned into a poled route back up to the main ridge, and at 10.45am we were back to the track we’d walked along the previous day, underneath point 1635. It was still noticibly windy on the tops, but at the same time it was entirely bearable — my decision to leave my long johns on that morning was certainly paying off, however. During the 20 minute walk in the direction of Mangahuia, we heard a noisy helicopter descending through the clouds. We never actually saw it, but it sounded as if it descended into the valley near Triangle Hut, and then lifted up again. We joked with some ideas about someone having gotten into trouble, but we never found out what was going on.

Jeremy approaching Rangi Hut.

From 11.15am having reached the signpost which points to Dead Man’s Track and Rangiwahia Hut, we turned onto the heavily walked track along the tops back towards the hut. The heavy rain overnight had caused quite a few endangered snails, of which I forget the name (although somebody told me), to emerge above to the track. Where we saw them, we picked them up and moved them to one side to reduce the chance that they might get accidentally trampled. Finally, just before midday, we reached Rangiwahia Hut, complete with its Ruapehu back-drop. Having more time to kill, we sat down for a decent lunch, with Jeremy sharing around some of his weird fruit cake that we hadn’t eaten the night before. A kind visitor to Rangiwahia had left a packet of Moro bars on the table, but not being in great need we left them for the next person to be stranded in a blizzard.

Dirk on the Rangiwahia Bridge.

Marie, who was still not feeling too well and was keen to get out, was the first to leave a little before 1pm, and the rest of us followed within a few minutes. Unlike on Friday night, we now had a clear view of the massive slip that washed away part of the Rangiwahia Track. From the vantage point on the way back, Alistair noted that the detour over the top must almost get all the way up to Dead Man’s Track on the top of the ridge.

Dirk, Jeremy and I finally caught up with Marie when we reached the van at the road-end, a little after 2pm, bringing a great weekend of walking to an end. Having packed things up we piled into the van, and headed back towards the Heritage road-end further south, where Peter kindly gave us a small donation towards ice creams on the way home.

The last time I visited Waitewaewae Hut (aka YTYY), I was on my first ever trip with the Wellington Tongue and Meats. This had been the easy-rated trip up Saddle Creek from Otaki Forks, and considering Andrew was in charge, I think as many people had gone for the cooking as for the walking. With a large group of 12 people, the track that was signposted as 4 hours ended up taking us more than 7, and several people on their first ever tramp were feeling almost dead at the end of it.

This weekend there was another group from the club doing a similar trip to what I’d done earlier, but personally I was in a separate trip coming into Waitewaewae from the other end. Our basic plan was to start from the Waikawa Stream, meet the other group at the hut on Saturday night, and then we’d all walk back to Otaki Forks on the Sunday.

Dates: 8th-10th February, 2008
Location: Tararua Forest Park, North Manakau Road to Otaki Forks.
People: Steve, Lesley, Kerry, Marie, Andy, Sylvia, Dave, Sue, Allen and me.
Huts visited: Waitewaewae Hut (1 night).
Intended route: Begin at the end of North Manakau Road, follow the Waikawa Stream and pick a spur towards the saddle north of point 673. Continue down the other side into the West Waitewaewae River. Follow it to Island Forks and along the main Waitewaewae River to the Otaki River. Carry on to Waitewaewae Hut. Then out via the main track over the plateau and along Saddle Creek back to Otaki Forks on Sunday.
Actual route: Bingo.
Related bits: Dave also wrote a trip report about this weekend.
[Photos]

It was a complicated transport arrangement on Friday night. Steve (from our group) was the only bus driver available, so it was necessary for him to drive the bus to Otaki Forks to drop everyone off, after which the remaining ten of us piled into the van and set off for the North Manakau Road-end, some distance further north. Both road-ends are windy and bumpy and have to be negotiated slowly, and it took quite a while for us to get to our starting point. At the end of North Manakau Road, we were quite surprised to find both a long drop, and a concrete barbecue, but not much else. Maybe it’s a popular place for people to camp for the night before setting off.

The large fly goes up.

We arrived shortly after 9pm and, after noting that there wasn’t really anywhere useful to walk to on a Friday night, we set to work putting up the flies. There was plenty of space, but the ground was far too hard to knock in any pegs, so we had to find some heavy rocks to weigh them down. The problems compounded when we realised that the main guy rope on the large fly we’d brought with us was a couple of metres too short. It almost got to the point of having to yank out some bootlaces to tie it down, until we figured out that it’d be feasible to tie one end directly to the van. The large fly was properly up by about 9.45pm, and with the front of the van sheltering one end of it we even managed to cram seven people under it quite comfortably.

Steve crosses a slip that
we found quite early.

People were stirring a little after 6.30am or so on Saturday morning. Allen had a billy boiling before long for everyone who wanted hot water, and after an hour or so we were packed up and ready to get going. The North Manakau Road-end actually has two obvious exits. One of them, on the left of the road when facing the end, is signposted as some kind of bush-walk and immediately starts going up-hill. I don’t know where this track goes, and we went the other way, which basically continues straight ahead into the trees from the end of the road. This track goes straight down towards the Waikawa Stream, which was where we wanted to be, towards the site of one of the Tararua’s old logging mills. We’d hit the river within 3 or 4 minutes, and even though there’s a track marked along the river’s true right to the old mill site for about a kilometre, it wasn’t very distinguishable to me from the river itself. Personally I never even noticed the site of the Old Mill. I’m unsure if this is because I wasn’t looking hard enough, or if there’s just not much to see.

Navigationally speaking, the entire trip was likely to be quite straightforward. The plan was to follow the Waikawa Stream south for a couple of kilometres, then head up a spur to a saddle, which was also pretty much south-wards. It was a good place to practice navigation techniques, though, and several of us had maps and compasses out to try and pick up the variations in the stream.

Marie and Andy
heading upwards.

The stream did have a few kinks in it to throw us off, and at one point we nearly headed up the wrong side-stream, and only realised after a bearing found us somehow heading north-west. Looking at the map, though, it would have been difficult to take a wrong turn that didn’t eventually take us to where we wanted to be anyway. Allen and Sue, of course, had been all around just about everywhere nearby except for this particular stream. If we’d found a way to get lost, we would have known because they would have begun to recognise where they were. They probably wouldn’t have told us, though.

Lesley near the top of the
saddle, heading down.

We found what we thought was the right spur at about 9.40am, and there was even a bit of a track worn around it. At first, the track seemed to go more alongside the river rather than up the spur, but it eventually headed up, and we were on what I presume was the saddle at about 10.35′ish. After a small amount of surveying to check if we should be heading either way along the ridge, we ended up heading straight down the other side, and into the West Waitewaewae River. The descent took about 30 minutes, and we stopped for a natter and a short snack at the bottom.

Sylvia shows off
fancy footwork.

The West Waitewaewae River is a little gorgey in places, and within about ten minutes we were wading through knee-deep water for the first time. As things go there wasn’t a lot of water in the river, though, and it was quite a nice and gentle walk under the trees. The group stopped for lunch shortly before 12, and with quite a lot of time to burn, we boiled some more water and took a 30 minute break.

After lunch things became a lot more gorgey, intermittently at least. At about 12.45, we came across our first part of the river that looked a little difficult. It was a section with a small waterfall that looked deep underneath, and had steep walls on either side. Dave and Andy were the first to climb around the edge. They didn’t make it look easy or particularly safe, either. I was starting to consider my first practical attempt at pack-floating at about the time that Sylvia got everyone’s attention by mis-placing something and falling backwards into the river from the wall above. Sylvia was fine (apart from being a little saturated), and when she stood up it became more obvious that the depth wasn’t much more than waste deep. Steve and I ended up just wading through, while I think everyone else found a convenient ledge about knee-deep under the water which was a little easy to sidle around.

Dave next to the main
Waitewaewae River.

We were walking again at 3.35pm, with the next phase of the trip being about 5 kilometres along the main Waitewaewae River to where it flowed into the Otaki River. The main river continued the occasional gorginess, resulting in more places where we needed to wade through waist-deep water. This also contributed to the number of good swimming holes that we walked past. We didn’t stop for any swimming in the end, but it might be worth remembering for the future.

Sue and Allen lead everyone in
another crossing.

There’s a big slip marked on the map about half way along that stretch, which we’d reached by 5.10pm at our fairly relaxed pace. It was starting to get later in the day now, though, and notably the sandflies were starting to hover around the water, biting when given the chance. We weren’t too far from the hut by now, which was evident by the increasing numbers of footprints visible in the sand, suggesting that this part of the river was getting to be a little more populated. For a while, however, we were still considering camping for the night. The weather was calm, and we walked past quite a few possible campsites in the flats alongside the river.

We never did stop, however, and secretly I was quite glad inside. Camping would have been nice, but I’d only just renewed my annual hut pass the previous Tuesday, and somehow staying in a hut somehow seemed to justify this. We finally reached the Otaki River at 5.45pm. From here it was a short jaunt further down-stream to the swing bridge, 15 minutes away, where we stopped to re-group. We were all over it by about 10 minutes later, including Marie who put on a small circus act by holding her pole in her mouth, and were settling into hut life by 6.20pm. Overall it was a good day, apart from Kerry’s injury which was still bothering her. I think the only irritation for me was after I pulled off one of my gaiters and discovered that one of the lace brackets from my boot had fallen off, probably in the West Waitewaewae River since I think that was about the time I thought my lace had come loose. It’s probably washed well out to see by now.

Arriving at Waitewaewae Hut.

Already at the hut for the night were a couple with a friendly dog, who were camped outside, and a family group of four who were currently preparing dinner and playing card games. What we didn’t find, against our expectations, was the other group. Considering how late it was in the day, this seemed strange and a little concerning, especially after the dog couple told us they’d overtaken the group at the log hauler near the start of Saddle Creek back at mid-day. As we heard a helicopter fly overhead shortly after our arrival, we joked about how it might have been for them.

Waitewaewae Hut was very similar to how I remembered it from September 2006, the only obvious difference being the movement of the long drop. (The track to the previous location has been filled up by a large tree branch.) The current Waitewaewae Hut itself has an interesting distinction of being the first hut that New Zealand’s Department of Conservation funded the building of using the fees from back-country hut tickets. This was a demonstration in 1991, in response to a lot of controversy over the introduction of hut fees, shortly after the department usurped control of the country’s National Parks and Forest Parks, and whatever was in them. To quell some of the complaints from many people who objected to being charged for use of the facilities that they themselves had spent time and effort building and maintaining, the government department wanted to demonstrate that those fees would actually be spent on supporting recreational activities. Consequently, Waitewaewae was rebuilt. Although there less objections to the payment of fees after 17 years, the hut book at Waitewaewae still gets the occasional comment from someone complaining about how they feel insulted for being asked to pay them.

We settled into a couscous dinner, and as we waited for the other group, I flicked through the hut copy of Ross Kerr’s A Chronology of the Tararua and Rimutaka Ranges. Sue meanwhile explained to one of the other people at the hut just where we’d come from that day, pointing to a stream on her Tararua map which I noticed was covered in a very comprehensive grid of drawn lines. The other group still hadn’t arrived by the time we went to bed after several hours. It was quite possible they’d had a minor mis-hap, so we assumed they’d probably just stopped and camped somewhere along the way, or returned to Otaki Forks. For the entire day, I’d been expecting to be sleeping on the floor. I felt a little guilty snatching a mattress on the so-far completely vacant top level. It was tempting to sleep on the deck outside and a couple of people almost did, but everyone was inside by the end, even though Steve and Marie preferred to stick to the floor. It may have been just as well that everyone was inside, as there was rain overnight.

The first people started waking up at around 6am on Sunday morning, partly prompted by one of the couple camped outside who came inside briefly around then. Allen and Sue were keen to get back to their car at Otaki Forks so they could get home early, and they were away by about 7am, dragging Dave behind them, who was needed so he could be dropped at the Waikawa road-end in order to collect the van and bring it back to the Forks. Before they left, however, Steve (who knew how to use the timer on his camera) made sure to get a nice, group photograph of everyone. The couple with the dog and the family group were away next, but everyone else in our own group took a bit longer to get going. It wasn’t likely to be a long day, at least compared with the previous day, and so it took until about 7.45am before the rest of us were packed, ready to leave and walking again.

