Friday 19 February 2010

Navigating the Blue Range

October 12-14 2007

Tararua Forest Park, Kiriwhakapapa Road End

Team: Ray (Leader), Jackie, Jane, Corwin 1 other (aplogies, I have forgotten names from then!), Me

blue range nav route

Starting in the usual way, with the group meeting at the railway station at 5.30, we proceeded over the hill and stopped for my first dinner at the great kebab shop in Carterton. The Kiriwhakapapa road end was reached with no great drama (which was great given we were in the crapper old bus!), and beds were constructed in the shelter.

Saturday dawned clear and quite warm, and we wandered along the track towards Mihimihi, looking for a spur heading off the side where we would leave the track and start bush bashing. It was surprisingly obvious and easy to find! The plan from there was to head up the ridge to Te Mata, a small peak, then down and on to the track and on down to Cow Creek.

The navigation was something we only did because we wanted to, as it turned out that the ridge was an old track of some sort, and was clearly marked every couple dozen meters with pink markers of various types. Hence, Te Mata was reached without too much ado and lunch was had.

Rest Trig

The track from Te Mata down to the river and Cow Creek Hut is steep and nasty, and I have vowed never to do it again. Once at the bottom, there was a bit of track that had washed away in a slip and a short river sidle was required, before we reached the bridge that marked we had arrived at the hut.

Cow Creek Hut is lovely, and if there was an easier way to get there, I would definitely go again! 6 bunks, old forest service style with a wonderful potbelly that we stoked up before all taking a nap before dinner. Sleep was early for everyone, since the was no table to sit around and play cards and the weather was packing in.

In the morning we headed back out, straight up and over the hill towards the road end. The short sidle in the river had turned into a well beyond knee deep mission due to overnight rain, which had also made the track slippery in many places.

Cow Creek Bridge Cow Creek Hut Slip

While the others all headed off to Blue Range hut for a visit, I kept plodding along, worried that if I didnt I would be entirely left behind. The track down from Blue Range is also very steep, and VERY suddenly flattens out. I was caught about 10 minutes from the end of the track, and was very glad to get home!

Friday 12 February 2010

A Monumental Achievement

Yep, I'm finally getting around to writing up older trips. Its about time some of these were written up!
20-23 October 2007

Tararua Forest Park, Holdsworth Road End

Group: Me (leader), Emma, Emily, Rita (assessor / supervisor)

After a hectic Friday spent packing and shifting, before then unpacking, grocery shopping and packing again to go away, I slept really well, and somehow managed to be nicely organised just in time for people to arrive at my new flat on Saturday morning to share a ride to the road end.
The purpose of the tramp was to complete my Gold Young New Zealanders Challenge of the Duke of Edinburghs Award, and therefore we needed to spend 4 days tramping, exploring both the valleys and tops of the range.

My previous attempt at a Gold DoE tramp had been cancelled about 5 days out, as we had planned to complete the round-the-mountain tramp at Ruapehu, but a Lahar had come through and washed away a major bridge, leaving a very acidic river blocking our path and cutting the available track in half, meaning the walk was never going to be long enough.

Rough Plan:
Day One: Holdsworth Road end - Jumbo Hut via Powell Hut
Day Two: Jumbo Hut to Mitre Flats Hut
Day Three: Day walk to Mitre
Day Four: Mitre Flats - Holdsworth Road end

Saturday
Even though it was late October and the weather had been fairly mild for the previous few weeks, there was an almighty storm going on over the tops on Saturday morning, so we decided to head along the valley to Atiwhakatu hut, and then from there to Jumbo Hut for the night, and see where we felt like going on Sunday. It is a very pretty valley, with some cool bridges and the walk in was fairly easy, apart from one massive slip that had obviously re-slipped since the track had last been cut through.
Rita getting stuck Rita 1 person... makes you confident??? Atiwhakatu Stream Crossing
It was quite mild weather wise with just a nice breeze. At Atiwhakatu hut, we met a couple of runners who had tried to get to Jumbo and had had to turn around because the weather was too bad, with lots of wind-driven hail, and a bit of snow as well. We stuck with our decision to head up the hill to Jumbo Hut on the theory that the hut was only just above the bushline, so chances were, we could still make it. Worst case scenario was that we would have to turn around and come back to Atiwhakatu, which although not pleasant, was at least there!
Emily and Emma
The climb was steep, nasty and slow. And very soon, surrounded by snow / hail / ice. Which was kind of cool, as none of us had tramped in snow before. Everyone was very tired, but got a bit of a second wind when we got to the bushline and started getting pounded by gale-force-wind driven hail! OUCH!!
Raingauge Spur sign Arrival
Later in the evening, the weather settled somewhat, and we got a bit of a view over the rest of the range, which looked rather nasty, and gave us a fair indication that wherever we were going the next day, it definitely involved going back DOWN the hills!
Baldy

Sunday
Sunday dawned fine but cold, and a lot of the ice from overnight had melted. There was still enough around for a snowball fight though!
Action Snow fight
We decided to head down the old track that would bring us out closer to Mitre Flats, rather than head back down the Rain gauge track again. It was actually a really lovely piece of track, still well enough formed and marked, and we were at the bottom before we knew it!
Coming through
Right near the bottom of this track is a really great-looking campsite that I keep meaning to go back to. Its a nice sized clearing, with a fire pit already built and easy access to the river. We stopped here for a while for lunch, and everyone started looking a bit tired, which was worrying.
Rita watching over

We continued on up the valley, eventually reaching the bridge thats as far up valley as the track goes. Its probably the longest and slowest bridge we crossed all weekend. There are a couple of fingers and toes, turned-round-backwards moments on the track before here, which were fun.
Emily
From here, the track goes UP to the junction with the track to Baldy and across Pinnacle Ridge. At the track junction, we sat down for food and a discussion. Everyone was shattered, and we had at least another 3 hours to go at current pace before we got to Mitre Flats Hut, from where we would have to come all the way back through where we were. There was also a technical bit coming up that had seen many experienced parties get lost for hours at a time, going around in circles. So the decision was made to return to Atiwhakatu Hut for the night, and go from there up one of the spur tracks to Powell Hut for Monday night. This way we were closer to the road end in case the exhaustion got worse in anyone, and we knew what was coming with regards to tracks, distances and times.

