17 December 2011
Party: Mark, Myself, Paul A (leader), Karl, Nic, Jose
Turere Lodge (meant to be Paua Hut), Orongorongo Valley, Wainuiomata
Coming so close to the end of the year, this trip was unsurprisingly late to be properly organised, with emails going out on Friday morning to confirm Saturday’s planned departure – “regardless of the weather”. The weather had been awful, and was forecast to remain so for the entire weekend, but we were intrepid proper trampers, so tramping we would go, regardless of the weather.
I don’t recall the weather being massively abhorrent while we were walking, but we got to the bridge at the Orongorongo River to discover a nasty, brown, fast-flowing and VERY high river in front of us. That had our destination on the other side of it.
A quick conflab was held and the easy decision made – no way were we going to try and cross that river and get the hour-or-so down the valley to the hut. Instead, we opted to trudge up the valley a short distance and head for the newly opened Turere Lodge for a lunch break before heading back to the van and home.
We found Turere Lodge booked by a set of Ranger Units, with the units tramping in over the course of the day, so only a couple of leaders were in residence when we got there. They obligingly let us look around (Turere is a locked, bookable hut normally) and allowed us to warm up in front of their fire while we ate, which was a huge improvement over the intended plan to eat out on the deck.
Given Karl had his traditional multiple-kg bag of lollies with him, we ate what we could and gave a pile to the leaders to lighten his pack before heading back along the track towards the carpark.
Good practice at carrying an overnight bag again after a while away from tramping, even if we only got halfway to where we had wanted to be. And a good team to have an unusual day with!