Incidentally as a bit of mostly useless information, the Terramap of the Tararuas folds really nicely if you’re going on a similar route to ourselves and stopping at the hut overnight. The hut itself is near the edge, duplicated on both sides of the double-sided map. This meant that for all of Saturday we were walking from top to bottom of the map, from Waikawa to Waitewaewae. On Sunday morning I pulled it out and neatly re-folded it to the other side, and once again we were walking from the top to the bottom, from Waitewaewae Hut to Otaki Forks.

Circumventing the track via
the Otaki River.

After a brief discussion, we decided to avoid the first part of the track from Waitewaewae Hut, which is known for it’s fluctuating altitude, and instead wander around the curve in the Otaki River, which was all flat. We’d reached the big orange triangle, at the intersection of the Otaki River and Arapito Creek, shortly after 8am. By this time I was the only person remaining in our group who’d done this before, and unfortunately I had some fake memories of the incident. My specific memory had been that there was some climbing up above the creek to the track from this point. This memory also seemed completely logical after seeing that there was an obvious track going up the hill from that point. The further we climbed, however, the less obvious the track became, and I’m now wondering if it only existed because so many other people had had the same false memory that I’d had. Or perhaps it had something to do with the exact placement of the big orange triangle down at the river level.

After a couple of minutes, Steve asked me if I was sure that we were going the right way. I admitted I wasn’t, and so we decided we’d probably be better off going back down and simply following Arapito Creek for about 200 metres, to the point where the map indicated that the main track crossed it. The logic in my mind had told me that since I’d remembered another track, this creek must certainly have been quite difficult to navigate. It wasn’t of course, and within a minute we were practically walking on a highway with orange triangles every 30 seconds.

From here there was an uphill climb of about 250 metres to a plateau, although the track tends to undulate up and down for a bit which probably makes the climb a little further. Kerry wasn’t having quite so much trouble with her knee any more by now, especially having gotten away from the uneven and hard ground of the riverbeds that we’d been walking along for nearly all of the previous day. (My accidental guiding up and down a very steep section earlier probably hadn’t helped, however.) We still took things quite slowly, however, with no real reason to rush. I’m unsure exactly what time we reached the plateau’s high-point, but it was probably roughly 9.30am, after which we began to descend and very quickly found ourselves walking in Saddle Creek.

Saddle Creek.

The track from Waitewaewae Hut back to Otaki Forks zig-zags frequently over Saddle Creek for about 2 kilometres before heading up the hillside, to the extent that it’s often easier to simply walk in the creek than to keep following the track up and down beside it. In our case, the remaining seven of us went at our own pace and we spread out quite a lot, occasionally regrouping. I quite enjoy it when this happens because it’s a nice change from constantly catching up with people, and I tend to make better decisions about where to put my feet when I can see further ahead of me. A little after 10am, though, I caught up with Andy, Lesley and Sylvia, all of whom were crowded around a tree. It turned out that Sue, from the other group, had left us a note, and it was interesting reading.

Steve and Marie
read the note.

The previous afternoon, one of them had had an accident and slipped over in the creek, twisting an ankle. After attempting to walk her out, it’d quickly become clear that doing so wouldn’t be possible. Ray, also from the other group, had decided to activate his personal locator beacon, which I later heard him refer to as his pocket helicopter. Ray and Sam had then walked back to Otaki Forks to raise the alarm that way in case the beacon failed. Within a couple of hours, however, a helicopter had arrived and the injured person had been flown out. So that helicopter we’d heard the previous evening had actually been for them after all. The note went on to say that they’d camped in the surrounding area that night, even though we couldn’t see anywhere nice to camp no matter how hard we looked. It must have been quite an awkward night. According to the note, they’d left about 90 minutes before we arrived, so they probably weren’t too far ahead. The others carried on while I waited for Steve, Marie and Terry to catch up, if only to see the looks on their faces.

We re-grouped again about half an hour later (about 10.50am), after those in front had stopped rather than overtake the family group that’d left the hut before us. We actually weren’t far from the turn-off point from Saddle Creek; once we got going again, we’d only been walking for 5 minutes before we unexpectedly ran into our friends from the other group. They’d been waiting for quite some time for us to show up. After having had some issues getting around an active slip on their way in on Saturday morning, they hadn’t yet decided whether to continue along that way or to follow the river instead. If they did the latter, they also didn’t want to go down the river without us knowing about it.

An added complication was them having had to divide up everything from an extra pack, since Sarah had been flown out without taking everything with her. Most of this was figured out already, but Steve helped out by carrying an additional pack which by now was almost empty, strapping it to the back of his own. After some discussion, we all decided to continue back on the track. Nobody knew what to expect from the river, whereas we knew that the main track was quite easy once we’d gotten around the slip.

The old log hauler.

Our group was walking again at 11.15am, leaving Saddle Creek behind and immediately finding the old log hauler, which is placed right next to the track, and overtaking the family group who’d sat down behind it for a snack or early lunch. Much of the track between Saddle Creek and Otaki Forks is wide and flat. In fact, the old rails that were used by the log hauling engines continue to exist along some parts of the tracks. At 11.30am we reached the main obstacle, which is where the track hits quite a large, active slip. From here it’s necessary to climb up and around the top of it, using a much worse track that won’t be permanent for as long as the land continues to get washed away over time. Getting around it only takes on the order of 5 minutes, but the sudden difference in terrain could be quite a shock after a while of flat, wide tracks.

Steve on the final leg.

We returned to flat, wide tracks soon enough on the other side, however. Those of us up the front got ahead quite a bit, and we stopped for some lunch at midday, triggered by having caught up with the couple walking their dog. From here the whole walk out was much less structured, though. Once Steve decided to get up and leave, I followed shortly after, and we were almost immediately out from under the trees and into chirping cicada country. Everyone followed at their own pace, with many people apparently stopping along the way for a swim in one of the nearby rivers.

By 12.45pm, I’d reached the grassy plateau just above Otaki Forks, where the Waitewaewae Track meets the track up to Field Hut. This had definitely changed since last time I saw it. In particular, there was now a 2 metre wide lawnmower track through the grass, with a sign indicating that the marker poles should be followed back to the forks. At first I thought that DOC had simply clearly mown the original track so that people would stick to walking in one place, rather than wandering all over the field. After a few minutes, though, it became clearer that this track didn’t seem to be going exactly where I thought it was. I did end up back at the Forks, but it was probably about 4 or 5 times longer than the original track, which is much more direct. Presumably DOC wanted to make something that had a shallower gradient, considering how much Otaki Forks is frequented by people who just want a short circular walk, or who want to get to one of the nearby rivers.

There’s a new very grunty bridge there now, too, which in any other location would look like a monstrosity (which is exactly what has occurred with the new DOC bridges in places like Mitre Flats). At Otaki Forks though, it probably makes some sense because so many people visit. Another tramping club was having some kind of children’s camping picnic on the other side of that bridge. Those kinds of things frighten me, and I decided to go sideways slightly and walk over the old swing bridge instead. Half way across I looked down and noticing that the water in the river was only ankle deep, I wondered why I hadn’t just waded across.

The time was now past 1pm and I thought that Dave would almost certainly be back with the van. Looking around however, I couldn’t find him or the van anywhere. Dave arrived with the van about 20 minutes after I had, and I found out later that after a rather fast 3.5 hour run from Waitewaewae Hut to Otaki Forks, Allen and Sue had taken him to the Brown Sugar Cafe in Otaki for a coffee, which explained his lateness. Meanwhile I found the club bus, in which Ray and Sam were sitting half asleep. We went back down to the field near the bridges and threw a frisbee around for a while, as everyone slowly trickled in.

It was a fun trip in the end, made even more exciting after hearing about the helicopter adventures of those in the other group. Apparently helicopters on club trips are something to do with Ray and Sue being present, so I might have to take that into account when planning what I sign up for in the future.

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.
[Photos]

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.

The six of us were accompanied to the end of the road by Geoff and Yibai. Geoff had offered to drive the bus while Yibai had offered to make sure the door of the bus opened and closed at the appropriate times. The two of them planned to go hunting while they waited for us to return. Having left Wellington at about 6 with a 30 minute stop for dinner at Bulls, we arrived at the Urchin road-end at about 11.20pm. Ruth knew of a good campsite clearing a few minutes’ walk in the opposite direction from the start of the Urchin Track, and that’s what we aimed for. As it turned out, Mike and I were the only people interested in setting up a fly, but even we gave up after trying to get the first peg into the very hard ground. It was a calm night so we joined everyone else and put away the fly, sleeping out in the open.

We were all settled and on our way to sleep by about midnight. I think I must have slept well because after falling asleep underneath the constellation of Canis Major, the next thing I remember was being under a dense part of the Milky Way which was most likely near Sagittarius. By the time the Southern Cross was overhead, traces of dawn were showing, and a sprinkling of songs started echoing through the trees. The two most prominent belonged to a Grey Warbler, and what I think were Bellbirds. We didn’t have any significant problems with dew on people’s sleeping bags, although Paul’s had somehow gotten slightly wet on the outside, possibly if he’d somehow rolled it into a puddle.

Everyone in our group was packing at 6am. Geoff and Yibai – respectively the gun-toting bus driver and gun-toting bus door-opener – had already left for their hunting trip by that time, probably hoping to spot a deer in the early morning. John boiled some water for a brew, and was a little surprised when Mike and I weren’t interested. (Neither Mike nor myself usually bother with much other than water when on trips.)

There’s no source of water at the Urchin road-end, which is important to note because the first water available on the journey still requires a 600 metre climb followed by a 450 metre descent before reaching the Waipakihi River. Fortunately Ruth had thought ahead, and left a 3 litre bottle of water on the bus that we could raid before we left.

Somehow everyone in our group had turned up with a different forecast for the weekend. They all contradicted each other, but none of them were particularly good forecasts and the main thing we determined having mashed them together was that Saturday was likely to be the best day. From Sunday onwards things would probably get steadily worse – in some cases a lot worse. With this in mind, we decided to attempt a very long day on Saturday to get around as much of Middle Range as possible, hopefully all the way to the hut, and would later decide how to use up the remaining two days.

We left our campsite near the Urchin road-end just before 7. After a quick stop at the bus, we began walking up the hill, with Craig making subtle comments about the unusual heaviness of his pack. The track from the road-end up to Urchin is a nice, consistent gradient, and the ground is quite soft which makes it good to walk on.

Craig at Urchin Trig.

We reached the bush-line at 8.15am, and the wind progressively picked up from there, complete with wind chill. Less than 10 minutes later having arrived at Urchin Trig, it was actually getting quite cold. We re-assessed the day’s plan once we broke onto the tops and could see the rapidly moving clouds to the east which suggested suggested that Middle Range, along which we’d intended to walk, was probably sheltering us from something much worse coming from the north-east. Instead, we decided to spend the day walking up the river in the valley below.

Looking down from
the Urchin Track.

The Urchin Track is poled along the tops, which makes it easy to find the way down to the track in the bush-line on either side. Although cold and windy enough for everyone to add an extra layer, it wasn‘t too much to manage and the visibility was good. We covered the 2 kilometers or so on that part of the tops without much trouble, and were on our way down into the bush on the other side within 45 minutes. The Urchin Track heading down the south-eastern side is quite a bit steeper than the other side by comparison, but really no worse than a typical up-hill track in the New Zealand back-country.

We reached the river at 9.40am, where two guys from Tauranga were camping having walked there on Friday afternoon. They‘d already encountered Geoff and Yibai who’d gone past some time earlier and continued up-river. They were also intending to be at Waipakihi Hut that evening, so we’d expect to see them again later in the day. The weather was much calmer and warmer down in the valley. With no reason to rush, we stayed and chatted for a good 25 minutes. As we left, Craig made some more subtle comments about the unusual heaviness of his pack. A few minutes further up the river, Geoff and Yibai popped out of the trees where they‘d set up a camp. They hadn’t had any luck yet. We updated them with our plans, and arranged to send a couple of people down the river to find them again if the weather became so bad for us to want to leave early.