It was a fairly straight-forward tramp back to Atiwhakatu, although it took quite a while, and after crossing an unbridged stream between the two Jumbo Hut tracks, I managed to put my hand in a patch of stinging nettle. This meant a brief stop was required to dig out antihistamine cream, and at every small bit of flowing water I could get to, I was dunking my hand to try and cool it, as it felt like I was wearing a very tight balloon glove and my hand was effectively useless. All up rather unpleasant. But at least we got one laugh out of it - when I pulled my hand away from the nettle and realised what I had done, I yelled "Ow, it burns, it burns!" in what was apparently quite a comical tone. I couldn't not laugh at the imitations over the next 36 hours... :)
Stream

Monday
A short day distance wise, but it still took us the better part of 6 hours, from Atiwhakatu Hut via Mountain House to Powell Hut because we were all SO sore and tired! The weather clagged in on us as well as we went, and eventually we were walking in quite thick mist. We stopped at Mountain House for a pre-lunch snack, which wound up being soup. And Damn that was the best cup of soup I have ever had.
Mountain House ' Walk on, through the rain More up??? Really???
It at least wasnt windy on us! It cleared a little in the afternoon, so we spent some time exploring the close surrounds of the hut, which neither Emily or Emma had been to before, and then tucked in to some really quite average backcountry cuisine dinners. We had two flavours, and so everyone had some of each. This was great because only about the first 3 or 4 mouthfulls of each actually tasted any good!

Thankfully most of us still had hot chocolates and the like around, as the huts gas heater was broken, and with only four of us in the hut for the night, it did NOT get very warm at all! (Most of us had dinner sitting in our sleeping bags at the table)

Tuesday
Tuesday morning we got a text telling us that a southerly front with wicked winds was due to come through soon. Given at least two party members had spent most of the night awake becaus they thought the wind was going to blow the hut down the hill, we figured anything that was worse than we had now was worth getting out ahead of. So we bolted down breakfast, threw our raincoats on (it was hosing down) and bolted out the door fairly early.
Pig Flat
By the time we got to the bottom of the hill, it had dried out and warmed up (a little at least), which was lovely, but would have been nice to have had that weather on our way down! The track down was much the same as always, although this was before the recent re-build of the lower part of the gentle annie, so there were lots of steps that had fallen away. But the road, car and fish n chips were just a short walk away, so we pounded down the hill with our much lighter packs, ending back at the carpark by Noon.
Sunshine Happy Trampers Finished

Wednesday 10 February 2010

New Atiwhakatu Hut

12-13 July 2009

Tararua Forest Park, Holdsworth Road End

Group: Me (leader), Mark, Kyle, Jo

What a cruise of a tramp. Purposely advertised as an Easy Easy trip at club, with a Saturday morning departure and only a couple of hours walk to a brand spanking new hut, we planned to take it easy and eat extremely well!

Saturday morning saw Mark and I off to the rental company to pick up the vehicle the club had hired for us for the weekend, which happened to be a nice sedan instead of a van for a change, which was great. Collecting the other two at the railway station at 9am and with only a brief stop at Carterton to get the meat for dinner, we were at the road end in good time.

Its a track I have completed several times before, but there were some new sections along the way, where they have been improving the track to what can only be described as "great walk standard", which is nice for the fact that the bits done are so front country. Due to the fact I had had a fairly major back injury less than a month previous and was only leading this trip because I was damnably determined to get to this new hut, we passed on the option of going up to Mountain House and then down, instead heading direct for the hut.

On the way in we passed a pair of Dads with their collective kids, off for a couple of nights at Atiwhakatu, with a day walk up to the snow on the rain-gauge track on the day in between planned. It was nice to see the kids out and about, enjoying themselves. I'd like to see it more often!

The new hut is a VAST improvement on the old, although the toilet that was there when we came through was still the old one - the new one was lying on its side behind the hut, so I assume by now they will have dug a new hole for it...

We had lunch at the hut, and then spent most of the rest of the afternoon trying to get the fire lit in the new fire box to keep the hut warm. Snow was already confirmed at only about 500m above the hut by people who had come down from Jumbo and stopped to chat, and more was predicted overnight. Kyle went for a wander up along the track a way, and then came back to chop up some more of the old hut as firewood.

Eventually it was dinner time - Mince Nachos, a real treat on a tramping trip! Since we had only had a couple of hours walk, we had decided to carry mince, canned tomatoes, chilli beans and cornchips for dinner. Dessert was meant to have been Butterscotch instant pudding, but it was made with too much water, so only the marshmallows to go with it were really edible... Oops!

Eventually, after a couple of long games of 500, we headed to bed. By this stage it was very very warm in the hut, and the kids on the top bunks were not sleeping well. I think several wound up on mattresses on the floor eventually.

Morning at Atiwhakatu

After breakfast and packing up, we headed straight back for the road end and home, delivering people back in Wellington about 1pm. A great, cruisy weekend and one I really think I should do again soon!