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.

A few times now, I’ve wondered just how many degrees of separation there are between people who visit New Zealand’s back-country. Maybe a few people know nearly everyone, and the whole network is very closely connected. Maybe there are geographically localised networks.

Dates: 12th – 13th June, 2010
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Walls Whare Road-end.
People: Steve, Megan B, Hans, Christine, Kevin and me.
Huts visited: Totara Flats Hut (1 night)
Planned route: Up past Cone Saddle, over Cone and down to Neill Forks for Saturday night. Then back up and around Totara Flats, back towards the road.
Actual route: Straight to Totara Flats for Saturday night, up over Cone and back to start.
[Photos]
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We chased rainbows through the roads of the Wairarapa, and rain finally began to come down on us as we arrived in the parking area at the road-end of Walls Whare. There’s a nice camping area here, but it’d be somehow silly to use it this time given we were arriving at around 9.30am on a Saturday morning. Being a trip organised on behalf of our trampey club, our group consisted of Steve, myself, Megan, Hans, Christine and Kevin — a chap who mostly goes out with the Alpine Club whom Christine had managed to rope in on short notice. Apart from Christine, none of us had met Kevin before, but going tramping with people is a great way to meet people.

Our intent was to get in to Neill Forks Hut for the evening, which I was looking forward to because I haven’t been there before. We shared our van with another trampey club group of people coordinated by Megan S, and their idea was just to walk to Totara Flats alongside the river, stay for the night and walk back. As we drove up a couple of TTC members were about to leave, taking a retired Search and Rescue dog for a walk in to Tutuwai and back to Cone. This was good weather for tramping, despite the rain setting in.

As often happens, I took a little while to get my things sorted, and eventually found myself running over the swing bridge that crosses the Waiohine Gorge, flapping around as I sorted out my pack, camera now firmly attached. The others were waiting on the far side, having been away from the van two or three minutes before myself. We all left the far side as soon as I arrived, heading along the relatively obvious track and hoping to soon be at Cone Saddle. I had a strange moment there glancing at the end of the bridge, wondering if maybe everything wasn’t quite right. It was just a little rain . . . great tramping weather. As the minutes wore on, we discovered that Kevin wasn’t so unknown to us after all. Soon after we left, Hans had an enlightened moment where he exclaimed something like “ah, you’re that Kevin”. It turns out they’d anonymously come across each other a few weeks ago.

Within twenty or thirty minutes we’d spread out somewhat. It wasn’t a bad track, actually, gentle sidle above the Waiohine moving in and out of the trees and with the occasional view out over the Waiohine below. That was the problem, actually, and maybe why something hadn’t seem quite right. We weren’t going up, and surely we shouldn’t be anywhere near the Waiohine at all.

Kevin, Christine and I found and consulted each other near the back of the group, wondering if there was something wrong. Pulling out and checking a map, it became apparent that yeah, we certainly shouldn’t be where we were. Oops. A minute or two of continuing and we soon caught up with the others, who were having similar thoughts. This was certainly a problem, and it was about now I had one of those enlightening “ah yeah” moments, during which memories flooded back of the three previous times I’ve been to Cone Saddle. On every one of those occasions, the track went straight up a spur leading directly off the end of the bridge. The most recent time hadn’t even been that long ago. Some quickly performed in-the-head logic suggested that the track junction we were after would probably have been exactly where it was a year previously, which was more or less where we’d started from. Somehow we’d wandered off the end of the massive Waiohine Gorge swing bridge and missed a major junction.

As an aside, I’d like to note that some people would call this a “navigation” error, and possibly even an idiotic and embarrassing one. I wouldn’t. If you never tried to navigate, it can’t possibly be a navigation error, after all. If anything it was just a small mis-judgement of vectors that mis-placed us a little. Consequently instead of directing ourselves towards Cone Saddle and eventually Cone Peak (which should have been more vertically inclined), we were gracefully sidling towards Totara Flats.

Our first order of business was to decide how to avoid embarra creating disorientation and confusion for other groups of people enjoying the range. Obviously back-tracking to walk straight into Megan S’s group behind us was out of the question — they would have been very confused, possibly even dying of confoundedness on seeing us re-appear. Assessing our situation, we could probably divert up an alternative route to Cone Saddle, the base of which we’d yet to reach, but it’d be a big diversion that would take longer. In the end we decided to press on to Totara Flats, and possibly continue up and around the long way to Neill Forks Hut if we had time. Even if we stayed at Totara Flats, we’d have a while to get our story figured out before Megan and co showed up.

Kevin and Megan at Makaka Creek.

Pleasant Tararua rain continued to fall, but not so much as to flood the side creeks and prevent us from getting to our newly chosen destination. We wore raincoats, but were also under trees in general. Exposure to wetness was only average for the Tararuas. Good tramping precipitation. The route this way towards Totara Flats has at least a couple of significantly sized side-creeks that may flood dangerously — Clem Creek and Makaka Creek (aka Long Flat Creek), although neither was very full at this point. The main Waiohine River was high enough, however, for us to decide on the high water route around the slip two thirds of the way along. Having a hill to climb was rather a nice change, even if it was only for a short distance. The far side of the slip leads into a third creek on the southern end of Totara Flats, unnamed as far as I know, which is also prone to flooding and I’ve seen it in the past in a state which I wouldn’t enter it, but today, as we found on reaching it at about 12.30pm (three hours after starting), it was still perfectly crossable.

Totara Flats, and the site of the (newer)
old hut towards the back left.

We eventually drifted along the approximately 2.5 kilometre length of pretty river flats, sparkling with lively grasses and generally photogenic as places often are in the rain. The site of the old Totara Flats Hut lies part way along here, towards the back of the flats in a raised section. It was moved a few years back due to a determined flooding risk, I think, and is now reduced to a few sheets of corrugated iron left in the trees. The area now seems to make a popular campsite, being raised above the rest of the flat. The naming and positioning of Totara Flats Hut can be confusing when comparing different maps. Some maps label the now-missing hut as the “new Totara Flats” hut, as it was new when it was built as recently as the 1970s. The really new (and current) Totara Flats hut is back where the very old Totara Flats hut used to be, a few hundred metres further north, opposite the confluence between the Waiohine and Totara Creek, and very close to the bridge over the Waiohine. Some maps still label the location as the “old” Totara Flats hut, including the map on my GPS which is based on late-1990s data from LINZ.

Hans and Megan arriving.

Within a minute or two of us walking into Totara Flats Hut, the rain started persisting down with real cats and dogs force. Perhaps it was just the verandah amplifying the rain. Still, overall, a good Tararua day and great tramping weather. We’d walked in at about the same time as a trio of people from the Hutt Valley Tramping Club, who’d come from the Holdsworth Road end, and had a chatter with them. It turned out Kevin knew a couple of them really well through the alpine club.

By now it was lunch time, but we still needed to decide what to do from here, and if necessary get our story figured out before the others showed up. Being situated in a large cosy hut like Totara Flats with rain hammering on the corrugated plastic roof does strange things to people’s judgement which are sometimes difficult to understand. Weighing the prospects of staying against the prospects of continuing towards Neill Forks, possibly walking the final hour in the dark (being a week or so before the shortest day and everything), we elected to sacrifice travel in the good tramping rain and remain here for the night. Kevin’s declaration that he’d been to Neill Forks a few weeks before, and that it was a dank and soppy hole in the ground, or something to that effect, sealed the deal. His description reminded me of an entry I’d seen in the book at Powell Hut on the late Saturday morning of a few weeks before, of a group that’d left to go up Holdsworth in yucky weather before heading down to Neill Forks. Okay, so he was that Kevin, as I confirmed with him. I guess you quite often run into the same people in the hills.

With the decision now made, I quickly snatched my favourite Totara Flats bunk, which is the top level bunk next to the window overlooking the Waiohine River. Last time I was here I’d spent some time gazing out the window waiting to see a large tree or two floating past. That had been great Tararua tramping weather, too. This time we’d not had as much rain as last time.

Kevin and Christine fighting
with a crossword.

Steve also hovered towards the bunk room, but in his case it was to hide himself away in his sleeping bag for a snooze. We waited and waited for Megan S’s group to show up, and as time went on Christine eventually roped us all into helping with her crossword puzzles, which took a while. I read a few more pages in my book, and as we waited we were joined by another single person from the direction of Walls Whare. It turned out she was someone Steve knew through his work, and I guess the degrees of separation are rather small in the tramping world.

The Waiohine went up and down with the showers, rising and falling, speeding up and slowing down very noticeably during the several hours as we waited. One of the Hutt Valley club guys was paying close attention to it, and kept us updated as to the state of the marker rocks he was watching over in Totara Creek as it poured into the far side of the Waiohine. In the space of a few hours, Totara Creek rose by perhaps 30 centimetres, and then dropped by the same amount. The main river was certainly full enough to be a dangerous crossing for the whole time we were there, but not as flooded as it could be. Earlier as we’d coasted along the flats, I think I’d been able to see the stones below the water within a metre or so of the river’s edge. I suppose there probably hadn’t been enough rain in the past few days to fully saturate the soil, and the river levels were much more reactionary to heavy showers passing over the catchment than they would have been after a few days of persistent rain.