A couple of kilometres further up the river, we stopped for lunch at the base of Thunderbolt Creek. Much of the Waipakihi River has wide flats on both sides. This point, where a spur comes down to meet the river from Te Hiwiokaituri Ridge was no exception. The time was only 11.30am and we were in no hurry, so we took advantage of a sheltered spot on the northern side of the spur, and sat down for some lunch.

John likes tea when he
goes tramping.

John used his skills to throw together a small campfire and heat water for a brew. He grumbled about how times were changing for the worse when Mike and I both told him we didn’t need any hot water once again. It was a nice day to have campfire smoke periodically wafting in one’s face, however, and we spent a good hour sitting, eating high quality lunches, chatting, and comparing the cheap altimeters with the expensive ones. It was only now that it became apparent that we actually had six altimeters between six people, albeit some of a more accurate nature than others. Mike was the only person without one, although Paul actually had two if we also counted his bright yellow GPS device.

As often happens, lunch was a forum for many important and involved discussions. The most important discussion during this lunch was to do with accurately measuring the volume of a club billy using a GPS device. The consensus was that it could be useful to have about 1000 billies so they could be lined up alongside each other, and perhaps then it’d be easier to measure their diameter and height more accurately. We packed up and left shortly after 12.30pm, with Craig making a few further comments about the weight of his pack

The wide flats along the edges of the Waipakihi River make it possible to walk much of the distance outside of the river, but it‘s often necessary to cris-cross it and, of course, we often found it more convenient to simply walk up the middle. On this occasion the river wasn’t at all flooded, and it was never necessary to wade through anything deeper than about thigh-deep water. There were quite a few deeper and slow moving areas which would have made good swimming holes, however.

Where we waited
for Craig.

We nearly lost Craig shortly after 1pm, when we dropped off the flats down to a curve in the river at what I think was a grid reference of about 616238. Craig was last in the group at the time (or at least that‘s what we thought), but he never turned up when we sat down to wait. After about ten minutes of waiting and with some concern mounting, further investigation revealed there were several diverging tracks through the flats than the one we’d followed. It was possible that he might have dropped down to the river at a different place somewhere ahead of us, and missed us completely. Just as we were discussing the possibilities, however, Craig turned up, having been just around the corner for the entire time, ironically waiting for us.

Somewhere along this stretch, we overtook the two guys from Tauranga, who’d passed us at some stage when we were hiding in our lunch spot. We stopped for a few minutes and had another chatter with them before continuing.

Mike, Craig and Ruth
in the shade.

At about 3pm, our relaxed pace dictated the need for yet another rest. Ruth was keen to find somewhere with shade, while John wanted some grass next to the river. The lack of locations to match all requirements caused some vigorous debate over the next ten minutes, but in the end we just stopped in the shade, except for John at the front who hadn’t noticed we’d stopped, and continued around the corner to find his grassy riverbank. This stop lasted another 30 minutes, during which time I’m sure I heard snoring. By now it was starting to get later in the day, however, and John asserted that there should be no more stops before we reached the hut. We picked up our things and got going again, with Craig making a few comments about the extra weight he thought he must have been carrying. Once again, we overtook the chaps from Tauranga, and this time they were quite surprised and confused to see us. Presumably they hadn’t seen us snoring in the shade.

At 4.20pm, Mike and I (at the back of the group) finally saw what was either the Waipakihi Hut in the distance, or a very good cardboard cut-out imitation of it. I’ve sometimes thought it could be funny to build a giant cardboard cutout of a hut in the distance, but this time I hoped it was the real thing and was pleasantly rewarded for my optimism. Mike and I were the last two people to reach it. We wandered up the steps at 4.40pm, trying to look as authentic as we could as we strolled past a crouching John who wielded the impressive new camera he’d recently given his wife for Christmas, and added our soppy socks to the clothes line out the front.

Ruth and Paul outside
the hut.

Nobody else was home at the hut when we arrived, but a couple of hunters had left their things in one of the bunk rooms. The hut has a bunk room on either end with six bunks in each, so the six of us picked the un-used room and filled it. Not long after we’d arrived, the two guys from Tauranga caught up, and duly added their soggy socks to the line. The wind was starting to pick up in the valley by now. Paul even reported seeing a small waterspout forming over the river, so it appeared that our timing had been good. John settled into arranging some hot water for a brew, but grumbled about how times were changing for the worse when Mike and I both told him we didn‘t need any hot water.

The next two people to arrive were a couple of British doctors, based in a hospital in Hawkes’ Bay. They‘d followed the same route as ourselves, but had only driven to the road-end earlier in the morning. The two of them were absolutely exhausted, which may have had something to do with all the extra effort they‘d gone to to avoid having to step into the river any further than ankle deep. Good for them, I guess. They got stuck into eating their cold dinner outside the hut within a few minutes of turning up.

On our own side of things, John had nearly completed the task of accurately slicing two very large kumura into 1 centimetre cubes. Craig meanwhile, who’d been making subtle comments about the weight of his pack all day, produced what must have been the world’s biggest cucumber from his pack. Only a third of it (at best) went towards a dinner for six people. Much of the evening was spent with the other inhabitants of the hut, collectively working on crossword puzzles which Paul had brought. The hunters still hadn’t returned by the time we’d all gone to bed at around 10pm’ish, although we heard them in the other room not long after.

We woke on Sunday morning at a little before 7, and first impressions of the day were much better than what several of the contradicting forecasts would have had us believe. There was a little wind outside, but the high clouds weren‘t moving fast and it looked very feasible to be walking over the tops. John boiled some water on the hut stove for a brew, although he grumbled about the state of tramping and younger people as Mike and I didn’t want any.

The two hunters were up and about very shortly after we’d begun to make significant amounts of noise, and they were quite helpful with information regarding what we were keen to do during the day. They’d both been up to point 1475 the previous evening and half way down one of the spurs near it, where they said it’d been extremely windy and a waste of their time as far as any hunting was concerned. Despite their claimed lack of success, there were still a lot of flies buzzing around one particular corner of the outside of the hut that morning, which made us suspicious as to whether anything had been left nearby.

Paul departs Waipakihi Hut.

The British tourists were first away, with a plan of walking back to the road by that evening, via the Umakarikari Range on the north-western side of the river. Our own group left shortly behind them at 8am. Watching them from a distance, they did a very adequate job of getting through the river without having any water seeping over the top of their boots prior to ascending up the track on the far side.

The book at Waipakihi Hut had had a big warning scribbled in the front, apparently courtesy of Air Charter Taupo, reminding everyone that the nearby private land was being monitored and that people should stay away from it unless they had a permit. This reduced our options because the private land in question had a nicely drawn corner of a triangle jutting over about 3 kms of ridgeline that we would have liked to walk. Not everyone in our group was in possession of a suitable balaclava to hide our identities, and none of us had packed any giant motorised pogo sticks that might have assisted us to leap over many kilometres of private forest in a single bound. The prospect of the looming Air Charter Taupo attack choppers buzzing us along the ridge wasn’t inviting, so following the main signposted track from the hut and dashing across 3 kms of ridgeline wasn’t an option. We therefore decided to head up an alternative spur to point 1475, south of the hut, and bypass the pointy corner of private land as much as possible.

There’s a well-walked route up the spur to 1475, which shouldn‘t be much of a surprise since I bet a lot of people had done the same thing before we did it. It’s not obvious from the bottom, though, and it was fortunate that Paul had been here once a year before. We also got some directions from one of the two hunters. The only obstacle in getting to this spur, which is probably more of an issue for people who try to walk directly from the hut, is an annoying gully which needs to be either crossed or circumvented. It‘s perhaps on the order of about 15 metres deep and quite steep on either side, heading north-south, almost 600 metres west of the hut (from the south side of the river). My TerraMap marks it as a stream, but at the time we visited there were trees growing along the bottom, and no obvious water above ground. Having walked straight from the hut, we had begun from the eastern side of the gully accidentally, before Ruth managed to find a way down into the thing and up the other side.

Ruth walking up to
point 1475.

25 minutes after leaving the hut, we were at the base of the route through the trees on the western side of this gully. The spur and the route itself becomes more obvious after a little roaming around at the lower end and then following a bearing to the south for a few minutes. In our case, Paul went up front and scrambled through the bush to help find it, since he was vaguely familiar with it having been there before. After this, getting up was fairly straightforward with the exception of a little bush lawyer. Several unofficial markers are tied to trees near the top end of the track, although they’d probably be more useful for finding the top of the spur on the way down.

We cleared the trees shortly before 9am, and immediately some great views opened up towards Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe. We also had a better view towards Middle Range, where we’d been hoping to go. Unfortunately it looked very clagged in, and was probably sheltering us from some bad weather. By 9.30am we’d reached point 1475, and assessed our options. The first of these options was to try Thunderbolt, along Middle Range, but that no longer seemed as inviting considering what we could see. There were also a couple of other nearby ridges, however. One of them was an un-named ridge (actually more of a spur) that heads almost directly west, but slightly south, of 1475, and would have been a good option if we’d wanted to get down to the river quickly without heading straight back to where we’d come from. The other ridge, named Te Hiwiokaituri Ridge, heads south-west on the inside of Middle Range, and this one seemed much more interesting.

Clag over Middle Range.

Ruth does some surveying.

So we continued a little further south towards point 1506, taking absolute care to circumvent the outside of the imaginary boundary of private land, which shaved the wide-ish ridge that we needed to cross. Point 1506 was reached at about 10.10am, and from there it was a walk roughly south-west over the tops for several kilometres towards point 1600. The wind even died down along this section, which I think might have been related to the sheltering positioning of Middle Range in the distance, although I’m no expert on such things.

Mike and Craig at brunch.

All the way along Te Hiwiokaituri Ridge, we had fantastic views of Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe, walking generally towards them for the entire time. We sheltered on the north-western side of the ridge 40 minutes after leaving point 1506, somewhere below quite a long saddle, roughly at grid reference 636232 and stopped for brunch. The pace was still quite relaxed given that the weather felt reasonable. Brunch lasted about 20 minutes, during which time I played with taking bearings on things and identified parts of the river below.

Approaching point 1600.

Point 1600 was quite a climb from the lower part of the ridge, and as we approached it, it almost looked feasible to try sidling it. John felt quite strongly about such things, however, and insisted that because the name of the club was the Wellington Tramping and Mountaineering Club, we should definitely go to the top. And he was correct about the name. If anyone had even proposed changing the name to the Wellington Tramping and Sidling Club, let alone voted in the change at a recent AGM, then one of us would probably have known about it. As it turned out, the discussion was redundant. Having walked another hundred metres or so it became clear that the side completely dropped off and sidling would have been very difficult if even possible.

Point 1600 was reached at about 11.45am, and standing on top of it allowed us to have a very nice view of the entire surrounding area, including where we’d come from and where we were going. We sat around and surveyed things for about 25 minutes before beginning our drop down the spur on the north-western side, towards the river.

The initial parts of this descent are quite steep, and although the presence of quite a lot of scree makes things easier, Mike and I got into a discussion towards the back of the group about how neither of us really like some of the situations in tramping where there’s not much room for making mistakes. The discussion stopped abrubtly a minute later, when we realised that the track sidled around a wide pinnacle-like structure (point 1490 on the map), with a steep drop-off to the rocks below on either side. This was definitely one of those awkward situations in which a small mistake could result in a serious injury. Everyone else had already gone around to the other side by the time we reached it, and after some surveying we decided that the right-hand side (to the north) would be preferable for sidling, despite the most obvious track heading around the other side. This had something to do with the sharper and further drop-off to the south. In hindsight, I think I would have preferred the southern side, because the northern route required a small amount of climbing without good hand-holds, and for which I wasn’t very prepared. We got there, though, and Craig was waiting for us on the other side.

