Gourmet Lodge Weekend

9 - 11 August 2013

Whakapapa Village, Tongariro National Park

Team: Mark, Spike, Me, and 29 others

This was a highly unusual trip to the lodgefor us. For starters, Mark and I had a 4 month old with us, second, we were going on a weekend full of other children.

Also, there was the awesome fact of it being a gourmet weekend.

We left Wellington as Spike was due his nap, just on lunchtime. After stopping at Z Mana, and debating McDonalds for lunch there, we decided to keep heading up the road instead since Spike had just fallen asleep.


Eventually we had lunch in Levin, followed by afternoon tea in Taihape, and a very brief stop just south of Waiouru with the sun setting over the mountain looking glorious. The drive west from Waiouru was challenging - straight in to the setting sun at times. We arrived at the lodge about 6pm, just after sunset.



Feed and bed for Spike, then dinner for us before the rest of the families arrived by van at about 9pm.

Saturday morning dawned clear. Dammit. I was in charge of the cooking for dinner during the day, and that was going to take most of the day and I was hoping to have plenty of help - especially with Spike having a cold that was bad enough we considered not going away.

By the time we had finished breakfrast, cloud was coming over the top of Pinnacle Ridge. The snow cover was already awful, and the weather report was average, so Mark agreed to stay in the lodge rather than waste a whole days pass on what looked to be a half days skiing.

Cooking started. By lunchtime we had much of the preparation done. The casserole (Beef, Onion & Guiness) was in the oven already, the pumpkin soup in a pot on the stove, cheesecakes were setting in the fridge and one set of bread was also in the breadmaker for turning into pull-apart garlic breads.

People started to arrive back in the lodge, having given up on skiing because of the weather. Spike was the centre of attention for some of the other kids, with his portacot setup in the lounge for his naps. More people started also helping with the last bits of dinner prep, as I abandoned plans to do potato dumplings and scones, instead simplifying the 5-course dinner ever so slightly.

We started dinner with standard lodge nibbles at about 4pm, followed by pull-apart garlic breads (BAM, and the bread was gone), before serving mains at just on 6pm, and dessert just after 7pm. The food went down a treat, and it was lovely to get so many positive comments.



Mark and I joined a few others for a few rounds of 5-handed 500 (no scoring) once Spike was in bed, before heading off for an early night ourselves. Breakfast in the morning was awesome, mini mushroom and egg pastries, apple danishes, loads of bacon. Even better, it was all cooked before we got up!

The weather was awful, however. So we packed up, and as Spike was due to go down for his nap, we loaded him down to the car and headed home, via After Hours for Spikes wheezy cold.

Menu:
Finger food: As usual for lodge. Carrot and celery sticks, dip, crackers, cheese and pickles.
Entree: Pull apart mini garlic breads
Starter: Curried Pumpkin & Kumara soup with Sourdough bread
Main: Beef, Onion & Guiness casserole with mashed potato and veges
Dessert: White chocolate & berry cheesecake with ice-cream

Raindrops kept falling on my head

5 - 7 October 2007

Boulder Forks Hut, Leatham Conservation Area, Marlborough

Party: Myself, Geoff

Friday

After rushing home from work early so I could park my car in Johnsonville and then catch a bus to Thorndon Quay / Old Hutt Road to walk to the ferry, it turned out I didnt have enough money on my bus card to cover my fare... Thankfully the driver took pity on me and let me on anyway, since my wallet was buried somewhere in my pack (which weighed a tonne!), behind the ice axe, crampons and helmet.

The walk from the south bound bus stop to the ferry terminal was very straight forward - as is the walk from the north bound stop, if you negate the fact that stop requires you to cross four lanes of traffic with a speed limit of 60kph! - and a lot faster than I anticipated, so I was at the ferry early
The ferry trip was a bit rough, as it was exceedingly windy.

There had also been a lot of rain leading up to our trip (not uncommon for spring), and so discussions were had about alternative options for the easy group. The plan was for them to follow us up to Boulder Forks Hut for the night as their entire tramp, while we were planning to go on from there to climb Bounds Peak.

Arriving at the road end in the pitch black of midnight in the pouring rain, a decision was made that our party, and the other climbing party of two, who were aiming for Pinnacle, would cross the river in the dark and head to the hut for the night to get a head start on the climbing. I really wish we hadnt. The river was high and unpleasant to cross. My head torch then started running out of battery, and I struggled to keep up with the guys as they missioned their way at full speed towards the hut. About 5 minutes from the hut there was what appeared on the map to be a minor side-stream that would need to be crossed. When we arrived, it was a raging torrent and you could HEAR the rocks being moved in the dark brown current.