As for getting our story straight, we didn’t really. I think it was some kind of justification about having decided to come this way around our loop in case the creeks were flooded by the following day. Whatever it was, it was enough to satisfy Megan S and her associates. They showed up about three or four hours after we had, having coped with some higher side creeks, I suspect. They weren’t too late to help with some of the harder parts of the crosswords. Before long we were chopping veggies, figuring out how to open tins of tuna without a can opener, and eventually Steve slunk out of bed and cooked a nice Green Curry meal, which was topped off by some kind of cream and apricot on ginger cake dessert whipped up by Hans. Good food by all accounts.

I took a look outside and counted three stars in various directions, generally through cloud, and the rain continued to clatter on the corrugated plastic verandah. On announcing the stars when I returned indoors, Kevin raced outside appearing quite enthused, soon returning with a muted look of disgust on his face. Maybe I hadn’t been descriptive enough. I slunk into bed at around 8pm, I think. It was dark out side and the rain continued to clatter on the roof. Classic tramping rain.

Me, Hans, Steve, Megan, Kevin and Christine.

We’d discussed our options for Sunday, which amounted to either walking out the quick way (side-creeks allowing), or following around the loopy way up to and along Code Ridge. The second option had won convincingly, with nobody really wanting to go back the way we came, and we estimated it’d probably take about 7 hours looking at the topology and using standard group timing metrics. It was about 9am by the time we left, after a relatively casual pulling together of things. I’m fairly sure Steve would have won any competition of the most sleep at Totara Flats that weekend, having clocked up around 16 hours as we figured out. He must have been very tired, but didn’t hold anyone up. I killed some time as people got ready by going out to find some firewood, having felt somewhat guilty about not having contributed much to the HVTC people’s effort to keep the fire going the previous evening.

Christine clambering around the track.

During our climb up to Cone Ridge, which starts steeply, the rain continued. It looked as though it could be rather cold higher up, but I was one of the few to take a gamble and stick with only wearing my shorts, and no thermal long-johns just yet — I sometimes find I can get very uncomfortably hot otherwise, I guess. Cone Ridge becomes a more shallow climb at around 600 vertical metres, and in several places we found ourselves clambering around small ponds and bogs that had collected on what might normally have represented a track.

Two hours after we left, we passed the turn-off that would have led down to Neill Forks Hut, but nobody felt like running down the hill to take a photo proving we’d been there. An hour later we found a smidgen of snow, indicative of the relatively cold temperatures at this higher elevation.

We were sleeted on through the trees as we approached Cone, and I finally caved in and got my overtrousers and balaclava on. It wasn’t windy, though. Just great Tararua weather. As we approached the wacky antenna thingee on Cone some time after midday, which the most obvious route avoids by about 100 metres, the sleet even let up and allowed us to see some of the surrounding range in relative comfort as it hovered in the midst of the glinting cloud that settled in the valleys. Still quite cold, and kind of murky, but also very cool. It was nicer than last time I was here, when the wind chill made things less comfortable. We celebrated, each having a toffee pop. Cone Peak (1080m) lies just above the bush-line, and the three-way route junction is marked by a standard 3-way DoC signpost. I was the last to head back down into the trees, and took a minute just for myself.

Looking towards Alpha, Aston and Hector.

The track from Cone Peak down to Cone Saddle is a fairly normal walk down a spur in the Tararuas, offering the occasional vantage point to gaze out towards much higher peaks such as Alpha and Aston and Hector to the west. That part of the range, up to 500 metres higher than Cone, was well covered in a white blanket of snow, and made a good sight despite also being blanketed by cloud. As we descended, Kevin explained how he was now up to his seventeenth day in the Tararuas, and had been rained on every time. This contradicts my own experience. Still, I think we’d timed our visit to Cone Peak nearly perfectly despite the amount of rain. The cloud had parted, albeit briefly, during the short time we’d spent above the bush-line and had made for a relatively pleasant visit. Awesome Tararua Weather. With the rain holding off, I even managed to remove my raincoat for a while.

There are a couple of notes about this particular spur that come to mind, from Cone Peak down to Cone Saddle. The first is that I was in a group where we saw a kaka screeching and flapping in the trees around here a couple of years back. By itself this would not be significant because I’m sure kakas get to many random places, and they’re known to live in the Tararuas. I think someone up the front of our group on this occasion also mentioned seeing a kaka, though, so perhaps there’s a kaka or two that especially likes this region. The second note that comes to mind is that although my relatively modern map only shows the two “official” maintained tracks down to Cone Hut… the first directly off Cone Saddle and the second from slightly further down… Kevin’s map showed a third track labelled as the Block XIX track, heading down the spur from spot-height 812 directly towards Cone Hut. I forgot to look out for the likely starting point of this route, but it could make a fun navigation exercise some day.

Cone Saddle is easily recognisable.

We re-grouped at Cone Saddle at 1.30pm or so, an hour after our visit to Cone Peak and probably about 4 horizontal kilometres of travel back to the Waiohine Gorge bridge. Cone Saddle is within reasonable reach of a Friday night walk, which was nice to know for me at least. As we dropped further, nearing the road, the weather situation changed quite suddenly. Within minutes, the ambience of light below the tree canopy dramatically diminished, and soon more rain set in. This was a fresh southerly front finally on its way through, but fortunately not one we’d need to spend a lot of time enduring. Overall we spent about 2 hours getting down to the road from Cone Saddle, a journey that becomes fairly steep and slippery near the bottom. We emerged at the bridge from the opposite direction to where we’d headed the previous day’s morning, somehow amused to re-discover the track junction we’d walked straight past, and quickly made our way back to the van where Megan S and three others had been waiting for about 90 minutes. It took us about 6.5 hours in the end, so thankfully our estimate hadn’t been too far off.

The Waiohine from above.

There are many things I think I enjoyed about this trip. I was able to see the Waiohine River, one of my favourite Tararua rivers, in relative flood once again. I still haven’t seen it much close-up out of flood, and maybe that’s one of the reasons I like it so much. I also got to climb up a hill, which was fun and rewarding as usual. Oh, and I’ve now met Kevin, which seems to put me less degrees of separation away from knowing many more people who visit the back-country.

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.

Rain

It rained and it rained and rained and rained
The average fall was well maintained
And when the tracks were simply bogs
It started raining cats and dogs

After a drought of half an hour
We had a most refreshing shower
And then the most curious thing of all
A gentle rain began to fall

Next day was also fairly dry
Save for the deluge from the sky
Which wetted the party to the skin
And after that the rain set in

– Anonymous tramper, 1984

I thought this was the end of it — just a very amusing poem from an anonymous tramper in 1984, seemingly very New Zealand-like to me (as a New Zealander) — until I started to look around the web.

It turns out the poem’s been spotted on at least several continents. Although many sightings have been in New Zealand (such as Architect’s Creek Hut in Westland National Park) it seems unlikely that it originated here as far as I can tell. It definitely dates back much further than the 1984 that was given by DOC’s visitor’s centre staff.

The best resource I’ve so far discovered is this helpful womens’ Morris Dancing website (scroll down that page a little) which initially suggested it might have been one of Barry Crump‘s written ramblings based on his New Zealand experiences, but then notes that it was also published in the 1979 edition of the Cambridge University Ramblers’ Club songbook. This doesn’t necessarily rule out Barry Crump as he was very active in the 60′s, but unverified claims suggest it might also have appeared in the 1950 edition of the Cambridge songbook. The page collects together three distinct variations of the poem from various parts of the world, none of which exactly match the one I transcribed (though the Architect’s Creek Hut one comes close).

Wherever it originated, it certainly found its way around and people who tramp in New Zealand have adopted it quite well. I guess things people can identify with are like that. Who woulda thunk it?

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]
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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.

What surprised me as I walked back towards town was the number of bottle caps washed up on that part of the beach around there. There were barely any plastic bottles, but there were thousands of bottle caps. They were typically the variety that comes from soft drinks and bottled water, the latter of which I think is a bizarre, inefficient and pointless thing in New Zealand, but perhaps that’s a topic for another post.

I suppose the bottles must separate and be carried somewhere else with a different make-up and density, but apparently thousands of bottle caps end up right here. Putting thoughts about lazy thoughtless polluters and the hypocrisy of New Zealand aside, I’d love to know more about the physics of what’s happening here.

Crossing the Waingawa under Cow Creek.

It seems weird going back to somewhere where I’ve been as recently as a week earlier, but that’s what I did last weekend. This time it was with the trampey club, and it wasn’t quite the same place. Instead of just walking from Holdsworth to Mitre Flats and back, we began further north at Kiriwhakapapa, then walked back to Mitre Flats before coming out at Holdsworth.

Dates: 8th – 10th May, 2009
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Kiriwhakapapa to Holdsworth Road-ends.
People: Steve, Daniel, Andrew, Justin and me.
Huts visited: Blue Range Hut (1 night), Cow Creek Hut (0 nights), Mitre Flats Hut (1 night), Atiwhakatu Hut (0 nights), Holdsworth Lodge (0 nights).
Route: Kiriwhakapapa to Blue Range Hut (Friday night), down to Cow Creek Hut via an old track to Cow Saddle, then to Mitre Flats Hut for Saturday night. Out to Holdsworth road-end on Sunday.
[Photos]

We’d planned to camp at Kiriwhakapapa on Friday night (though it turns out there’s a shelter), but with the rain we decided instead to walk straight up to Blue Range Hut, which took between about 90 and 120 minutes (I forget), and being under trees meant the rain wasn’t too much of a problem. Usefully enough, that Friday night walk got most of what would have been Saturday’s climbing out of the way. Blue Range Hut is one of those fun huts with interesting signs and lots of character, thanks to the humour of people in the Masterton Tramping Club, but you really have to be there to appreciate it.