Stopping for lunch.

By now it was about 12.20pm and John, Paul and Ruth had already raced ahead along the spur. We could see them heading over the top of the ridge in the distance, even though it looked as of the most heavily used track was heading along the southern side of the spur and quite a long way down the side from the ridge-line. After following this track for some distance, we eventually decided we‘d be better off getting up to the top, just in case the paths diverged or we walked past them. It was just as well because shortly before 1pm, we found the three of them having stopped in a rather steep (but very stable and scenic) area along the top for lunch. John boiled some water in his billy for a brew, grumbling about the current state of tramping when Mike and I didn’t want any. We sat down for lunch and a rest at about 12.45pm, while Craig and John embarked on a conversation all about bicycle shops, and the problems they’d experienced with getting bikes repaired.

An hour or so later, we continued directly down the spur after lunch, but very quickly found that any hint of a track dropped away suddenly, quite literally. After John’s efforts to climb further down the spur amounted to nothing, we eventually noticed a much more worn track about 50 metres down the southern side of the spur. This was possibly the same track that Craig, Mike and I had left before lunch, although we didn’t know for sure. A little back-tracking allowed us to find a variety of ways down, and travel became much easier until the edge of the bush-line at roughly 2.10pm, where the track ended abruptly with the signal of somebody’s grotty old sock tied to a tree.

Craig and Mike wait for a
route to be discovered.

Looking ahead, it appeared as if people had tried to push through the bush in several directions, but no clear passages lasted for longer than a few metres at best. Presumably the sock was there for a reason, however. Ruth, John and Paul in particular spent some time looking around while the rest of us waited at the entrance, not really wanting to exacerbate the problem by all wandering off in different directions. Eventually we found a clearing after pushing almost straight ahead through the dense growth for about 30 metres (at a guess), slightly uphill from the entrance point.

Descending through Bush Lawyer.

From here on, travel down-hill was fairly straightforward considering the circumstances, with Ruth and I staying towards the back to make sure that those ahead remained on the correct bearing. We were able to follow a bearing of 172 degrees to head straight down the spur, with the main hindrance being recurring patches of bush lawyer to scramble through. From the way things looked, it appeared that this path had been walked many times before. It diverged from the bearing on occasion to get around big trees and the like, but always returned again.

Ruth points out the spur
we accidentally followed.

The trap that we fell into was to end up on another spur which headed south-west off the side of the main spur, starting from about the 1250 metre mark. At about that point, the track did appear to split into two, as Ruth noticed from the back after most of our group was well past it. We followed the track on the left because it still had the correct bearing, and those at the front had already invested significant amounts of effort getting through more bush lawyer. A few minutes later however, Ruth pointed out that the higher trees on our right made it look as if there was a higher spur over in that direction, which ultimately shouldn’t have been there. She was right, of course, and at 2.45pm we ended up sidling around the hillside to climb back up to it. We’d been following a 172 degree bearing on the incorrect spur, but the fact that it was quite wide at the top had probably meant that we’d been shifted too far to the left, and were walking across the top of it rather than directly down it for some distance.

Descending to the confluence of
Thunderbolt Creek (left) and the
Waipakihi River (right).

It probably wouldn’t have been a disaster regardless of which spur we’d come down, since they both appeared to be a shallow gradient on the map although the incorrect spur would have put us about 500 metres up Thunderbolt Creek, rather than on the confluence. The only complication we had towards the end was a bit of a drop off shortly before the river. After some hunting around we got down by sidling around to the left, where we picked up another well-worn track. Standing on the flats at the confluence of Thunderbolt Creek and the Waipakihi River, we were now back at yesterday’s lunch spot. The time was almost 3.30pm.

The initial campsite.

We continued back along the river to the south-west, now retracing our steps from yesterday morning and keeping an eye out for Geoff and Yibai, whom we expected to be camping along here somewhere. They were no longer at their previous camp-site when we arrived, however, so eventually at 5pm, we decided to simply set up camp for the night in approximately the same spot. The location seemed a little exposed to the wind, but we had two-person Huntech flies which tend to be quite good in the wind if they’re pitched well. Interestingly enough, pitching them well was a task that we had a few issues with. Paul discovered that the pole of the fly he was setting up wouldn’t fit properly through the sleeve for some reason. Meanwhile when I was struggling with my own, which was more tight than usual (possibly due to expansion from the heat), I heard a big snap from inside the sleeve, which caused me a lot of concern until I was able to pull it out again and discover that the pole had only snapped at the join, and could simply be slotted back together.

By the time we had two and a half flies set up, Ruth wandered up having been for a walk further down the river, and announced that there was a much better camp-site about five minutes’ walk away. Despite the effort we’d already expended, Ruth did a good enough sale job to convince us to pull down the flies and start walking again. Sure enough, about another five minutes along the river on the true right, there was a very nice and sheltered camp site, which was definitely preferable given the forecasts we’d seen before leaving.

John and Ruth at dinner.

The three of us who carried flies once again began the task of putting them up, and it was all done by about 5.30pm. John, meanwhile, built a small camp fire and heated some water for a brew. He grumbled about the state of tramping as it became clear once again that Mike and I weren’t big tea drinkers. The genetically engineered cucumber that Craig had brought with him still had about two thirds remaining, and that came out again for dinner, as well as a gratuitous 2 cups of parsley that John had brought. Cooking dinner was an interesting exercise due to reasons that included the unstable see-saw log, on either end of which Craig and Mike were sitting. Both of them were playing with gas cookers and very hot water. We sat around working on yet more crosswords as the evening continued, and tried to take macro photos of an unusual looking spider. Paul kindly volunteered to do the dishes on Sunday night, and we named the location Dishwashing Flats in his honour.

Ruth builds a cairn.

We had still been a bit uncertain about Geoff and Yibai, who were respectively needed for driving the bus home, and for opening and shutting the door. Being in the trees, our campsite wasn‘t particularly visible to anybody who might wander past along the river, and if we weren‘t able to find them, the only arrangement we had was to meet at the road at about 3pm on Monday. With this in mind, Ruth came up with the idea of building a cairn next to the river to draw attention to where we were camped. The final result had a big stick poking out of it with a bag of Tararua Biscuit crumbs hanging from it, and it would have gotten the attention of anyone who saw it.

Geoff did find our camp site as he was walking past at about 9pm, although he found it thanks to the smoke from the camp fire. He and Yibai had moved their camp further down the river, which was why we hadn‘t found them earlier. From his description it sounded as if the two of them had had a huge day zig-zagging all over the place. We invited him for a cup of tea, but he looked exhausted and was more keen to just get back to his camp. After John had interrogated Geoff for several minutes about how impressive his rifle was, we left it at arranging to leave quite a bit earlier the following day, possibly even walking out with them.

It rained very early on Monday morning, which was the first rain we’d actually seen on the entire trip. Only my own fly even got wet on the outside, which was the consequence of a gap in the trees. Everyone was up a bit after 7am, at which time there was a very light misty moisture hanging in the air. John heated some water for a brew, but grumbled about the state of things as Mike and I declined his offer.

The base of the Urchin
Track had a lot of pumice
lying around.

The six of us had packed up and left by 8.15am, at which time we headed for the base of the Urchin Track. Personally I didn‘t get my feet wet at all since there was a track in the trees on the true right of the river for that entire distance, although Paul led a contingent on the other side of the river, and they actually reached the Urchin Track slightly before us. It was only a 10 minute walk in any case. We thought we might have found Geoff and Yibai waiting for us here, but if they had been they‘d already left. They might have been up early hunting again, and we assumed we’d probably find them at either the road, or on the way there.

Ruth and Mike on the tops
of the Urchin Track.

Craig and Paul ran up the Urchin while the rest of us followed at a slower place. We’d reached the bush line by 9am, with John now having mentally collapsed into an endless circle of muttering under his breath about young people who no longer drink tea and eat muesli bars for breakfast and have hoses coming out of their packs. It sounded as if he was about to break into a violent tirade of shouting “GET OFF MY LAWN”, but he became distracted when we finally caught up to the place where Craig and Paul had stopped to wait for us, 40 minutes after we’d reached the bushline and roughly near point 1391. Craig and Paul accused us of having stopped for a brew, although I think this was probably one of the few times that John hadn‘t. We sat near 1391 for 10 minutes, during which time we thought we could see at least one person in the far distance, veeeeery slooooowly walking along the ridge up towards Urchin. It crossed our minds that it might be either or both of the two people we were looking for, but it also didn’t seem as if either of them would be the type to be walking so slowly. We did catch up after we got going again though, and to our pleasant surprise it turned out to be both of them.

Paul becomes a
home-owner.

From Urchin, which we reached at 10.10am, the trip was a fairly routine and relaxing walk down the hill on the soft track towards the bus. We reached it an hour later, at which point John pulled out his cooker and his billy and heated some water for a brew, grumbling about the state of tramping in New Zealand as Mike and I declined his offer.

At Geoff’s recommendation, we stopped at both the Waikato Falls and Tree Trunk Gorge on the way back, both of which are within easy reach of the area and which I’d thoroughly recommend. We also had to stop at Bulls on the way back to fill the bus with more diesel, and to check a broken indicator. It was a nice opportunity for stretching legs and eating ice cream on a hot day, except for Paul and John who went to the cafe down the road for a cup of tea. John was probably complaining to some poor waitress about the state of tramping in New Zealand.

Our return trip to Wellington provided one of the best panoramic views of the Tararuas I’ve had the opportunity to see so far. It was probably a combination of the still weather and high cloud which meant the view from Foxton showed a high contrast silhouette of the entire range.

Craig and Ruapehu, walking
towards point 1600.

Sam collecting water
on Bull Mound

This weekend we went for a trip into one of Wellington’s two main water catchment areas. For some confusing reason, the Tararuas were in the middle of experiencing several very fine days in a row, which perhaps makes the trip quite rare.

Dates: 16th-18th November, 2007
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Walls Whare Road-End.
People: Sam, Marie, Eddie, Lee (a friend of Sam’s visiting from the Otago Uni Tramping Club), and me.
Huts visited: Cone Hut (0 nights), Alpha Hut (1 night), Eastern Hutt Hut (0 nights).
Intended route: Begin at Walls Whare, walk via Cone Hut up to Alpha, continue along Quoin Ridge down the spur, and out via Pakuratahi Forks.
Actual route: Similar until Quoin Ridge, at which point we split up. Marie and Lee continued down the ridge and ended up drowning (accidentally) in the Western Hutt River. The rest of us followed a spur to the Eastern Hutt River.
[Photos]

We used the club bus for the first time in a while, now back having had some rust removed (I think). I think the only down-side of going to the end of the Tararuas closer to Wellington is that you don’t get to stop at somewhere like Carterton for dinner, which has some very nice food places. Instead, we settled for Featherston, where we ambushed the local fish and chip shop. By now I was at the state of trying to empty some of the left-over shrapnel from my wallet so I wouldn’t have to carry it around all weekend, and I almost managed to do so except for an annoying $2 coin. It’s actually not a bad cafe and sells some other things too, but I was too pre-occupied with my weight saving that I didn’t notice some of the other things on the menu before I ended up with some very salty fish and chips. I wasn’t really sure if this was what I should be eating before embarking on a trip, so half of my chips survived being obliterated by my digestion, and ended up in a nearby rubbish bin.

Having arrived at the Walls Whare, we still hadn’t fully decided whether we wanted to walk anywhere on Friday night. It would have been completely feasible to walk in to Cone Hut, but doing so would have complicated things by dramatically shortening what we could really do on Saturday. Shortly after Alpha, we’d be turning into the water catchment area, where it’s illegal to stay the night. In other words, we’d either have a relatively short walk and then have to stop, or we’d have an uncomfortably long day and arrive at the collection point a day early. So in the end, we camped at the road-end.