Being now nearly 2am, the decision was made to link up and try it anyway. Even with no runout. Talk about a scary experience for me, who was on my first ever club tramp! We made it, and arrived at the hut in the dark a few minutes later. The family that were already there woke themselves up and volunteered to squeeze into a couple of bunks so we could have enough space, and the eight of us hunkered down for the rest of the night.

Saturday

Saturday dawned beautiful and clear and Geoff and I decided we would make a go of getting to the peak and back from the hut. So day packs were shouldered and we headed off. The ground was super saturated, it was like walking on marshland. Waterfalls had sprung up everywhere

and the gully Geoff had marked out as a way to climb up to the ridge was now a substantial river and very slippery.

After the night before, I was really in no mood to take risks as I was completely freaked out, so early on in the piece I abandoned the climb to the ridge and returned to the hut, leaving Geoff to his own devices.
I then went exploring in the direct area of the hut, including down to the river we had crossed the night before, which had dropped a bit since the rain had stopped at 4am or so.

I also clambered about in the old Boulder Forks Hut, which is in antique condition, but with groundsheets and mats would make a suitable emergency shelter if the main hut was full


the sun stayed out all day, and the ground around the hut was surprisingly solid considering how wet the next valley was. The family group who had stayed the night headed out about lunchtime, and so I pulled out my mat and sleeping bag and napped / read my book in the sunshine outside the hut for most of the afternoon.
Geoff returned about 4pm, announcing that the ridge would really need a long weekend to get up, and the easier access is from further back down the river towards the road.
The other two (Stuart and David I think) returned from Pinnacle at about 6.30pm, bang on the time they told us not to start worrying before. The easy group never arrived at the hut, so we had to assume they had decided to go somewhere else instead.

A nice dinner was had, followed by an early night.

Sunday

Overnight it had started raining again. The river we had earlier crossed had been down quite a bit the evening before, so we werent hugely concerned. Until we got up and saw it starting to rise very rapidly! (Obviously a rather large catchment area!), but it stopped raining by about 9am, so we thought it should go down again fairly well, forgetting it had taken all day Saturday to get as far down as it had...
We got to 11am and realised we really needed to get going if we wanted to meet the van at 2 for the drive back to the ferry. It was decided that we would try to true right of the river, as there were apparently large "River Flats". Yeah, they were flooded, and we wound up scrambling along rain-soaked hills on that side till we were bluffed out. Then we had no choice but to cross the river because going back against the flow wasnt really an option.

Crossing here was actually the easiest part of the day. The river was wide and slow flowing and only really ankle deep. We were now running late though, and had to mission along the 4wd track to the next river crossing to get back to the van.

We arrived on the far side of the river just as Paul was about to give up waiting for us and head the 3km back to the van for them to all go home without us. The river here was wide, fast and deep. An area which had been a puddle on Friday was now part of the main river. The spot the van had parked in had also dissapeared into the river. We could see why the easy group hadnt arrived at the hut!

We then discovered from Paul that there had been a washout on the road that the van had been unable to get past, they had been lucky to get it out Saturday morning. So we had to keep walking. It was cold, I was soaked to the skin and we were all miserable. Thankfully Paul was in good shape and offered to take my pack so I could keep up. Then even more thankfully, a local farmer came past and offered us all a ride on the back of his ute. Even with that, we still only just made it back to the ferry on time, and very WET!

Lesson: Dont sign up for trips beyond E/M. They will likely be beyond my capability!

Tararua Snow

03 – 05 July 2009
Mark, Me, Barbara + 7 others
Holdsworth Road End, Tararua Forest Park

Mid-Winter, and I was scheduled to lead an Easy-Medium trip to Sunrise Hut to play in some snow. We were hoping for maybe half a meter, enough to make it a tramp IN snow, but not ploughing through tons of the stuff being miserable.



The weather snowed nicely for us the week before, so I contacted a campground in Dannevirke so we didn’t have to try and make it to the road end in snow in the dark before making our way to Triplex Hut in the snow and dark at midnight or later. They were happy to have us, and offered us a massive discount to boot.

Friday morning I arrived at work to a massive flurry of emails. The not-great weather I had been watching all week had hit the Ruahine’s hard. The leaders of the other trips were not thrilled with the idea of going in, with one having called the local DoC visitor centre that morning and receiving the advice that the CARPARK was under 1m of snow, with more expected over the weekend.

I cancelled our booking at the campground at Dannevirke. They were pleased to hear that news as they had been worried about our plans given the weather they were experiencing. I still met my punters at the railway station on Friday night at the standard time and we made plans to go a bit closer to home – so Powell Hut it was. Sad, as I had been there so.many.times before.

For some reason, we still decided to head over the hill that night rather than heading home and then regrouping early Saturday morning. This meant we had a cold night ahead of us, sleeping in the shelter at the Holdsworth Carpark, as the lodge was booked.