Cattle Ridge in the morning,
from Blue Range Hut.

Steve crawled out of his sleeping bag at 7.30am on the dot, and as I stared at the multitude of maps on the ceiling I could hear him stuffing things into stuff-sacks and assembling his cooker. He had a billy boiling before long, and it was time for brekkie. It took me about 20 minutes to finally roll off the top bunk, stepping outside to a chilly and crisp morning. The trees part next to the clearing outside Blue Range Hut behind a picnic table which seems to have been placed there since I last visited, offering a direct view to snow on the nearby range. It would have been cold up there overnight!

Blue Range to Cow Creek.

We were packed and leaving between about 8.20 and 8.30am, set to meet back at the track junction 10 metres above the hut. A brief gap in the trees allowed a glance towards Mitre Peak, hiding behind a clump of light gray clouds. Then we were under trees again, heading towards Cow Creek Hut. A friend (Craig) had told me earlier that there’s a very nice route directly from Mitre Flats, down from Te Mara (1104) leading west, then south-west above Donald Stream. I kept an eye out for this but I started looking too late, and missed it, but next time I’m in the area it could be an interesting route to find. Rather than walk directly to Cow Creek Hut on the marked track, we thought we might follow an old track which leads down to Cow Saddle, and then turn back towards the hut from there. This old track is shown on some older maps, and begins behind the sign at grid reference S25 213437. It then follows the ridge over spot heights 970, 890 and 810 before dropping down a spur to Cow Saddle.

The on Cow Saddle that marks
one end of the old track.

We thought we may potentially need to do some navigation along this route. It’s actually a very clear track, though, and according to a couple of people I spoke to, in better condition than the official track to Cow Creek Hut. We didn’t actually walk along the official track, however, so I can’t say so from experience. There are no official markers along the old track (DOC, Forestry Service or otherwise), but a helpful person has marked it occasionally with fluorescent pink ribbons. Even so, they weren’t necessary at the time we visited because the track itself was so obvious. At 10.50am we emerged from behind a tree on Cow Saddle with a sign nailed to the trunk that incorporated a symbol of a cow. I’ve arrived at Cow Saddle previously having come down from Cattle Ridge on the opposite side, but on that occasion I think we must have entered it slightly further along, because at our current location there was no sign-post pointing to Cow Creek Hut. We turned left to follow the track down Cow Creek, however, and within 20 minutes and one Bus Stop Sign (nailed to another tree) later, we were on the shores of the Waingawa River — not at all flooded, which was consistent with the complete lack of rain and increasing amount of sunshine so far.

There used to be a cable-way with a winch next to Cow Creek Hut until very recently, so I hear. This is now gone, and replaced by one of those mammoth new suspension bridges with wooden planks that the Department of Conservation now seems to favour. There’s a sidling track from Cow Creek around to the end of the bridge, which we duly ignored, and instead we walked around the edge of the Waingawa River and ultimately waded through the river almost directly underneath the bridge. And thus we arrived at Cow Creek Hut, too early for lunch at 11.30am.

Cow Creek Hut.

Cow Creek Hut is an old Forestry Service 6-bunker, and looks well placed in the trees. I’d like to visit it overnight some time in the future, but its location in the shade meant it wasn’t an optimal place for lunch on a day such as this. Steve wrote something in the book, which to this day I don’t know what it was, I bounded over the bridge and back — just so I could say I’d done it — we all messed around and did nothing in particular for about 20 or 30 minutes, and then we wandered south along the bank of the Waingawa River in the direction of Mitre Flats, looking for a sunny patch.

The exit pool.

We found it at about 12.30pm, a nice peninsula of rocks on the edge of the river. If we’d had wet tent flies from the previous night, this would have been a wonderful place to dry them out. For half an hour we sat around and ate lunch in the sunshine, and with a weekend forecast of continuous heavy rain, the five of us elected for a time to wade down the Waingawa River. We left our lunch spot at about 12.30pm, and potentially could have followed the river for the rest of the day, all the way to Mitre Flats. Due to some cold feet it was not to be, and 30 minutes later we decided to exit the river and instead follow the track which runs alongside. The first exit point was on the far side of a small pool in which Steve quickly found himself up to his waist before being able to climb out, and then spent a minute or two figuring out how to lever his pack and himself above an over-hanging tree root. The sight of it encouraged Andrew, Daniel and Justin to find an alternative route to the track through the trees, but it looked quite fun and I felt left out seeing Steve do something like that. As soon as it was clear there was a way up the other side, I jumped in. It was fun.

Walking alongside the Waingawa.

It’s quite a good track between Cow Creek and Mitre Flats, which sidles along the true right of the Waingawa River for the entire distance, albeit climbing up the hillside from time to time. For a couple of stretches we ventured back into the river, and at one point a deer and (apparently earlier than I arrived) a stag came down to the river’s edge on the far side.

A couple of side-creeks could flood for a while in heavy rain. One is North Mitre Stream where we arrived at about 2pm, and the other is Peggy Stream, about 15 to 20 metres south of it. After this we continued along the track which sidles up and down and through old board-walks buried 30 cm under mud, until we reached Mitre Flats at about 3.30pm.

Nearly at Mitre Flats.

Mitre Flats was similar to how I’d left it a week before, which wasn’t too surprising. We arrived shortly after a couple of other chaps who’d walked in from The Pines, one of whom was a volunteer DOC warden, also from the Tararua Tramping Club and a great source of information about nearby routes. I asked him about the second track up to Jumbo that I’d had trouble finding a week before, and he confirmed that it certainly did still exist. I’d probably missed it because it’s easy to coast along next to the river (where there’s a nice campsite) and completely miss the main track’s excursion slightly uphill. I guess I did this in both directions, and it’s something to keep in mind for the future.

He also confirmed that the morning’s forecast for the weekend had involved the words “rain”, “hail” and “severe”, each several times and in a variety of orders. What wasn’t completely clear was exactly how the rain, hail and impending severity would manifest itself on the south-eastern end of the Tararuas, given that it was coming from the other side. Hopefully it’d be clearer by tomorrow morning, when he was scheduled to make a 7am radio call for rugby results and an updated forecast. We manufactured our Moroccan Couscous and had a nice dinner. A fly wouldn’t stop buzzing near the window, even after the candles were out, but I eventually got to sleep on the top bunk at the late hour of about 8pm. It didn’t rain much overnight.

We woke to the overnight rugby results booming through Mitre Flats Hut at 7am on the dot thanks to the radio call that the helpful warden guy was making for a forecast, followed by further repetition of the words “rain”, “hail” and “severe”. The weather was quite unusual. Looking outside there was actually some blue sky, although I somehow managed to get hailed on under the blue sky. The rain and occasional hail was coming in waves, every so often being blown horizontally over the range from the west and ceremoniously landing on us. In time it began to rain more properly, and by 8am we’d all left Mitre Flats on our way out to Holdsworth Lodge. Just chugging along.

For me at least, I now walked along this section exactly a week after I’d walked along it previously. This time, however, I was trying to keep an eye out for more of the side routes. The first couple were in the vicinity of the Barton Track, which leads up an east-west spur in the direction of Baldy. My LINZ map shows a loopy bit here where one option heads about half way up the spur before going down and sidling around, and this is where the marked track leads. The second option (also shown as a track on the map) simply sidles around the lower section. A week before I’d never actually seen the division, but the warden guy had told me that the lower track split off in an obvious place. Sure enough, we did spot what was probably it heading off into the trees some way up the hill. The second route I wanted to find was the one that keeps going straight east to west up the spur to Baldy when the marked track curves around. Older maps that I’ve seen show this track explicitly and the warden guy referred to it as an escape route. I didn’t see any clear diversions from the main track for this one, but I did note a couple of places where I think it would have been reasonable to keep walking upwards on a bearing when the track curved around.

Sidling over a small side-creek somewhere
between the two Baldy spurs.

The rain was now hammering the tree canopy above, but it wasn’t too much of a problem with us walking under trees. Still, the weather was curious. At one point we gazed through a gap in the forest to see the great plains of the Wairarapa bathing in glorious sunshine… while we were still being rained on. There was little doubt that the mountains of the Tararuas themselves were sheltering us from a greater deluge coming from the far side, but it didn’t feel like it. We reached the washed out side creek north of the south-east Baldy spur at about 9.20am or so, at a guess. It was very straightforward, unlike when I was on my own a week before and had driven myself to unnecessary concern. We left Baldy Saddle shortly before 10am, and after a 15 minute slippery slide down the southern side, we crossed the bridge over the Atiwhakatu Stream.

Doubtlessly my moment of triumph.
Now that I’ve found this sign,
I know I can navigate!

The next route I needed to tick off my list from missing a week before was embarassing, because the northern track leading up to Jumbo Hut is a well maintained track that many believe to be in better condition and more interesting than the more popular Rainguage Spur. At 10.20am I caught up with the group at the front who were aware I was looking for it, and were milling around the giant bright yellow and green Department of Conservation sign in the middle of the track, wondering just how I could have missed it. I’m now fairly sure what happened was that in both directions, I’d followed the edge of the Atiwhakatu Stream too closely instead of the track markers. This is a generally safe thing to do, but at that exact point the track leads up the hill slightly to the junction with the track up to Jumbo, whereas I’d continued to walk through a nice camp-site below it. Steve took a photo of me standing behind the sign, so I can now prove that I’ve found it.