Cooking breakfast in bed

Naturally, being a trip organised by Sam, we began with a tent fly that had nothing to prop it up, and nothing to tie it down except the single tent peg which Sam had packed (doubling as a billy-hook, I think). This was all intentional, and we (referring to Sam in particular) improvised by running around and finding a few sticks and logs to hold up the fly and also to tie it to. He then set up his cooker and boiled some water, which made for a nice brew. I don’t usually bother with tea or coffee on trips, but I’d actually brought a mug this time so I could be social. Unfortunately I’d left it buried in the bottom of my pack somewhere under the fly, and I missed out on this occasion.

Lee spent much of the evening trying to convince us to play checkers or backgammon on his fancy fold-able plate and cup set, which had the board designs for these games printed on the plastic, as well as including the appropriate pieces. Nobody was really interested sitting in the wet grass in the dark to play checkers, and nobody really knew how to play backgammon, although we eventually learned when a couple of the girls from one of the other groups wandered over to our camp-site and explained it to us.

It was a very calm night in the end, and went really well, although Eddie reported some trouble getting to sleep having had some mattress or sleeping bag issues. We awoke with the sunlight and some very noisy birds, some time before 6am. After some brief wandering around having a quick breakfast for myself, I made a feeble attempt to dry out the tent fly, since it was me who was carrying it. It was covered in dew on both sides, and really didn’t want to dry in the cool morning shade. In the end we folded it up and settled for it being somewhat heavier than it should have been.

If New Zealand’s great walks are like tramping motorways, then the track to Cone Hut is at least a State Highway. To be fair, it’s perhaps a little more like a South Island State Highway, because it dips into the occasional muddy bog. Other than that, it was a very flat and easy track. We passed one person who walked in the other direction during this phase of the trip. He was a hunter on his way out, dangling a gun from his waist and with what looked like it was probably a deer over his shoulders. It was hard to tell because he’d wrapped the corpse in a pair of polypropylene long-johns, which I wouldn’t personally have wanted to wear afterwards, but which probably made some sense.

We were making very good time, effectively too-good time, when we reached Cone Hut at 9.20am, especially considering that we couldn’t really go past Alpha until the next day. We used that excuse to sit down at the historic hut, for a while. The sunshine was just beginning to make its way through the trees and onto a small patch of ground near the hut, so I pulled out the large fly in an attempt to dry it out again. Meanwhile, Sam, who was thoroughly enjoying inspecting the hut, got a fire going inside to heat some water for a mid-morning brew. We were a bit short of cooking gas at the time, and when Sam’s around, I think he’s always keen on an excuse to light a fire. This time my social-ism mug was readily accessible, and I pulled it out so I could enjoy the brew with everyone else.

It was probably about now that Marie started commenting that she needed a fork, having left hers behind. Nobody had a spare one, of course, but Marie still rested in the confidence that she would find a fork deserted by someone else at Alpha Hut. Important things usually tend to work out, after all.

The large tent fly, by now draped over the picnic table, hadn’t noticeably dried at all as far as I could tell, although Lee officially declared about 5 square centimetres to be completely free of moisture. This wasn’t really enough to bother with, however, and we packed up to resume our walk shortly after 10am. Marie was first to bound across the Tauherenikau River, and we resumed our walk up the Bull Mound Track, towards Bull Mound. By now the state highway had degraded in quality to something more representative of a Provincial State Highway, with a rather steep gradient and the occasional tree growing in the middle of the road. On the few occasions where we stopped, Sam pulled out a small plant identification pocket book, and was experimenting with identifying some of the species. My only dilemma at this time was that I couldn’t get a stupidly annoying Shania Twain song out of my head. This had begun back at Cone Hut, when Lee had made remarks about high property values in Queenstown. Yet another case of Pierce’s Unlimited Semiosis in action.

Marie, leaving Bull Mound,
shortly after lunch

Although not quite at Bull Mound, we reached a small out-cropping above the tree-line at about 11.45. Lee decided it was a good time to pull out his lunch, and given there wasn’t much further to go, we ended up sitting around in the sunshine at this point for about 40 minutes. In fact, the main motivation to get up and keep moving was that we had previously decided we wanted to be at Bull Mound for lunch. 10 minutes later, we were there, and we loitered around the area for an hour, at least, lying down and lazing around for a proper lunch. There were plenty of tarns all over the place, and people who needed to filled their drink bottles. Apparently, as I discovered later, Paul and his medium-rated club group were looking over at Bull Mound from Cone at about this time.

It was during the final leg of the day, towards Alpha Hut, when we met a lone runner with a daypack. He had made his way over from Otaki Forks that morning, and (I think) was on his way out via the standard Southern Crossing route down Marchant Ridge. We reached Alpha Hut at 2.50pm. As I approached, a group of about five or six guys were crowded around the hut discussing their progress so far. They were also making a day-trip of the Southern Crossing, and by the looks of them they were more a group of friends than a group of running enthusiasts. They were doing quite well, and made a point of how much they were looking forward to massive servings of pizza and KFC once they made it out the other end. They were doing it as a brisk walk rather than a run, and probably had about another five or six hours to go.

Nobody was home when we entered the hut, and contrary to some people’s predictions, Marie did find that somebody had left a spare fork behind, so good for her. I helped with some token searching for firewood, but there wasn’t any loose dead wood anywhere near the hut. In the end, Sam and Marie resolved to empty their packs, and went out on a firewood-hunting mission for about 30 minutes. Marie then went for a walk up to Alpha Peak on her own, while the rest of us lazed around.

Another party of five people arrived at about 3.45pm or so. They were a family group from Levin including three men and a couple of teenagers, who had on this day walked over to Alpha from Field Hut, on the Otaki side. It turned out that they were quite ready to stop, and after about an hour or two of sorting things out and cooking their dinner, they were all in bed and more or less asleep. It wasn’t even dark by this point, or anywhere near it, but we did our best to be reasonably quiet for them. Meanwhile, we prepared and sat down to our planned meal of Macaroni Cheese, except with that twistee pasta instead of macaroni, which was almost all prepared by Sam and very tasty. Marie somehow managed to lose her fork again at this point, possibly between dinner and the custard dessert, and it was only now that Lee piped up and claimed he had a spare fork she could borrow.

Lee had dragged a mattress out under the verandah of the hut, with the intent of sleeping outside, but eventually decided he’d be more comfortable on one of the top bunks. Somehow Eddie managed to end up with a couple of mattresses on the floor in front of the fireplace, but I think I was mostly asleep at the point in which that happened.

Marie and I woke first on Sunday morning, up at about 5.50am thanks to the Sun having risen combined with some typically cheerful birds. Marie went back to bed for a while, but I couldn’t really sleep, so I sat at the main table in the hut and browsed more of the FMC bulletin which a thoughtful person had left behind, munching on my muesli bar breakfast to get it out of the way.

With the exception of Sam an myself, most of the people in the other group were up and about before the majority of ourselves. The previous evening, Sam had stated a guideline leaving time of about 8.30am, and we were still nowhere near it. I passed some of the time chatting with a couple of the older guys from Levin, who were both quite strongly involved in the Land Search and Rescue in the Tararuas. I found them very interesting to talk to, and they were quite concerned that there don’t seem to be many younger people getting involved in SAR these days, which is becoming a real problem.

Despite our attempts to stretch out our preparation for as long as possible, we were all ready and leaving by 7.50am. Marie bounded off in front, as happens so often, and everyone else followed at their own rate of packing themselves up. We still hadn’t decided exactly where we were going, but basically had resolved to either walk the complete length of Quoin Ridge, or to follow the early spur off the southern side of the ridge, down to Eastern Hutt Hut, which is marked as being for emergency use only.

Quoin Ridge seen from
near Alpha Peak

We re-grouped at Alpha Peak at 8.15am, which I think was the highest we would be on this trip, at 1316 metres above sea level. Being very clear, there was a terrific view around in all directions. I was quite impressed to see Kapiti Island from this perspective, from which it was much clearer how its shape fits geologically into the entire Tararua Range. Egmont was clearly visible in the distance. Sam and Lee thought they may have been able to see Ruapehu, although I wasn’t able to pick it out myself. It was about this time, as Sam was rubbing sunblock into one of the many tears in his pale yellow t-shirt, that he declared that his shirt might finally be past it, and he wouldn’t bring it on another trip. 15 minutes after our arrival, we began our descent along Quoin Ridge, into one of Wellington’s two major water collection areas.

We reached the first major spur heading south very quickly, and an answer was immediately required as to where we actually wanted to go. The discussion lasted for a couple of minutes, but we decided that nice days don’t come too often, and that we should make the most of the opportunity to spend as much time on the tops as possible. This, of course, meant walking along the length of Quoin Ridge. Marie did raise the question of how on earth we were actually going to be at Kaitoke at the scheduled pick-up time of 5.30 in the afternoon. The only answer we could honestly think of was to make as many unnecessary stops as possible along the way.

Lee climbing towards
Quoin Peak

After a short dip into the trees at about 9.45am, we finally reached Quoin (the peak) a little after 10am, slowed only by having had to climb around the occasional formation of rocks. One interesting find of Sam’s along the way, but quite near to Quoin itself, was an old sling from a helicopter, which was by now quite rusted and had probably been lying there for some time. We still had far too much time on our hands, and sat down again to enjoy the surroundings some more.

Being the keen hut-bagger that he is, Sam was still trying to find a method and an excuse to visit Eastern Hutt Hut — tempting both due to the illegality of staying the night there, and also due to its funny name. When studying his map again, Sam noticed that although we had bypassed the most obvious route down to the Eastern Hutt River, we might still be able to follow a less obvious spur down from peak 1133, which wasn’t far away from where we were sitting. This new spur headed east-south-east off the peak for about 400 metres, and then split into a couple of other spurs. If we kept following a bearing between the two splits, however, we’d still be on a slightly less obvious spur, and end up almost exactly at the hut. If we were careful about following the right bearings, the only uncertain factor would be how much vegetation we might have to bash through. Being on the eastern side of the range, though, which receives far less rain than the west, it was a reasonable bet that the vegetation would not be too difficult to push through.

Sam proposed his idea to the group, and it sounded quite interesting. Lee in particular was still keen to have a lazy day and enjoy the sunshine. In the end, we decided to split the group. Marie and Lee would continue down Quoin Ridge, whereas Sam, Eddie and I would attempt the alternative route down to Eastern Hutt Hut. Both routes would converge on the swing-bridge at Hutt Forks. We devised a plan for the first party to leave a rock on the end of the bridge as a signal to the others, so that either group would know whether the other had already passed the swing bridge when they arrived. Presumably there would be no other groups in the area using the same signal.

Sam and Eddie heading
down from 1133

So Sam, Eddie and I continued into trees, leaving Marie and Lee behind at Quoin Peak. We started from point 1133 at roughly 11am, and I calibrated my altimeter. Sam was correct in his prediction about the vegetation, and it was very easy to push through. The undergrowth from the beginning was extremely soft to walk on, and for something that went so steeply, it was quite easy on knees and ankles.

The topo maps suggest there are some very steep bits there, but we didn’t find them. Sam basically took the front position and followed the roughly south-east bearing (130 degrees give or take to begin with) on his compass. In fact, he took a couple of guesses about our altitude compared with my altimeter. The first time he was correct within 4 metres, and the second time he had it exactly right. This was very impressive. I think the only obstacle we actually encountered was a big fallen tree to climb over at the 670 metre mark, and I’d be tempted to suggest this tree as a landmark in future traverses down this route. We reached Quoin Stream at almost exactly 12.30pm, 90 minutes after leaving the high point, even having found a couple of unofficial track markers that somebody had tied to trees near the lower end. From there, we quickly reached Eastern Hutt River by pushing through the trees.

We didn’t find Eastern Hutt Hut immediately, but an entrance to a small clearing on the far side of the Eastern Hut River became more apparent after we’d wandered back and fourth along the river for 20 minutes. I must say that the Regional Council went to great efforts to make it clear to people that they were not allowed to stay the night. There were several signs that were very obvious.