Thankfully the wind was in a good quarter, and we were joined in the shelter by a whole pack of scouts also off on a tramp, so the number of bodies squeezed in to the area with a roof kept us all a little warmer than we would otherwise have been.

Saturday morning dawned slightly overcast but dry, and so we headed off up the slightly muddy track. We came across our first snow patches somewhere above Mountain House. When we got to the last flat section just below the bushline, the snow was blanketing the ground entirely. Looking up the first steep scramble to the lowest point of the ridge, there was a LOT of snow ahead of us, but a good ground trail to follow our way up.

We all stopped to celebrate making it to the snow (and to don extra layers and sunglasses), as the weather started packing in a little. The snow was deep enough in places that our trail in the snow was walking on top of the stunted trees that grow on the ridge.

We made it to the hut with no drama, shook the snow off our boots and settled in to get warm. A scrummy dinner and dessert were had, books were read by candle light and we all settled in for one of the best nights sleep I’ve had at Powell as we had very little wind.

Sunday morning dawned overcast. No pretty sunrise for us. On went frozen boots and damp packs, and we inched our way back down the hill, out of the snow and back to town. We got to tramp to and in the snow, even if it wasn’t to our original destination, and we had a good time while we were at it.

Winning all around!

Frozen Water

Taranaki Falls Loop, Whakapapa Village

Winter Solstice Weekend, 19-21 June 2009

Team: Myself, Mark, Geoff, Andy H, Steijn, Rob, Several Others

The weather at the lodge was marginal, tending revolting. My group had originally intended to walk to Whakapapaiti Hut, cook up a brew for lunch, then wander on down to the village for a beer and hot chips before returning to the lodge. After a talk with Geoff K (Chief Guide), we decided to can that idea because it involved what would be a very cold river crossing about 3 hours from the road end.

Mark was keen to do Tama Lakes, but with the wind gusting as strong as it was, past experience suggested that lower Tama Lake would be as far as you would get, and even that wouldn’t be overly comfortable. Instead, we decided to do the Taranaki Falls loop – or as much of it as we could do, considering we had heard conflicting reports about whether it was open or not.

Knowing we had a maximum four-hour walk ahead of us, we all took our time, and took our cameras. We had a lot of fun testing the frozen streams to see how much weight they could hold (most that Mark tried easily held him), and how many large rocks we could bounce off them before they cracked (they often won that one – we gave up before we got a break).

All of a sudden, we were in a sheltered, sunny spot (but it was still not very warm) at the top of Taranaki Falls – which appeared to be frozen too! Awesome. This put paid to any remaining idea that walking on to Tama Lakes would be good – everyone was too keen to get down and wander around the frozen waterfall.



After some fun playing with the waterfall, we had a brief debate. There was a sign clearly stating that the track beyond the lower bridge was closed, and we were wondering whether this was more to keep out underprepared daywalkers, or if there was something seriously wrong with the track. We decided that we would climb the fence and continue down the track anyway, being prepared to turn around at any point where it became obvious why the track was closed, and we felt unsafe continuing on.

Turns out, the track was closed for maintenance around an old slip, which we easily navigated. Our biggest difficulty actually lay in getting past some of the machinery that was on the track to do this work!
Before too long we were walking back out of the valley, taking the long, slow march from the forest edge to the van, parked in the carpark, soaking up the sunshine for us. We had all bought our swimming gear, and had always planned to head off to Tokaanu for a soak in the hotpools, but some people felt they really hadn’t done enough walking to earn it yet – so we stopped off on the way at Lake Rotoponamu.

The loop walk around the lake takes about an hour. Some of us didn’t really feel like walking all the way around, so we walked down to the lake and back up while the others ran around the lake. We had some exceedingly interesting conversations while we waited for the runners to get back to us… Poor Mark was the only bloke that didn’t run.

The hot pools were divine as always, and we stayed longer than we really should have. By the time we were coming back to the side of Mt Ruapehu, the sun was setting on the mountain, lighting it beautifully. The problem with this was that by the time we got back up to the carpark, it was dark and we had no headtorches! Oops! Thankfully Serac Lodge had its light on over the path, but the shadows were still huge.



After that it was party time – a yummy dinner, an 80’s themed dress-up party and a good quantity of alcohol meant pretty much everyone just chilled on Sunday morning. Once a good sized group were up and about, someone decided we should take the lodge toboggans down to the snow in Happy Valley and have a play on the snow. It was great – till I came off awkwardly and gave myself whiplash! Oops. Thank goodness Mark and I were travelling back in Robs car rather than the club van, as that was way more comfortable for the drive home. Needless to say, I wrote off the rest of the season for possible snowboarding lessons (on the advice of my Osteopath), which I wasn’t really complaining too much about!