Atiwhakatu Hut now has walls.

The next stop, now at 11am, was Atiwhakatu Hut. Its building had progressed even further than the wooden framing of the previous Sunday, to the point that it actually had walls embossed with Placemakers logos. The DOC-warden guy back at Mitre Flats had mentioned it supposed to be the same design as Roaring Stag Lodge, and it’s now finally beginning to look like it.

Of course, with all the rain, the builders were hiding inside the old Atiwhakatu hut with smoke pouring out and having slapped a giant piece of “DANGER KEEP OUT” tape over the door. At one moment Steve attempted to get a closer look at the construction site, until one of them shouted out the window that he should keep out. Fair enough, I guess. It’s still a building site, after all.

Looking back somewhere towards
Mt Holdsworth.

With the constant rain things were going rather quickly, and they only went faster from this point on because the track between Atiwhakatu Hut and Holdsworth Lodge is practically a State Highway. At 11.45am we walked past the junction heading up to East Holdsworth, at 12.20pm we cruised through Donnelly Flats, and at 12.35pm we exited past Holdsworth Lodge, having seen only a single person heading the other way for a short walk. Perhaps the forecast frightened people away.

I tried to write in the book at Holdsworth Lodge but gave up after a minute because my fingers, which had been rather exposed to the wetness, were rather numb and unable to accurately control a pen. Having attempted several methods of using one hand to push the other, I decided that there was little chance we’d be abducted by aliens between now and our collection, and so it’d be unlikely that anyone might consult the book to confirm we’d gotten out, anyway.

We probably could have stayed in the lodge for the 80-90 minutes until our collection, but it wasn’t very handy to the road. Thus, we ate our lunch and left-over chocolate in the shelter above the Holdsworth parking area, watching as several waves of rain came through. Quite a sombre way to end the weekend, but it was a good weekend. Considering just how much rain was expected, we were fortunate that everything went perfectly such that we didn’t need to resort to any of several backup plans. Saturday, especially, was a gem of a day. It was almost disappointing that we weren’t really equipped to go up onto the tops in the Tararua snow, but I know there will be future times.

Waiting for collection.

Between Atiwhakatu Hut
and Mitre Flats.

Dates: 2nd – 3rd May, 2009
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Holdsworth road-end.
People: Just me.
Huts visited: Holdsworth Lodge (0 nights), Atiwhakatu Hut (0 nights), Mitre Flats Hut (1 night).
Route: Start at Holdsworth Lodge, walk straight to Mitre Flats (via the track), then walk back.
[Photos]

Being on my own and with the forecast, I made up my mind not to do anything too dramatic, and settled for starting at Holdsworth Lodge and walking north towards Mitre Flats, which would let me red-line the section of track between Mitre Flats and Atiwhakatu Hut. Having driven up from Wellington, I left the Holdsworth road-end at about 10am. From here it was a matter of following the Atiwhakatu River north-west for a while past Donnelly Flats, where about 30 people, all with tents and open flies set up, seemed to be doing some kind of bushcraft or first-aid training involving a mountain radio.

Nice Jumbo/Holdsworth Boardwalk.

This entire section of track up to Atiwhakatu Hut at the base of Raingauge Spur is part of the very popular Jumbo/Holdsworth loop, and the track is kept in very good condition. It was even much improved on what I remember from about two and a half years ago, when we were occasionally clambering over tree-stumps and so on. Now, nearly the entire track is flat. Every significant side-creek is bridged, and every insignificant side-creek or muddy patch is board-walked. It might almost have been a Great Walk track, except that I saw several twigs that had been loosened from the trees above and not immediately swept away by the lurking wardens of the park.

Atiwhakatu Hut is sign-posted at 3 hours, but for me walking by myself on such a flat track, it was about 90 minutes, possibly slightly longer. The track has been maintained this way the loop is so popular, but I couldn’t help thinking that maybe it was an expensive prank by DOC to lure unsuspecting trampers deep into the Tararuas before unleashing on them the up-ward horrors of Raingauge Spur. I could sense the evil chuckle of the perpetrators as they rubbed their hands together with glee at the approach of another victim whilst they hid in the trees. This time, though, I had one over on them, because I knew that I wasn’t heading up Raingauge at all. I might be wrong about this, to be fair. I haven’t been up in a couple of years and the track up Raingauge could now be far more walkable. Perhaps DOC has installed handrails… and an escalator…

The rain started to fall lightly, which wasn’t much of a bother at first because the tree canopy sheltered me from most of it. I eventually wore my rain-coat over my shirt, mostly to protect it from the loose water coming off bushes that I pushed through from time to time.

Progress continues on the
new Atiwhakatu Hut,
midday Saturday.

Atiwhakatu Hut is currently closed. In fact, it’s about to be pulled down in favour of a new hut due to be opened at the end of May. Smoke emerged from the trees as I approached and the old Atiwhakatu Hut was inhabited. Despite being officially closed, the old hut is currently occupied by the people busy building the new hut, right next door. This is the first time I’ve seen such an event taking place. It was an interesting scene, although at midday Saturday there wasn’t much more than a floor.

Having passed Atiwhakatu and the turn-off up Raingauge Spur, I continued into the red-line jungle. The track this way is still marked, but being off the Holdsworth/Jumbo loop, it suddenly became much more rough in comparison. In practice, this meant less bridges over side-creeks, more mud, more wet tree roots, more slippery rocks, and more undulation. The track is also less direct. The straight line on a map represents a less-straight line in the real world. All of this added to taking about twice the time to cover a similar distance through the rest of the day. Actually it was typical Tararuas under trees.

My nice LINZ S26 Carterton map shows a second track leading up to Jumbo Hut that turns off north of Raingauge Spur track. I loosely kept an eye open for this, but I wasn’t paying attention the whole time and I didn’t see anything obvious. I’m wondering if maybe it’s not a maintained track any longer, but it could be an interesting navigation exercise some time.

Somewhere near the saddle
below Baldy.

The area further on from Atiwhakatu Hut includes a couple of nice campsites. About an hour after leaving it, which had included a brief sit-down for some lunch, I arrived at the swing bridge over the Atiwhakatu River, and this point more or less marks the end of anything that could be said to resemble flat-ness, despite what anyone might say about the track between Holdsworth Lodge and Mitre Flats being flat. It’s only flat compared with the rest of the Tararuas. Immediately after this swing bridge, the markers lead away from the Atiwhakatu River valley, up about a hundred metre climb to the saddle below Baldy (1325). The track then leads down into the Waingawa River valley, half way down a spur on the other side before sidling around and around and over side-creeks, a couple of which I thought might flash-flood in heavy rain. The track finally finds a spur to get down to Mitre Flats.

The first stream after the saddle below Baldy was confusing. My map indicates that the track happily sidles around and crosses the stream. On first reaching it and stepping over, I almost walked straight up a seemingly obvious parting in the trees on the true left which I’m sure people must have been up before, but suddenly this didn’t feel right. Backtracking, I noticed a marker down-stream a little. What actually happens is that it meanders around one of the side creeks for about 30 metres before lifting up on its true right, following beside it for another 20 metres or so, then dropping back from the true right into the stream, which joins another stream coming down at that point from the far side.

As I arrived at this point in the stream, marked by two of the giant orange triangles that DOC uses for entry and exit points, I was still confused. By now I was thinking that perhaps I still needed to continue further down-stream, and I double-checked my map which still implied I should expect to see a way out the other side anywhere near here. 15 seconds later, I found it. A large orange triangle sat in a tree on the true left, at the top of a 2 to 3 metre high steep-ish slope of scree and rock-face, which was not rich in obvious hand and foot holds. This could be awkward, especially given that climbing has never been a big interest of mine. I did manage to clamber up, but only after struggling to find any reasonable hand-holds. Glancing back, I had no idea how I’d get down the following day without blindly kicking around for thin foot-holds that I’d be unlikely to find before slipping, and thoughts of this concerned me for a long time afterwards.

Still, that was tomorrow’s problem. From now I could only hope that it wasn’t a sign of more to come and I bounded up the hillside to put it behind me. The route up this way actually passes through a very pretty moss-covered stream, up part of which it’s necessary to walk. I hadn’t seen anyone since leaving Atiwhakatu Hut, and it was awesome!

For a marked track, I did occasionally think it was a bit thin on the markers. I must have wandered off the track about three or four times, although it was obvious when I had, and it simply meant back-tracking a little and carefully trying alternative routes until I found something that looked very obvious. (I’ve felt more lost in bush on the Tinakori Hill in down-town Wellington than I was on that track.) I never had to resort to trying to use navigation skills.

My LINZ map shows that in the last section towards Mitre Flats, the track briefly splits into two, with an alternative section called Barton Track leading higher up the spur before coming back down and re-joining the track that sidles around the side. Although I noticed several possible places where routes might have led off to the side, I never saw an obvious track split off. At the time I wasn’t paying enough attention to whether I was predominantly climbing or sidling, and I’m still unsure which of these two tracks was the one I followed. Presumably the other is unmaintained, but maybe the higher one is a part of an alternative and more direct route up to Baldy from Mitre Flats.

Arriving at Mitre Flats.