The hut book itself was an old book that went back to 1986, and which has so far survived the reigns of the New Zealand Forestry Service, the Wellington Regional Council, DOC, and now the Greater Wellington Regional Council. Some smart cookie has scribbled “What next?” on the front of the book. Indeed, from 1986, only half the pages have been filled, so there may be a few more management bodies to come if this hut survives. We flipped though the entries, which included quite a few groups of people who had wandered up the river for daywalks. I did note that the Victoria University Tramping Club seems to be represented in the book quite a lot — maybe every couple of pages or so.

Eastern Hutt Hut

Eastern Hutt Hut was very well kept, with neatly cut firewood piled outside and along the path leading to it. Its design is very similar to other Forestry Service 6 bunk huts that I’ve seen, but instead of the glaring fluorescent orange colour, it’s now painted dark green, perhaps to help it blend into the surrounding vegetation.

Eddie was getting very hungry, and the first to suggest going back to the river to get some lunch. He eventually managed to drag Sam and I away, and at 1.15pm we sat down in a little bend in the river, shaded by an overhanging cliff. Lunch was a 45 minute sit-down, and we then realised that with the pick-up 3.5 hours away at 5.30pm, we should probably get started walking down the river.

Eastern Hutt River,
shortly after lunch

It looks very possible to walk directly down the Eastern Hutt River without too many problems, but for most of it we did actually find unofficial tracks along either side of the river, sometimes climbing 100 metres or so up the hillside before descending back down again. At 3.30pm, we finally reached the big, official sign announcing the beginning of the marked track back to the road-end.

Unlike DOC, which these days uses orange triangles to mark its tracks, the Greater Wellington Regional Council seems to use orange discs. I’ve seen these discs in several other places outside of Forest Parks, such as over farm-land all over Belmont Regional Park. It caught me a bit by surprise to see them on an overnight trip in the Tararuas, but I guess it makes complete sense if it’s the Regional Council which administers that particular catchment.

The marked track climbed a couple of hundred metres up a hill before descending about the same amount down the other side, apparently to step around some rather gorgey bits of river. The only drama in this short section was when Eddie and I started following an unmarked track off the main one. Sam followed the markers up the hill and then shouted down to us, and during the sprint up the hillside towards him, I managed to grab an old tree that didn’t hold very well, and rode it for a couple of metres down the hill. (It probably could have been a little worse, but turned out okay.) It was a shame I didn’t have a cowboy hat at the time.

Crossing the swing bridge

We reached the swing bridge over the last part of the Eastern Hutt River, and were quite relieved to find a rock, indicating that Marie and Lee had already passed through. This simplified things, because it meant we didn’t have to get concerned about where they were. The trip was now over as far as I was concerned, but this was only because I hadn’t been properly paying attention.

From the swing bridge was a 4-wheel-drive track, which went for about 200 metres before hitting the fold of my map. If I’d bothered to turn the map over, it might have occurred to me that it was an incredibly boring 4.5 kilometres, and in that time it climbed 300 metres and descended another 300 metres. The sign on the other side of the bridge basically points along the road, and states that it’s a 2 hour walk to the road-end. By now it was 4.20pm, and we didn’t have 2 hours. In addition, not being mentally prepared, I basically resolved to get this out of the way by cramming it into as little time as possible, so that maybe later on I could convince myself that it was only 200 metres that I’d originally seen on my map.

The three of us all reached the pick-up point at Pakuratahi Forks just barely after 5.30pm. In fact, I walked around the final corner at 5.30 and 39 seconds, and could hear the beeping of the door opening on the club bus as I approached.

During the walk, Sam had received a text message from Marie to indicate that they had actually been about an hour ahead of us, and they were in fact there to say hello when we arrived. It turned out they’d had their own little adventure, having accidentally come off Quoin Ridge a little too early and ended up in the Western Hutt River, which has a bit of a reputation for things like waterfalls and other gunky stuff that makes it awkward to walk along. They managed though, despite Marie having had to dive into the water to chase her pack at one point. (I’d love to hear more about that story later.)

It was was very enjoyable trip in the end. The only down-side, I think was the weather, which I know a lot of people wouldn’t agree with at all. This is only a personal thing where I tend to find perfectly fine weather (without a blemish) a little bit boring, but I’m happy to put up with it from time to time, and it does help to put the entire mountain range into perspective.

Dates: 5th – 7th October, 2007
Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Purity Road-End.
People: Captain (and gourmet chef) Alistair, Dirk, Paul and meeeee.
Huts visited: Purity Hut (0 nights), Pourangaki Hut (1 night), Kelly Knight Hut (0 nights).
Intended route: Camp at the Purity road-end on Friday night, then walk up past Purity Hut, Wooden Peg and Iron Peg. Turn South-East and carry on to Ohuinga, then head North down Broken Ridge, ending at Waterfall Hut for Saturday night. On Sunday, head up to Mangaweka via Trig Creek, back past Iron Peg and Wooden Peg, Purity Hut, and then out.
Actual route: Similar initially, but due to some weather issues we picked up the track down a spur about half way between Iron Peg and Ohuinga, to Pourangaki Hut. On Sunday, we continued along the track up over Pourangaki, and down to Kelly Knight Hut for lunch, then back to the Purity road-end.
Electric shocks: One.
[Photos]

There was no rain at all as it turned out, but the wind was a huge factor.

We shared the van on Friday night with Spencer’s group, who were doing a medium-rated trip, and spent much of the ride trying to play a game that involved looking for horses, or pictures of horses. (I still don’t understand it, and everyone ignored my attempts to cheat.) There was some talk about either or both groups possibly walking up to Purity Hut on Friday night. Alistair however, who was already familiar with a very steep climb on the route, was adamant that everyone’s effort would be better spent getting a good sleep next to the road, which we eventually agreed to do. The forecast for the weekend had implied that there could be some complications with wind, and we were already experiencing hints of this. Paul and I tied the end of our Huntech fly down quite low to the ground in anticipation of conditions getting worse, but there were no problems overnight.

Most things went well the next morning. Having left his shorts behind, Alistair resolved to tramp in his blue and white striped long johns. He commented on being quite hot for a while, but it didn’t last for long. At 7.20am on Saturday morning, we waved goodbye to the people doing the medium and easy-rated trips, and began to walk. After 20 minutes of shepherding curious moo-cows and a few sheep through a paddock, it became much clearer why Alistair had been against the idea of walking on Friday night. The track up to the edge of the farm took a very steep turn. It wasn’t bad in the context of things and only involved about 25 minutes of steep up-hill walking, but it was definitely nicer climbing it now than it would have been while dreary and tired late on a Friday night. As we reached the top of the climb, on the border between the farm-land and Ruahine Forest Park, we looked down at the view and saw the people of Spencer’s medium-rated group just leaving the road-end. It was a smug feeling

The track leveled off, and the walk through the trees from there was actually quite relaxing. Meanwhile, I was discovering the burning sensation in my throat that resulted from the dish-washing detergent I’d left in my water bottle. It really put me off sipping water for a while. We reached Purity Hut shortly after 9am, under a cloud that allowed about 100 metres of visibility. The cloud didn’t lift at all, but I suppose the large, transparent window in the door of the long drop meant there could have been some very good landscapes to view in that direction if things had been a little more transparent outside. Either that, or the window was simply thanks to some DOC workers with a strange sense of humour. We boiled up a quick brew, and added another layer. It didn’t look as if the conditions were about to get any nicer.

A comment in the hut book from a few days earlier mentioned that it had been snowing, against our expectations. Sure enough, however, the scatterings of snow after Purity Hut became more and more intense. The visibility became less and less to match it. By the time we reached Wooden Peg, snow was common in all directions, and it was becoming difficult to pick out even the immediately nearby features from the background. Continuing to Iron Peg, we began to encounter some harder, icier snow.

By now, it was obvious that the weather was not appropriate for the initial plans of walking over the ridges all day, which realistically was about what we’d expected from the forecasts prior to leaving. We began focusing on how to get to our destination of Waterfall Hut sooner rather than later. With the low visibility, being sure about the exact location of Iron Peg was difficult. In the end there was some guess-work involved as to exactly when we should turn off on a new south-east bearing, but we nevertheless managed to find the ridge heading towards the top of Pinnacle Creek without too much trouble.

This was about the time when my experience of the trip was vastly altered, because things started to get very windy. I first remember noticing the wind at about the time that I was blown off my feet.

It began to become noticeable as we dropped into the first major saddle on the south-eastern side of Iron Peg. For a few minutes it was quite amusing fighting against the wind, but after that I began to appreciate how difficult strong winds can really be . This was the strongest consistent wind I had encountered on a trip so far, and the first time a factor of the natural environment had invoked such a steady stream of four letter words as those that churned through my mind during the several hours we were at higher altitudes. Sometimes the wind would help to blow us up-hill, but I was personally beginning to feel quite discouraged at the amount of energy it was sapping, simply to avoid being blown off the steep side of the ridge. I soon learned that crawling up-hill and sliding down the other side, all the time keeping as low to the ground as possible, were very useful methods of movement.

The wind was blowing consistently and quite relentlessly everywhere on the tops, and it didn’t stop. On several occasions when I lay over the ground for some shelter, it crossed my mind to envy the sleek alpine grasses that occasionally poked up through the snow, mocking me with their lack of need to actually go anywhere. I could have quite happily laid myself down, sheltered under my raincoat and soggy mittens, and stopped for a while. Fortunately for my own sake, logic quickly prevailed every time, and I convinced myself to get up again. It still didn’t stop the frustration of fighting up over the top of every small climb, only to realise that there was yet another saddle behind it in which the wind was likely to be even worse.

There’s a trig somewhere in the middle of that ridge which isn’t marked on my map. I know it was there, because I had a good staring contest with a nearby rock as Alistair pulled out his map and consulted with Dirk and Paul. The forecast of the wind possibly being stronger on Sunday meant that we didn’t really want to go to Waterfall Hut any more. If we did, it would be necessary to return to the tops again to get out. The new plan was to aim for Pourangaki Hut, which would mean surviving the ridges for a little longer in exchange for being able to get out via the sheltered Pourangaki River the following day.

I actually lied earlier when I said that the wind never stopped. For a moment, there was a sudden silence and a brief respite from the roaring gale. As I cautiously detached the edge of my polar fleece beanie from where it had uncomfortably lodged beneath my eyelids, I noticed the drop in wind had occurred at the exact time that Alistair’s boot-lace had come undone. I admired his skill in commanding the weather as he lent over to re-tie it, but felt a certain amount of resentment that he let the throttling winds resume as soon as he was done.

We finally began to descend from the heights, finding a few small patches of sweet, sheltering Leatherwood along the way. With the gradual reduction in altitude, we came across a relatively protected place to stop for lunch at about 1pm, and took the time to sit down for a few minutes.

After skittling over the top of a rather large land-slip, the gradient of the spur became steeper and slipperier. From that point on, I think everyone in our group gracefully contributed to the further erosion of the hillside. The bush became thicker, the wind-chill disappeared, and the air temperature steadily rose above what had, until then, been a staple 2.7 degrees Celsius. In fact, the downstairs climate was entirely disconnected from what we had experienced until that point.

The lower end of that spur has a very nice small camp-site. It was only 2.20pm, but for a few minutes we toyed with the idea of simply going no further and setting up tent flies near the river. In the end, however, we decided to continue over the small swing-bridge to Pourangaki Hut. When we arrived half an hour later, it turned out to be in a completely sheltered clearing. There was no wind except what we could see in the tops of the trees. The Sun, which shone quite warmly, still had a good 30 degrees to move before it would be obscured. It was a nice time to sit outside, take in the surroundings, and dry out some damp clothing.

The book at Pourangaki Hut had not been updated for over a month, and implied we were the first to stay the night for six months, but items left in the hut suggested that it’s probably used more often than that. It was in great condition. The nearby tracks were re-cut in February, and Pourangaki Hut had recently been very well renovated. It now has lining on the inside walls, and is well insulated. (It looks as if there’s not much head-room at either end of the top bunks, though.)