The final swing bridge over South Mitre Stream was mildly confusing. I walked off the end of it and kept walking along what I thought was a track that evaporated into not much at all 30 metres later. Back-tracking, I discovered I should have doubled-back and walked underneath the bridge. I coasted into Mitre Flats Hut at about 3.10pm, where a couple of other people had also just arrived. They were expecting another four in a family group behind them, having walked in from The Pines. I quickly grabbed a mattress and hauled it out onto the deck for the best bed in the hut before anyone else would have a chance to snatch it.

We waited and we waited for the other four, and after two hours, another couple finally arrived and began pulling off gaiters and boots. Apparently one of the remaining two, who hadn’t arrived, had been having some problems, and they’d decided to bed down on the track under a fly for the night, so it was only the five of us. I read my book, we played 500, we played about four rounds of Last Card during which I only ever picked up a single 5!

For a while it rained outside, but the rain stopped and as darkness fell a crescent moon poked through the clouds from time to time. I heard two gunshots ring out in the distance that night, implying that some hunters were out nearby. Meanwhile the thought of getting down the slope into that stream near Baldy was still playing on my mind, and I was still very concerned. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, though, short of walking out somewhere completely different. I decided that it was likely I was blowing it out of proportion in my head, and that it’d be perfectly okay because people would be going that way frequently and not have any problems. That night on the deck and I had a wonderful dream. Strangely it was all about writing this trip report, having no recollection about anything on Sunday before Atiwhakatu Hut, and concluding that everything between Mitre Flats and Atiwhakatu Hut must have been completely eventless, insignificant and unmemorable, and nowhere near as bad as I was imagining it was going to be. Then I opened my eyes in the face of a bright sky at 7.15am, and I was both happy and sad.

The Waingawa in the morning.

I had everything outside on the deck, and was able to pack without being of much disturbance to those inside (I hope). I poked my nose in to say goodbye, though, and to return my mattress, then I walked away at about 8.20am, returning towards Holdsworth Lodge, taking a slight detour to stand half way over the main bridge over the Waingawa River for a look, before returning around the corner to the other bridge over South Mitre Stream, and from there straight up the spur.

Misty trees climbing
out of Mitre Flats.

Within a few minutes, a violent fwoo fwoo fwoo fwoo fwoo fwoofwoo fwoofwoofwoo fwoofwoofwoo came from the trees ahead of me, as a Kereru (aka New Zealand Pigeon) distanced itself from my approach. I find Kereru quite amusing to watch. They always come across as being clumsy fliers, and for their size, they tend to land and sit on branches that appear much too small to support their weight. The branches bend a lot but a Kereru will hold on and look at home.

I found that I barely walked off the track in this direction at all — contrasting the previous day when I’d walked off it several times. I spent much of the next 90 minutes, however, wanting to hurry up and get to this problematic stream, at the very least so I could happily discover that it wasn’t a problem at all, perhaps adjust my plans, or otherwise just put it behind me. Within five minutes of it I could hear the water running in the distance, and when I saw a goat track head off beside the main track, I was tempted to follow it on the pretext that perhaps it linked up to a more accessible crossing point. I decided not to do this on the grounds that it wasn’t a very logical course of action, especially as I hadn’t even been back to assess the drop properly and weighing that against following a random goat track, my original intention easily made the most sense. Thus with complete trust in the Department of Conservation, I followed the markers for another 3-4 minutes down to the stream.

Not that bad…..

And that was when I realised what I’d been hoping would be true all day. It really wasn’t that bad after all. I probably should have taken a third or fourth glance backwards a day earlier, and I might have realised it wasn’t as vertical as I remembered it. Solo tramping is great. There was still need for care, but I could actually see some foot-holds to slide myself into and lower myself down. From there it was one two three over a little scree, and I once again stood on the edge of the stream. It was insignificant and unmemorable, just like my dream had foretold.

And suddenly, for no particular reason, the music of Tom Jones broke into my head. Tom Jones and I celebrated my success with a jelly bean. Then we celebrated with another jelly bean. Then I walked across the stream, and the two of us celebrated once again. I eventually needed to convince Tom Jones that I couldn’t afford to let my teeth fall out before I’d had a chance to munch, crunch and digest my lunch.

“Sure thing!”, said Tom Jones, as he relented, and let me put the jelly beans away.

“Aren’t you getting a bit to old for this?”

“No Way!”, said Tom Jones. “I love tramping, and I love singing!”

And thus he launched himself up ahead and did a twirl on a slippery rock with his microphone in hand. Then I enjoyed, accepted, tolerated and eventually reviled repetitively singing together with Tom Jones as we powered up the hill towards the saddle below Baldy:

It’s not un-u-su-al to be loved by anyone
It’s not un-u-su-al to have fun with anyone
But when I see you something a some–thing anytiyeeeiiime
It’s not un-u-su-al, to see a fryyyy… a wanna yaaaaahhhh

Mmmmmmmmmwaaaa!

Tom Jones was singing badly out of tune. Twenty repeated first verses later it was clear that he couldn’t even remember the words to his song that he’s been singing for 44 years — a definite sign of senility. I left him deleriously spinning on a wet tree-root, and as I glanced back at the sound of a fwoop fwoop fwoop, I think he was being pecked at by an angry and unappreciative Kereru. There was nothing more I could do for him at the time, but if anyone’s looking for Tom Jones, he was last seen in the Tararuas, in the vicinity of grid reference S26 177367.

The rain had held off and at 10.30am when I stood on the saddle, I briefly considered heading up towards Baldy for a look, but decided it would be something for another day. Therefore from here, it was a 20 minute down-hill slide back to the bridge over the Atiwhakatu River. I’d been meaning to look out for that side track up to Jumbo — the side-creeks around it are easy to identify, and supposedly it starts opposite a substantial slip on the other side (ie. true left) of the Atiwhakatu River. Unfortunately I forgot to keep my eye open at the critical time, and once again didn’t notice any obvious track leading up a spur. Having returned, Amelia (a friend) has already shown me a photo of the giant sign that existed a couple of years ago. I’m reasonably sure I didn’t walk past that, although it wouldn’t be the first time I’d looked through something obvious. I’m curious now if DOC may have de-commissioned maintenance of the track in favour of encouraging everyone who does the Jumbo/Holdsworth loop up Raingauge Spur, but so far this is just me speculating.

One of a couple of camp-sites further
up from Atiwhakatu Hut.

I stopped and sat at one of the camp-sites along the way for about 15 minutes since maybe I don’t do enough sitting, and arrived again at Atiwhakatu Hut at almost exactly 12pm.

The new Atiwhakatu Hut looked different! Compared with the previous day, it now even looked like a hut. I was impressed with how quickly it had changed overnight. I guess they must be working on it fairly intensively. It was about lunch time, so while the builders hammered behind the trees, I wandered to the flats in front of the hut and had a quiet lunch in front of the river.

The new Atiwhakatu Hut at
midday Sunday.

The Sunshine even came out.

Well that was nice, but by now I was starting to feel as if I was ready to get home, so I didn’t waste much effort in making my way back along the well-graded loop track to the Holdsworth road-end. And the Sun began to come out — at first on the far side of the river, but soon it crept more closely into where I was. From here I finally began to see more people again — typically a mixture of people who looked to be aiming for Jumbo, and several day-walkers and dog-walkers, although there was no way any of the day-walkers could be hoping to complete the loop in a day with remaining daylight. After an hour at 1.15pm, I stopped for a couple of minutes contemplating whether I might want to head up the hill to Mountain House, just to see it again for the first time in a while, but I decided against it reasoning that the detour would probably add at least an hour. So at 2pm I walked out past Holdsworth Lodge and back to the car, and that was the end of a nice overnighter.

I did get out for a walk in the rain this afternoon, however, starting in Otari Wilton’s Bush (a 10 minute walk from our current residence), and walking up towards the Skyline Walkway. The Kaiwharawhara Stream was as full as I’ve ever seen it — probably still safely crossable (not that there’s a need with all the bridges), but much higher and faster than its usually tame appearance. Walking along it for a few hundred metres was a telling experience, every so often seeing another temporary ad-hoc creek racing down the hillside and crashing into the stream valley at the end, making a lot of noise.

I didn’t expect to see anyone, considering the volume of precipitation in the air, but I actually saw several people outside with similar ideas to myself. The first was a group of about 6 or 7 people and a dog. I imagine they were from a tramping club. From my own experience, it’d be unlikely to see a group that size out for a walk in such weather, and two of them were wearing Oringi Raincoats, which in general tend to be an artefact of people who spend time outdoors as a serious hobby rather than casually.

I walked up to the flax clearing half way up the western side of the valley. I’ve been there many times before, but this was the first time in such consistently pelting rain, so I stood there for about 5 minutes just to watch and listen to the different kinds of things that come out in such different weather. As I was about to leave it, a chap came climbing up the hill in shorts and a t-shirt, which was a contrast to my own shorts and long-cut raincoat. He was completely saturated but I doubt he minded, and he gave me a smirky grin as I waved, and turned back into the trees to continue up towards the ridge.

Within a few minutes the trees cleared, and the region was once again directly exposed to the rain. Not that it really made a difference by now because I was about as wet as I was going to get, and I kept going for another 10 minutes to the top of the ridge along where the Skyline Walkway passes. The wind began to play its part by now, but not in a way that was unbearable so I walked along the ridge for a few minutes, watching the misty curtains of rain blowing in waves across the hilltops. I like the rain.

It was time to turn around, and so I happily made my way back the way I’d come, off the ridge and into the trees and back to the Kaiwharawhara Stream, stopping to read a few more pages of my book under a shelter before climbing up the other side. It was a nice afternoon walk.

Steve, Amanda and Paul
north-west of Mangahuia.

Dates: 24th – 26th October, 2008 (one day shorter than intended)
Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Rangiwahia to Heritage Road-end.
People: Steve, Amanda, Paul and me.
Huts visited: Rangiwahia Hut (1 night), Triangle Hut (0 nights), Iron Gates Hut (1 night), Heritage Hut (0 nights).
Intended Route: Walk to Rangiwahia, then around Maungamahue and the back of Te Hekenga , over to Taumataomekura, Teraha and to Howletts Hut for Saturday night. Then via Daphne Ridge, Otumore and down to Iron Gates Hut (or possibly Triangle Hut) for Sunday night, before heading back up to Rangiwahia Hut and out again on Monday.
Actual Route: Due to weather issues we went straight down to Triangle Hut and Iron Gates Hut on Saturday, before continuing to the Heritage road-end on Sunday and getting out a day early.
[Photos and movies]

After dinner from that Kebab shop at Bulls, we reached the Rangiwahia road-end at around 9.30′ish, I guess. At the very least, after the walk up the hill (which from past experience seems to take about 90 minutes), we were settling down at around 11pm on Friday night. The weather forecast was already dismal, without much suggestion that things would clear up until about Monday. Although we’d made plans to sleep in, Steve was still up and about at 6.30, and everyone followed.

There was some teasing clarity in the horizon to the west, with Ruapehu clearly visible, but we were slightly more concerned about an incoming southerly. The rest of the range to the east of Rangiwahia was already clagged in — getting around the back of Te Hekenga and down to Howletts on the far side wasn’t an enticing thing, especially since it was likely to just be cold and clouded-in all day. Instead, we thought we might try starting the plan in reverse, in the hope that the rivers wouldn’t be up too much to interfere. So, after a casual breakfast, we packed up and left at 8am.

It took about an hour to reach the ridge just north of Mangahuia, which seems consistent with the previous three times I’d been there. Looking over the edge, broken slabs of icy snow were still settled below us on the eastern side, making for an eerie walk through a fairly cold wind. Within about 30 minutes we were walking down the spur towards Triangle Hut, budgeting on being there for lunch. With the route down the spur quite slippery and covered in tussock, we were still on the tops until a little after 10am. From there we reached the relatively good track through the trees, arriving at Triangle before 11.

Paul crossing part of the
Oroua River outside Triangle Hut.

Despite the rain, the northern branch of the Oroua River outside Triangle Hut wasn’t flooded, although it was more full than it would often be. The first half of the walk to Iron Gates Hut (sometimes called Iron Gate Hut) is in this river, and the last few minutes requires getting over the main part of the Oroua River. Consequently, what we saw outside Triangle Hut did cause us to carefully consider whether we should be going any further. By the end of it, I think I was the last person being annoyingly indecisive, but we came to the consensus that the fact that it wasn’t flooded would mean that the main part of the Oroua River down-stream wouldn’t be flooded either. If we really got stuck somewhere, we at could at least fly-camp in the rain along the way until the river became safer. Besides, I’ve been at Triangle Hut when it’s raining a lot before, and if you really feel like going somewhere, the idea of potentially being trapped behind flooded rivers on all sides the next day really didn’t appeal. At around midday, we set off south along the river towards Iron Gates Hut (often referred to as Iron Gate Hut, although the signs in the area seem to call it Iron Gates).

The river along here can be slightly gorgey, but in these conditions we always found reasonable crossing points that were rarely higher than knee-deep. There were a couple of minor areas where the current was uncomfortably strong, and it definitely helped to have someone nearby on firmer ground to use as support. At ten past one, we reached the end of the track leading over point 1037, to the other side where Iron Gates Hut is located. The first few minutes of this track follows a small stream up a gully, but it soon turns into a track of its own which is steep in some places, and without a lot of good hand-holds. It didn’t feel particularly un-safe, though, within reason at least.

Steve and Paul at the southern
end of the track to Iron Gates.

On the southern end, this track crosses one side-creek before sidling along a hillside above some nice waterfalls (down which I was glad we didn’t need to climb), before landing at the main part of the Oroau River. As we expected, this river also wasn’t flooded, but seeing it was enough to prompt me to put my camera away for a while. In hindsight I’m really glad that I did.

The current was quite strong, but after some surveying and brief experimentation up and down the river, we eventually found a place we could cross reasonably comfortably. This was relief for me, because I’d had in the back of my mind that we might become stuck somewhere between the two huts and have to camp out… which is why both Amanda and I were both slightly surprised when Steve, who’d been here recently, hopped straight back in the river a little further down and led us back to the side we’d started from. Iron Gates Hut was still a few minutes along the river, and it seemed that there wasn’t a clear route to it without a couple of extra crossings.

Amanda watching Steve testing
part of the river near Iron Gates.

We were able to continue along the river-side for a few more minutes, but finally reached a point where some fast-moving rapids combined with an apparently gorgey rock-face on our side. It looked do-able to get around, but we just might get a bit more wet than we were already. In the distance on the far side of the river, we could see smoke wafting from the trees, indicating that there was someone home.

Steve was the first to lower himself down into the pool, which had a convenient ledge below it, and work his way around the edge of the rock-face. I followed, and soon found I couldn’t see Steve ahead of me. Leaning backwards turned out to be a bad idea because I started floating on my pack and drifting away from the rock-face. It worked out fine, though, because Steve was grounded just around the corner and held out a hand to pull me in. Amanda and Paul followed, and the four of us now found ourselves standing in a small in-set into the rock on the far side of the river. Getting over to the far side from here was a challenge, but we managed it with the help of Steve (again) who anchored himself somewhere in the middle so as to help pull everyone past him and out the other side. That was an experience.

As we approached Iron Gates Hut at about 3pm, maybe in some kind of jovial mood, we met the three current occupants as we searched for dry clothing. The two Oringi Raincoats hanging outside suggested some kind of strong outdoor affiliation before we’d even met them (that’s my current theory, anyway), and it turned out they’d come down from Auckland for the long weekend as an expedition on behalf of the Toi Toi Trekkers Tramping Club. Earlier on Saturday the three of them had walked in from Heritage Lodge. I think their original plan had been to walk up further to Triangle, then up to Rangiwahia and out that way, but by the time we’d arrived it sounded as if they were now intending to return the way they came — probably due to weather. They had a nice fire going and were busy drying some of their things… presumably things that hadn’t been well stashed underneath their impressive raincoats. Steve, who had been starting to feel sick-ish, hopped up to one of the top bunks for a snooze. Amanda, Paul and I settled into the accommodation for the rest of the afternoon, with myself catching up on some reading before Amanda became the central figure in preparing a nice pasta and vegetable dinner.

It rained in patches overnight, sometimes intensively, although the river had actually gone down when I went out to check it on Sunday morning. Specifically, it’d gone down by about 3 centimetres in the wide, wave-prone section that I’d been using to wash the dishes the night before. Looking up to the tops, however, they still didn’t look at all inviting. They’d received more snow overnight, which boded for a potentially long and quite hard next couple of days. According to the plan, we’d still need to be getting up to Howletts, which would probably take at least 6-7 hours in the conditions and wouldn’t be very scenic. That would be followed by a long day of walking on Monday, probably at least 10 hours, and then a long, late and tiring drive back to Wellington on Monday night. Steve’s condition, which seemed to have become more doubtful overnight, was also a convenient excuse for us to not bother trying.

There were a couple of other options we thought about. One was to go back the way we’d come, past Triangle and then either head straight back to Rangiwahia for Sunday night, or down to Pourangaki or Kelly Knight (perhaps more interesting). Neither seemed that inviting, and with the Oroua River still flowing quite strongly it would have been more difficult to walk up against the current. We’d definitely need to be looking for different crossing points from what we’d used the day before. The LINZ map also indicates another track heading up a spur towards Rangiwahia from about the half way point between Iron Gates and Heritage, but Steve’s attempt to come down this on another occasion several months before had suggested that it actually wasn’t much of a track at all, and may actually have been densely overgrown. So in the end, we reached another consensus decision to simply walk to Heritage Lodge (near a road-end), and to figure out some way to get back to the van once we arrived.

Nearing Heritage Lodge.

We left Iron Gates Hut at 8.45am, saying goodbye to the Toi Toi Trekkers who’d been waiting in bed while we packed up. It was a nice bush-walk through the rain, with a few undulations and a couple of crossings of side-creeks, but ultimately easily do-able. During one of our brief stops at 11.15am, we could see Heritage Lodge in the distance. 20 minutes later, having followed the sidling track around the hillside, we were there, and immediately greeted by two very friendly chaps from the Manawatu Branch of the New Zealand Deerstalkers’ Association. It was still raining, and although the sun almost emerged from time to time, it continued to tease us.

The luxurious section of Heritage
Lodge, reserved for NZDA.