Within a couple of hours, our outdoor slumber was interrupted by noises of more visitors coming down the hill. It turned out to be the first of Spencer’s group, whom we had earlier waved goodbye to at the road-end. They had also changed their original plans of getting to Kelly Knight Hut, and instead decided to come here. Perhaps they’d had a nicer time at higher altitude than we’d had, because at least a couple of them appeared very happy as they hobbled over the sunny clearing.

The coincidence that both groups had diverted to the same place made the rest of the afternoon very enjoyable. For us, as it turned out, it was even fortunate. Spencer’s party had been overtaken early in the day by a large and slightly surly troop of older people, reportedly all wearing shorts that exposed their bare legs to the icy wind. They were also on their way to Waterfall Hut, and their main concern beyond anything else had been about who was going to be there when they arrived. If we had actually reached the place we’d been aiming for, it could have been very crowded.

Dirk had a fire going by late afternoon, keeping us heated to a piping hot 17 degrees, or just over 20 for those on the top bunks. With 8 bunks in total there was plenty of space for 9 people, but Maggie (from Spencer’s group) opted to sleep outside under the veranda. She would have had a great view of the stars later on Saturday night.

Having a trip leader who’s working his way through Gourmet Tramping in New Zealand (the book) is very beneficial. Thanks to Alistair’s organisation, we had a very filling course of Louisiana Jambalaya, followed by fruit cake for dessert. We shared some custard, because six litres of it was just slightly too much to comfortably consume between the four of us. Given the conditions of the weekend, it might have been that the amount of food we carried was all that separated the medium-fit group from the medium group. It was a smug feeling.

With the winds forecast to get even worse on the tops, the plan for Sunday had been to follow the Pourangaki river to Kelly Knight Hut. Any alternative ideas had been merely an afterthought, until we actually woke up. Sunday was a relatively calm, clear day, perfect for climbing to higher altitudes. A couple of people in Spencer’s medium-rated group were still hurting a little from Saturday, and they decided to follow their original back-up plan and walk along the river (a 2-3 hour journey). Dirk was also keen to do some river walking, and joined them for this stage of the trip. Meanwhile, Alistair, Paul and I used the time to follow the track from the hut back up to the tops, and take in some scenery. The three of us left at 8am with an agreement to either meet the others at Kelly Knight Hut, or to exchange messages in the book.

With the Sun now shining, Alistair had discovered that he could simulate his missing tramping shorts by rolling his stripy polypropylene leggings up to his knees. We climbed for about 15 minutes through the trees, and by then were able to stop for a moment and admire the surrounding snow-capped mountain tops over the valley that we had crossed blindly the day before, only just now becoming visible between the gaps in the branches. During this pause, Paul went to take a mouthful of water and was dismayed to discover that he had left his bottle behind. Fortunately there was a spare bottle buried in my pack, and we re-distributed the water that we already had. We continued to climb, taking in the increasingly clear views of the surrounding ranges.

And in the end, we sat in a sheltered gully beside the untitled 1614 metre peak, 800 metres east of Pourangaki. For our efforts we enjoyed a sparkling morning panorama from Sawtooth Ridge through Broken Ridge and Rangioteatua, Mangaweka, Iron Peg, and ending with the clear view of a completely whitened Ruapehu in the far distance. Somewhere, approximately 1000 metres underneath us, six people had for some reason elected to wade through waist-deep liquid snow for 3 hours. Once again, it was a smug feeling.

It was near the top of Pourangaki, on the way down, that Alistair’s emergency phone gained some reception and beeped at him. If anyone had contemplated staying at home to watch a certain rugby game on TV, it was now obvious they had made a superior choice to come out for a great windy weekend. The conversation about the sports news that raged in front of me didn’t last for long. It quickly morphed into a much more interesting anthropological debate about chimps, humans, and genocide.

The others were wringing out their socks by the time we met them at Kelly Knight Hut, fifteen minutes before midday. Paul, was happy to discover that Dirk had rescued the water bottle he’d left behind that morning. The atmosphere around the hut made it a good place to be for lunch. We stopped for another half hour before heading out for the last part of the walk to the road-end, in one large group. Even the farm-land was a treat to walk through on such a calm, sunny day, although we made some accidental minor detours over the farm and Paul sustained an electric shock.

We stopped in Mangaweka for ice creams on the way home. From there we left the Sun behind, and the weather became more dreary. The amount of water coming from rivers out of the western Tararuas implied that a torrential downpour of the weekend had probably missed us completely. I’m not complaining.

Overall it was a good experience. For me personally, it was definitely one of the more memorable trips I’ve been on. In one respect it was disappointing that our original idea had to be down-graded from a scenic walk around the tops all weekend, but it was for all the right reasons. It certainly helped to be with three other people who weren’t just cheerful and good to travel with, but who were also experienced and knew this part of the Ruahines well.

Dates: 21st – 23rd September, 2007
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Otaki Region.
People: Sam, Alistair, Sarah, Stijn, Marie, Louise, Glynne, and me.
Huts visited: Field Hut (1 night), Kime Hut (0 nights).
Intended route: Otaki Forks to Field Hut (Friday night), up to Kime Hut on Saturday, then down Tregear Spur (above Tregear Creek) to Tregear Creek. Walk alonk the river to Waiotauru Forks. Camp somewhere on Saturday night, follow the track back to Otaki Forks, acquire van and drive to Coastlands. Buy Lattes.
Items lost: One wristwatch, one large air-mattress, one walking pole, and one ring.
Related bits: Stijn also wrote a trip report about this weekend.
[Photos]

We began at the Otaki Forks’ road-end, and from there we walked up to Field Hut on Friday night. There was a bit of a race to get there, since the club also had another group starting from there the next morning. Once we arrived, though, there was easily enough space for everyone, including the other guy who was getting started on the Southern Crossing.

Everyone in our group was more or less up by 6.30am on Saturday morning. The tops were clouded in but the weather was really calm, and after some breakfast and packing, we were walking by about 7.20am.

I had finally figured out (more or less) how to use the $40 alti-meter watch thing that I’d bought on Trademe. I calibrated it at Field Hut, and later in the trip I was quite impressed to find out later in the trip that it seemed to be working.

The walk up to Kime wasn’t very eventful, and we were in some thin clouds before too long. One thing I did discover was that the previous time I’d tried to get to Kime and back again, I was right in thinking that I’d turned around about 5 minutes before reaching it. (Neat, because I’d never quite known.)

We reached Kime at quarter past 9 and said goodbye to the couple that was just leaving. We stayed for about half an hour, mostly examining the maps for details of the spur for which we were aiming. It wasn’t far after Kime that we were intending to leave the track. Earlier in the day there had been some thoughts of walking up Mount Hector. Despite Alistair’s attempts to convince Sam that there was a new biv on the top that might be worth checking out, we decided with the current cloud cover not to do the side-trip.

The weather was still very calm, but there was a good incentive for putting on another layer now that we were a little more exposed, and the wind had a bit of a chill to it. It was only a few minutes before we found the turn-off, and Sam led the way through the clouds down the spur.

By the time we’d scrambled through the alpine fauna and made it to the bush-line, the clouds had begun to clear. There were a few spurs going off the sides that we needed to be careful not to take accidentally, although we managed after a few debates, and taking of bearings.

It wasn’t immediately obvious how to get into the bush which was quite dense from the outside. Sam and Glynne scouted the edges in opposite directions until Sam found an entrance that even came with an unexpected track marker.

It took four and a half hours from the bush-line to reach the river at the bottom of the spur. This included a stop for an early lunch of about half an hour, where a brew was put on. We then continued on our bearing down the spur, eventually finding an old log hauling channel that matched our bearing, making things slightly easier for a while.

Later and nearer to the end of the spur, we found ourselves fighting with large amounts of tangling Supplejack and progress became more difficult. Stijn and I became separated at the back for a short while, not having seen the route that the others had found ahead. We eventually managed to get down after following voices and circum-navigating several large trees. It was some time during thi, I think, that Stijn managed to lose a sleeping mattress and a walking pole, both of which had been tied to the outside of his pack. By the time we had reached the river at the bottom and Stijn realised what had happened, nobody felt particularly motivated to wander back up the hill-side and look for them. Added to a wrist-watch that Marie had accidentally mis-placed somewhere earlier on the spur, this was turning into quite an expensive trip.

Our attention now began to move towards the idea of finding a good camp-site, since from this point, it should be a fairly straightforward walk back to Otaki Forks the following day. We walked for another 1.5 hours in water that reached about waist-deep, along Tregear Creek and then the Eastern Waiotauru, eventually reaching the Waiotauru Forks, just underneath a real track. After a short re-gathering, we climbed up to the track, crossed the swing-bridge down the river, and within 30 minutes we’d found quite a nice camp-site.

This was also the time that we discovered just how much excess tent fly space we had. What hadn’t been taken into account was that those who hadn’t been asked to bring flies were quite anti-social. Between us we probably had adequate shelter for at least 14 people. Glynne and Louise shared one of the large flies between them, while Stijn gathered up about several arm-loads of ferns and placed them under the other large fly, to combine as a temporary mattress under my own Huntech fly. Sarah and Alistair had bought the other Huntech fly for their own use. Sam had his one person army-camouflage fly, and Marie had her small tent.

It was a great night for a camp-fire, and Sam is really good at building fires. Some previous campers had also left a load of gathered firewood in the trees, which saved us effort in searching for some of it. Sam had a stable fire going very quickly. Most of our dinner (veggies, potato mash, and a mix of steak or sausages) was cooked over the camp-fire, which was a new experience for me.

I wandered back to bed before dessert as I was feeling full after a nice dinner, and I think I slept quite well on Saturday night. Sunday morning was basically a tidy-up before we got moving. As we were packing up the flies, Sarah managed to mis-place a ring, which fortunately hadn’t been a very expensive one. We spent some time looking around the camp-site, but without any luck.

The remainder of the walk was along a comparatively nice track, although it was narrow in a few places and required the negotiation of some slips. The track mostly sidles some height above the river, all the way back to Otaki Forks.

We were expecting to get back to the van by mid-day at the latest, and so started eating some lunch at about 10.30am, when we reached the boiler and water wheel from an old timber mill, remaining from 1931. Sam and Alistair had a quick play with the wheel, which was still in good rotating condition, and by the time we got moving again it was raining.

We reached the end of the road and the parking area at about 11.30, co-incidentally at the same time as another group from the club, which had been up to Kime and back, was also returning. After some cleaning up, we piled things into the van and got going. T’was a really good trip.

Dates: 7th – 9th September, 2007
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Ohau Region.
People: Alistair, Dirk, Enrique, and me.
Huts visited: Te Matawai Hut (1 night).
Intended route: Poads Road to Ohau River via Ohau Gorge, up Deception Spur to 865 metres, down to Girdlestone Saddle, then along the track to Te Matawai Hut, along Yeates Track to South Ohau river, back to the base of Deception Spur (via river), then out to Poads Road via river and track.
Electric shocks: 3.
[Photos]

This was a medium-rated navigation trip with the Wellington Tramping & Mountaineering Club, and it was my first time back in the Tararuas since returning from overseas.

Our original plan had been to camp in a clearing on Friday night, 45 minutes from the road-end, possibly walking another 15 minutes up the river to an unofficial canvas bivy that Alistair knew about. After some consideration of the cold conditions, though, we instead decided to set up our tent flies over the track, and under the trees, w30here it was still relatively warm.

Walking along the Ohau River.
(Photo taken by Enrique.)

We woke about 6.30 when it was getting light (hooray for summer), and after an hour or so of breakfast and packing up, we were on our way to the Ohau River. Nobody had any reservations about washing our muddy boots in Levin’s primary water supply, and we walked up the river to our first main venture off-track — up Deception Spur.

The track up the spur is quite overgrown near the base, but it thins out after about 15 minutes or so, and becomes easier to walk up. We had maps and compasses out a lot during this trip, and at the base of the spur was probably about the first time it started mattering. After climbing to the 865 metre mark, we began the slightly more complicated task of figuring out how to get down the other side.