Heritage Hut (sometimes called Heritage Lodge) is an NZDA-built facility. An old lodge on the site burned down in 2005, apparently after some visitors let the fireplace get too hot and then packed up and left. [Edit 9-July-2010: There's another side to this story described in the comments section below.] It’s since been re-built by predominantly NZDA volunteers, with the help of many sponsors. The new facility is a fantastic lodge. The NZDA guys had a warm fire going and offered us hot water for a cuppa as we walked up, which was a great way to say hello. They were also keen to show off the features of the lodge, which we continued to take in as we settled down for an early lunch. For the record, anyone who thinks that kiwi hunters always like it rough needs to take a look in the private NZDA section of the lodge (NZDA permission would be required), which comes complete with a mini-kitchenette and a shiny shower cubicle. So much for the whole lowering-your-standards philosophy of the outdoors.

The other people we met at Heritage were a couple from the Forest and Bird society, who’d walked up the track from the road to survey the area for a potential club trip they were planning in the near future. They were very friendly and helpful, and ultimately we were able to arrange for Amanda to walk back to their car with them, and then for them to drop her off at the Rangiwahia road-end to collect our van. The three of them left at about 12.15, with a loose arrangement that Paul, Steve and I would follow about an hour later. With nothing much else to do, Steve found a bunk to lie on for another daytime nap, while Paul and I chatted with the NZDA people and browsed the hut literature.

Steve at the Heritage road-end.

The remaining walk back to the Heritage road-end almost feels as if it’s a vehicle track in some places, and having left at 1.30pm and moving at a very relaxed pace, we were at the fence bordering Ruahine Forest Park about 20 minutes later. The timing was good and Amanda drove up at about 2.15pm, just as we’d begun to walk down the road. As Steve pointed out, leaving on Sunday instead of Monday (Labour Day) had the added advantage of us not having to pay a surcharge at the cafe in Kimbolton, where we stopped for a decent second lunch.

With breaks in the weather emerging, we could now clearly see the freshly snow-capped mountain range over which we might have been walking if the weather had played more nicely earlier in the day, but I guess on this occasion it wasn’t to be. We really needed two days of good weather to have carried out the original plan and for it to be worthwhile. Attempting it in reverse also complicated things further by putting the longest day of walking on the same day we wanted to drive home, and the uncertainty of exactly how this would pan out was a significant factor in us deciding to get out early. I still got to visit several places I haven’t been, however, and we’ll probably get another chance to try it again in the future.

What the storms left behind.

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

Dates: 12th – 14th September, 2008
Location: Tararua Forest Park, Walls Whare Road-end.
People: Alistair, Sarah, Illona, Amanda, Bernie and me.
Huts visited: Cone Hut (1 night).
Intended Route: Walk to Cone Saddle and camp on Friday night. From Saturday morning head up to Cone, over to Neill via Neill Saddle, across to Winchcombe Peak, continue to Hector, then follow the Southern Crossing track to Alpha Hut for Saturday night. Out via Marchant Ridge on Sunday.
Actual Route: We got to about point 1055 below Winchcombe Peak, then decided to turn around and head back to Cone Hut for the night and head back to Walls Whare on Sunday.
[Photos and movies]

We arrived at Walls Whare in coordination with another club group that was indirectly aiming for Totara Flats, with both groups planning to walk the first leg of their trip on Friday night. The others intended to spend the night at Cone Hut, whereas we thought we might just camp up the hill at Cone Saddle, which was marginally closer to where we planned to go.

The track was very muddy all the way up to Cone Saddle, and for a while we suspected we might not actually be able to find a flat area that wasn’t a bog to set up our Huntech flies. After a while we began to spot the occasional flat area several metres off the track, however, which was reassuring. At Cone Saddle we set up one fly slightly off the track, and another in the middle of the track, where it looked deformed once it was set up thanks to a bit tree-stump… otherwise it was very comfortable. Huntech says these flies are for 2 people, but with some ingenuity it’s nearly always possible to get 3 people under them, and we easily had 3 under both.

It began to get light around 6am, but with the fly still fairly damp and very light rain outside, we were a little reluctant to get up. From 10 metres away in the other fly, we heard Alister’s voice state something along the lines of how he’d be going at 7 with or without us, but it wasn’t until after some morning wake-up brews from within sleeping bags that anyone really began to stir properly. Thus it wasn’t really until about 7.15am that we actually got going, heading north up the track to Cone Peak (1080). Within 10 minutes we heard the screech of at least one Kaka, and turned around to see it fluttering away in the tree-tops above us, which I thought was quite a neat thing because although small numbers of Kaka are known to live in the Tararuas, it’s the first time I’ve ever had the pleasure of actually seeing one there in the wild.

Being under trees, the water was transformed from a light, misty rain to some more focussed drop-lets dripping from the branches, which is a nice setting to be walking through in the goblin forest up towards Cone. Before long we were starting to get damp, however, and some of us found raincoats. The occasional windows through the trees that looked off the spur towards the west let us see through to some increasingly impressive rainbows.

We still needed water for the day (even though Alistair had pointed out we’d walked past several obvious mud puddles on the way up), and the most obvious source was around Cone Peak, which has the odd tarn. We reached Cone a bit after 8.30′ish, and stopped just inside the tree-line because Amanda pointed out that it was likely to be much colder outside than it was under the trees. There was a last slab of snow nearby in the trees. She was completely right, too, and a moment after I stepped out for the 100 metre walk towards the tarn, I was glad I had my raincoat to fend off the wind, and wishing I’d bothered with my balaclava.

The route turns from north to east at Cone, and to get to the tarn for water, we’d strayed some distance from the main route towards Neill (leaving most gear back under the trees). Consequently, we were only exposed on Cone for a minute with the exception of the dash for water.

The cairn for turning north,
just west of Cone Peak.

We left Cone at about 9am, and 10 minutes later we reached the cairn which marks where the marked route swings from west back to north, as it dips into Neill Saddle. From here the route dips into some more very nice goblin forest, which is quite steep in places but still very pretty. We also passed the odd pool of water which might also have been good for collecting water if we hadn’t already filled up so recently.

Chasing a rainbow on
Neill Peak (1158).

We arrived at Neill Peak (1158) at about 10.30am, and for a few minutes we had more exposed tops to traverse, which was okay for as long as it was possible to keep the freezing wind off. There was still a very light misty rain, and consequently we were following rainbows for much of the time. Getting down from Neill was fairly steep and muddy in places, but easily do-able with care. By 11am we were in trees again, heading towards point 1055.

It was about now that things changed. After 4 hours of walking we were only a third of the distance we’d planned to travel for the day. Nobody was knackered, but although we expected things to get much faster and easier after reaching Hector and the main Southern Crossing trench back to Alpha Hut, several of us were starting to wonder if we were likely to make it through the entire day. Optimists in the group were guessing we’d be at Alpha by 4.30pm, but pessimists were picking more in the region of 6pm and becoming concerned about whether it was worth it. After some brief negotiations, we very quickly reached a happy consensus that we’d be better off not continuing with the original plan, and at 11.15am we decided to turn around and go back. Exactly where we’d go back to was yet to be determined, but there were several options. Shortly afterwards, we went back to the lower part of the slope on the western side of Neill for some lunch on the slope. We were still in a wafty mist at times, but the Sun was slowly beginning to emerge by now.

Everyone was away again a bit after 12, when we kept going back up to the top of Neill, now going more slowly because there was probably a little less enthusiasm. The rainbow was now to our right and occasionally behind us, and it really stood out. We spent about 30 minutes walking and standing on the tops around Neill before dropping back into Neill Saddle, and with a bit more time to enjoy the relatively lazy walk it wasn’t until 2.30pm that we were back on Cone, and sat down in what was now becoming warmer sunshine.

A discouraging view from Cone of
where we would have been.

By this point, we were think we might just go down to Cone Hut, and try to beat out the other club group if necessary, so they wouldn’t re-locate our van to the far end of Marchant Ridge. Another possibility had been to go direct to Totara Flats, where they should be staying the night, but we didn’t know for certain that they’d be there anyway. So Alistair had a go at phoning Craig (in the other group) to pass on the message that we were going to Cone, and was fortunate enough to be able to talk to him directly. It seems there’s work-able reception both on Cone Peak, and at least along parts of Cone Ridge, where they were.

So now it was just a task of getting down to Cone Hut. We left Cone at about 2.50pm, and arrived back at Cone Saddle at around 4.20pm, hearing more Kaka squalking on the way down. After a brief sit-down at the saddle, we finally reached Cone Hut at 4.50pm. Alistair and Bernie got started on building a fire and although we had some damp-wood issues at first, it wasn’t long before the place was warming up. We settled into dinner, and soon after went to bed with the roaring of the Tauherenikau River outside. It did come up as a topic of conversation that we were having a much better time roasting in Cone Hut after a relaxing day than we might have been having in an Alpha Hut freezer after an exhausting day.

Everyone slept in on Sunday, and lazed around until well after 10am, which seemed a bit unusual for what the trampey club had rated a fit trip. There wasn’t much incentive to leave early, considering that Craig had told us the other group wasn’t likely to reach the road-end any earlier than 2pm. We were literally about 1.5 hours away. Previously a few of us had been thinking about the possibility of walking out via Tutuwai Hut while the others went out the other way to get the van. This never eventuated, though, since in the end we couldn’t be bothered and were having too good-a-time socialising, or something like that.

We did finally leave at 10.30am, though, with a plan to continue very casually and to find a nice place for lunch on the way down, in what was now bright sunshine. After about an hour, we found such a place just off the track, and stopped for a very leisurely lunch and gossip session (which is completely normal on any trampey trip). As we munched and chatted, a group of 6 or 7 people from what looked like another tramping club walked past us up the hill, on what they said was some kind of circuit daywalk. These were the first people we’d seen since waving goodbye to the people of the other trip on Friday night.

Sunny walking back
to the van.

We got up and left again at 12.15pm, and roughly an hour later we were back at the van. This was excellent timing because during the 20 minute window that it took for everyone in our group to reach the bridge over the Waiohine Gorge, all 9 people from the other club trip turned up having arrived from Totara Flats… so we didn’t even have to wait long to get back into our van.

In the end it was a really worthwhile trip, as most trips are. Among other things, I got to see a Tararua kaka in the wild. We didn’t get to go to where we originally planned, but I think it says something about the people you’re out with when everyone can reach a quick and easy consensus to give up without any dissent. We had a great time.

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.

A couple of years ago I was walking home from work and noticed a rubbish bin on The Terrace with at least three broken umbrellas crammed in it, which I found rather hilarious. Since then I’ve been trying to remember to pack my camera on days with lots of wind and just too little rain to keep most of the office dwellers inside. Even then, this was the first time I’ve seen anything similar again. It’s a shame there was only one.

I should make a note that I still need to buy myself a good solid tramping umbrella.

Beneath the forest canopy of High Ridge is an emerald green, full of luscious moss, and sparkly glints of delightful photographic happiness. According to our experience, it also rains lots on weekends.

Dates: 16th – 18th March, 2007
Location: Tararua Forest Park
Drowned Rats: Christine, Paul, Danniel, Mike.
Drowned Cat: Marie.
Huts visited: Holdsworth Lodge (1 night), Totara Flats (1 night), Powell Hut (0 nights), Mountain House (shelter, 0 nights).
[Photos]

On Friday night, we shared the bus to the Holdsworth road-end with those involved in the introductory bush-craft course. Our own objective, as a trip focused on building navigation skills, was to walk up past Powell Hut, along High Ridge to Flaxy Knob, and then bush-bash our way down to Totara Flats.

The forecast was never good for the weekend, but it suggested that Saturday might have some reasonable weather. Unfortunately, it didn’t. Before we reached Mountain House, we decided that the low, fast-moving cloud that obscured High Ridge made it pointless to continue. Instead, we back-tracked and headed straight for Totara Flats. Plan B was to hope that the weather would clear enough to leave early on Sunday morning and do the trip in reverse.

Even getting to Totara Flats was an interesting experience. Marie and I, at the front of the group, accidentally walked onto an older unmaintained track. We became suspicious after a short time, and while Marie went to scout ahead, I stayed where I was and kept an eye on what I thought was the point where we had left the main track behind us. It turned out that it wasn’t, and by the time Marie had returned and we figured this out, Christine had already walked past the point where we’d left the main track. We found Paul and Danniel, who had been quite a lot further behind, but they weren’t 100% sure where Christine was, except that they hadn’t passed her. Marie and I then spent the next 30 minutes scurrying back to where Marie was sure of having definitely seen her last, while Paul and Danniel continued to the hut with an arrangement of coming back to help if we hadn’t turned up within a couple of hours.

With all the wind, the swing bridge over the Waiohine River was in full tilt, making it a crossing worthy of an amusement park. Marie bruised her arm when holding on during one of the more violent gusts of wind, and seemed quite proud of it afterwards. We reached the Totara Flats Hut at about midday, happily discovering that Christine was there, and had been quite concerned once she arrived and found that we hadn’t. It was there that we unpacked and stopped for lunch. Despite the confidence that we had in the barometer on Paul’s shiny new watch, which indicated the weather was improving, it was about now that the rain really started to kick in. After Danniel had lit the fire, Marie took the opportunity to give us some brief lessons in navigation techniques. Not wanting to sit around for the afternoon, we then found our wet-weather gear, and set out for a leisurely swim around the flats.

We had earlier considered the idea of crossing the Waiohine River and looking for Sayer Hut. One look at the amount of rapidly flowing dirty water, however, made it clear that attempting a crossing would be a very bad idea. Instead, we satisfied ourselves with figuring out where we’d expect Sayer Hut to be. Paul also took us to the fireplace remains of the second Totara Flats hut that was built in the 1970s, before it was moved due to a risk of flooding. By the time we had reached the far end of the flats, we could go no further. The stream flowing into the Waiohine at that end was impassable, and we turned around. The rapid effect of the rain was obvious. Even a small creek part-way along the flats, which we had easily stepped in an hour before, had risen considerably in the course of an hour such that we had to think carefully about where to cross on the way back.

Danniel kept the fire going nicely that night. With the torrential rain hammering on the roof, we had the hut to ourselves. We amused ourselves with thoughts of what it might be like outside under flies, which was what had been planned for people taking the bush-craft course.

Marie woke early on Sunday, and determined that although the wind had died down enough to make it feasible to visit High Ridge, it could also be a miserable trek when we reached the exposed areas on the top. Once she explained this, we sadly decided on plan C, which was to return to bed and sleep in. Afterwards, we’d have a relaxing walk back to Holdsworth Lodge, hopefully interspersed with some technical river crossings through the higher-than-usual creeks along the way. For the next hour, I kept myself entertained by gazing out the window from the top bunk, hoping to see a large tree or two being carried down the river. It was sad that our expedition was to be a fairly simple return trip to Totara Flats, but it was a good decision at the time.

The swing bridge was calmer than the previous afternoon, consistent with the wind having died down. When we reached the first of the minor creeks later that morning, however, there was even more water than we had anticipated. A small trip while crossing could have easily meant being washed into an overfilled Totara Creek, and then into the dangerously flooded Waiohine River. We considered returning to the hut for an extra night to wait for the waters to subside, but finally decided on plan D, which was to give High Ridge a try. Despite the conditions, it was sheltered under trees for most of the way. We would still have the option of returning if it looked to get too much worse, as well as the option to stay at Powell Hut if we ran out of time to reach the road-end. As we’d left later than anticipated for following this route, however, we’d need to move fast to get back by the end of the day.

The cairn that marked the start of the route up the spur was only five minutes along the rather saturated bog of a track behind us, and Marie led the way to Flaxy Knob. It was necessary to keep moving to stay warm, so everyone had a ready supply of high energy snacks to munch on during the walk up. We were now in more of a hurry, and unfortunately there wasn’t as much opportunity to experiment with navigation techniques, or even to stop and take photos.

Besides the great scenery along the ridge under the tree canopy, the highlight for me on this section of the trip was surviving a fall. I chose the wrong branch to support my weight when traversing a narrow section straddling around the hillside, toppled off a vertical drop for a metre or two, and ended sliding some distance backwards down a steep bank on my pack. By the time I’d realised what had happened, I was staring up the hill at Danniel, Paul and Christine about 10 metres away. Having surveyed everything that missed me on the way down, I think I was very lucky to have come away without a scratch to show for it, although Christine had to help me re-attach the hood of my raincoat.

I guess packs are good for these types of things, and the tendency of mine to roll underneath and act as a landing pad probably saved me from at least a few broken bones if not much more. After climbing back to where I’d started from, I was still a little shaken. Marie needed to point out several times, before I comprehended, that I was about to put my weight straight back on what remained of exactly the same rotten branch all over again. It could easily have been worse a second time, but thanks to Marie’s alert observation, I definitively conquered that five metres of the route, and hopefully came out of the whole thing a little wiser. Take THAT, nature!

The weather began to clear as we ascended, and the rain had even stopped by the time we’d dragged our packs through a few branches of Leatherwood to poke our heads above the bush-line. It was windy walking over the tops, but passable with caution. With the clouds having cleared, there were also some brilliant views back over High Ridge. It was just before 3pm by the time we reached Powell Hut, which had actually been our arranged time to meet with the others at the lodge. Marie took the opportunity to start making phone calls to report that we’d be late. Danniel spent a few minutes composing a verse for the hut book, and the rest of us attempted to quickly eat some proper lunch.

It was unfortunate that a sign inside Powell Hut had an incorrect phone number for the DOC ranger at the Holdsworth road-end. We thought to dial 018 to ask for the number, but the nice man from Telecom didn’t actually know where “Holdsworth” was, let alone the ranger’s office at a road-end, so couldn’t be of much help. Having been unable to contact anyone, we decided to just try our luck walking out, hoping that the bus would wait a little longer for us. With a clear track from Powell Hut, stalled only by a widely berthed platoon of people walking their dogs near the lower end, the remainder of the trek was fast compared with what we’d had until then.

It eventuated that the bush-craft group had decided to wait until 5pm, having sat around for the better part of the afternoon. A very reasonable assumption had been made that that we were probably stuck between flooded rivers at Totara Flats. A detailed note had been written and left for us at the lodge, the ranger had been notified of an overdue party, and our situation had been used as an example in front of the bush-craft attendees of how easy it is to be delayed for extra nights when tramping near rivers.

By a fortunate coincidence for us, 5pm happened to be the exact time that I walked out. I was quite bemused to see a bus full of people, who let out cries of surprise as I walked past the window, followed by a collective groan as I poked my head in the door and indicated that the rest of the group might take up to another half hour to arrive. Supposedly the only thing that had held them up was Glynne’s decision to change his shoes before returning to drive the bus away. Not that we minded, of course: our ride home had been saved.