Alistair had been here many times before, and let the rest of us try to work out where to go. We nearly went down the wrong spur in the beginning, until Alistair noticed that there was a ridge much too close through the trees on the left. That ridge, of course, happened to be exactly where we were supposed to be. It could have been much worse than it was, and we really only needed to sidle and climb about another hundred metres or so back up the hill. We then made our way down to Girdlestone Saddle.

Dirk pointing out the spur we’d
walked along to get down to
Girdlestone Saddle.

DOC had gone to great efforts with the standard orange triangles to make sure people went the right way from this saddle, and once we actually crossed the main track, it was easy to pick it up and follow it the rest of the way to Te Matawai Hut, roughly 1.5 hours away.

After an 8.5 hour day of walking, we reached Te Matawai Hut at 4pm, which gave us an opportunity to sit around and relax for an hour or so. Te Matawai Hut is rather large. It has a bunk-room with space for about 16 matresses, but there’s probably space for about 50 people in total if there was really a need. A small group of 3 from the Vic Tramping Club had passed through earlier in the day on their way to Arete Biv, but as it turned out, we had the entire hut to ourselves. The bunk room was freezing, and stayed that way. Later on, at Dirk’s suggestion, we successfully used it as a refrigerator to set the jelly mixture that we had for dessert. We also took advantage of the empty hut, and dragged some of the mattresses into the main room, which eventually was almost too warm from the fire that Dirk and Enrique had managed to get going when we arrived.

Alistair was primarily responsible for arranging the menu on Saturday night. He’s slowly working his way through recipies in Jon Sawyer and Liz Baker’s book titled Gourmet Tramping in New Zealand, and the dinner on Saturday night (some kind of pork stir-fry, mashed potato, brussel sprouts, and a chocolate-raspberry jelly topped with custard) was fantastic. It was well worth carrying a little extra weight, and I don’t think anyone in our group could complain about being under-fed.

Dessert.

Sunday was a little more relaxed. We made our way along Yeates Track down quite a steep spur, to the former site of the South Ohau Hut, which no longer exists. From here it was basically a walk along the river. This was a little difficult for a while, and there were some places where I was a bit concerned about slipping off some of the more awkward rocks, but we all managed to get through. As we reached the base of Deception Spur at about 10.45am, we co-incidentally ran into the other club trip, which was returning along the North Ohau River, from North Ohau Hut.

The remainder of the trip was quite leisurely. We stopped for a lunch with the other group, and a couple of hours later we were back at the road-end. Overall it was a good trip.

I’m going away with the trampey club this weekend, although only to Cattle Creek (in the Ruahines). I signed up to this trip late after another one fell through. I’ve pretty much finished packing, but trying to fit in my own tent fly as well as the trampey club’s large one is a real pain. I have to put the big one at the top, because it’s the first thing everyone will want for camping at the road-end on Friday night. When I re-pack on Saturday morning, it’ll be going right down the bottom. I can guarantee that much.

As the first time out since arriving back, I hope it should be lots of fun.

Dates: 20th – 22nd April, 2007
Location: Tararua Forest Park
Huts visited: Blue Range Hut (0 nights), Mitre Flats Hut (1 night)
[Photos]

This weekend’s trip was in the Tararuas.

We started at the Kiriwhakapapa Shelter, where we camped on Friday night. Most people (4 of the 7 in our group, and all of the other group from the club) set out sleeping bags under the shelter, as it was quite a calm night. Dirk, Colin and I set up our tent flies next to a tree in the middle of the traffic island. The night was mostly uneventful, although I was up reading at about 10pm when a car pulled up a few metres away, and some people got it. It turned out to be a group from the Vic Tramping Club. After a few minutes of getting ready and talking about someone not having a torch (I think), they disappeared off up the hill. I found out later, when we checked the hut book, that they’d walked up to Blue Range Hut for that night.

The weather was quite mild for the whole weekend. On Saturday morning, we had a relaxing walk up to Blue Range Hut, except for when Matt was stung three times by a wasp. The short path off the side of the main track to Cow Creek was about the only time we went above the tree-line on this trip, which gave us a brief view of Mitre Peak in the distance — the highest point in the Tararuas. Blue Range Hut is a nice little hut with a sense of humour, that’s very blue. We’d been there for a few minutes when a helicopter started buzzing us. After about 10 minutes of wandering around outside trying to figure out what on earth the helicopter was doing, we finally found out. A hunter turned up, wearing a classic blue bush-shirt. Apparently he’d arranged some kind of pick-up at the hut, but there really wasn’t a chance, and he eventually ran off up the hill again, perhaps to try and find somewhere better.

We then walked down to the Waingawa River (almost to Cow Creek), which we crossed, and had some lunch. We didn’t quite reach the hut, however. I pulled out my tent fly in an attempt to dry it, but alas, the sun was not co-operating. The afternoon involved a further walk southwards on the track along the river, for several hours, before we finally reached Mitre Flats.

Mitre Flats was full, but not overflowing. There was one person, from another group, who slept on the floor. That evening, we finally figured out the rules for Rummy, or some variant of it, and we played a few rounds. I forget who won, but it probably wasn’t important. This was the first time I’d actually slept in a hut for a few weeks, as opposed to camping outside, and it was great not to have to worry about packing up the fly in the morning.

There was some very light rain on Sunday morning, but it was almost undetectable and didn’t last. There was also no wind to speak of — not at all common in the Tararuas. We walked slightly further south of the hut, and crossed the Waingawa River via the new bridge. Dirk’s plan was then to bash our way up a spur, and eventually reach the ridge along the top. There’s no official track up here now, but there was apparently a maintained track in the 1970s or so.

So, we started bashing up the hill almost immediately from the other side of the bridge. This proved very steep and difficult at first, although there were enough hand-holds to be able to get up without too much trouble. After a few minutes, we reached quite a defined track, which even had a slightly modern looking sign. It pointed down in one direction, towards Mitre Flats, and down in the other direction to Stoney Creek. In hindsight, having checked the map, I think we’d managed to come up the gully in almost the exact centre of two minor spurs which met at this point. The sign didn’t say anything about the less-obvious track that continued up the hill, but that was the one we wanted.

Climbing up the main spur to the point at the end of the ridge at the top was a fairly straightforward exercise, although with a group of seven people and a climb of about 550 metres, the group stopped for rests a few times along the way. Walking along the ridge was also quite nice, and very green. It was also very overgrown in places, and we found ourselves bashing through quite a lot of soft scrub. We stopped just short of the peak of Bruce Hill at about 11.30am, and everyone at me had some lunch. I’d been snacking on scroggen all the way up, and wasn’t especially hungry, except for a few Meal Mates.

From Bruce Hill, we took a bearing of about 145 degrees, and set to bash our way down another spur to the other side of the ridge. We actually picked up an unofficial track down here, which someone had marked with what seemed to be all the old junk from their pack: Cut up ice-cream containers, bottle caps, old coke and beer cans, and an old Savlon ™ tube that, as Dirk noted, had expired in 2001. I don’t think the expiry date accurately indicates how long the marker had been there, though. Savlon is probably one of many things that sit around in people’s bathroom cabinets long after their expiry date. (Case in point, I just found some around the house that expired in 2002.)

This track was very easy to follow, and someone seemed to have gone to a lot of trouble. Unfortunately it was following the main spur down the hill, and aiming at a point of the trail on the other side that was much further south than we wanted to be. So at about 700 metres, which we determined using the barometer on Max’s watch, we veered off to the left at a bearing of about 85 degrees, looking for a less-obvious spur that went closer to where we were interested in ending up. This hillside was quite stable, but also relatively steep. It was here that I had a slip where I hit a bone around my upper thigh. It didn’t effect me more than briefly on the rest of the trip, but it’s since swollen up and I’m hobbling a bit — at least for a few days.

The rest of the descent was a slip-slidey affair where we mostly got quite muddy, but also got down safely. We located a couple of rivers that we were expecting to see, and from there it was easy to find the old tram track route that led back to the road-end. We met three mountain-bikers shortly after starting along this track, and they were the first people we’d seen outside of a hut since the hunter guy who’d been trying to chase the helicopter. I raced ahead of the group, with Max, after a while, because I was quite keen just to get back. Annoyingly, a wasp got me just below the knee about half way back along the track.

We made it out at about 2.30pm, before any of the other people from the club. Yay for us.

This was a weekend Easy-Medium club trip into the Rimutakas, roughly east of Wellington. After driving to the Catchpool Valley road-end in a couple of cars, we walked for a couple of hours in the dark towards Paua Hut, with some interesting crossings around the braided (and very shallow) Orongorongo River towards the end. Having reached the hut, we sat around for a little while, and went to bed.

On Saturday, Paul was keen to do some off-track exploration, and for this we decided to walk a little down the river to the intersection opposite Oaks Hut, before bashing up the spur onto the ridge south-west of the Turere Stream. It turned out that there are actually trap-laying tracks around a lot of this region, and one of them went straight along this ridge-line. We followed it for some distance, before deciding to bash down the hillside to try and find the Turere Stream at the bottom for lunch.

There was one particular major spur that we were aiming for on the map, but we later discovered that we’d missed it by quite a lot. In fact, we hadn’t even reached it, and ended up having to sidle around a very steep hillside for quite some distance looking for a safe way down, all the time without much to hold onto. It was quite an interesting experience, and for me I think the adrenalin was rushing even more after the accident I’d survived a week before. We did eventually make it down, however, and had a relaxing lunch sitting on rocks at the river level, below a landslip that wasn’t marked on the map (as with many slips).

After lunch, we bashed up the spur on the opposite side of the Turere Stream, up what turned out to be another trap-laying route, eventually arriving at the McKerrow Track along the ridge at the top. On hitting the intersection we’d turned left and hoped to find the post that marked the top of Mt McKerrow, but we never actually arrived at it. We later figured out that we’d actually come up on the other side of the peak than what we’d though, an had come up an entirely different spur that was further south-west of where we’d thought we were. This caught me by surprise because I’d had my compass out for the whole distance, and although there was nothing to take bearings from with the dense trees in the way, it still appeared we’d been travelling in the right directions and turning at the correct times. On studying the map again afterwards though, it turned out that the spur we’d actually walked up had very similar contours. In fact, we’d always been further south-west of where we thought we were, right back to when we bashed down from the top of the opposite ridge. I think I learned something through this experience, and hopefully I’ll look for that sort of thing a bit more in the future. Having found the McKerrow Track, we followed it back to the main junction at the Orongorongo River, then back to Paua Hut.

On the following Sunday, we decided to start by heading up Browns Track, which starts almost directly opposite Paua Hut over the other side of the river. Although it’s a shorter distance, Brown’s Track starts very steep (with a potentially big fall if a mistake is made). In hindsight I’m glad we hadn’t come down it in the dark, which we’d been thinking of doing on Friday night. We ended up on the Cattle Ridge track, at which point we turned right, and followed it straight back down to the major intersection at the Orongorongo River. From here, rather than return straight back to the carpark, we elected to walk up the river some distance for lunch, and we eventually made it to Baine Iti Hut, glancing at the private batches hidden amongst the trees every few minutes or so. (Correction: In the preceeding and following text, I originally referred to “Baines Hut”, which is the next hut along from Baine Iti Hut. The major difference is that Baine Iti Hut is unlocked and open for all to use, whereas Baines Hut is operated by the Hutt Valley Tramping Club and requires obtaining of a key.)

Baine Iti Hut isn’t a DOC hut, and is owned privately, but it’s provided as a hut open to be used by anyone who wants to use it, which is really neat… especially with the apparent culture in the Rimutakas of having so many private batches. Following lunch, we had a leisurely walk back to the Catchpool Valley parking area.

The Rimutakas are quite a weird place to go tramping, compared with other places in the New Zealand back-country, if only because the Orongorongo River is full of what are essentially people’s private batches, built before there were regulations preventing people from building on conservation land. This makes it very accessible, especially with the 4WD tracks, and it’s a bit of a different experience. It was a great weekend, though.

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