Kaitoke Road End - Mt Reeves Track
Party: Myself, Dad
This tramp was planned as a nice father-daughter weekend and as a chance for me to escape Christchurch for a few days. I was also home for a job interview on about the Wednesday after we were due out.
The original plan had been for us to go in at the Kaitoke Road end, stay at Tutuwai Hut and Mitre Flats hut and walk out at Holdsworth OR Waiohine on day three. As with many of my trips, the actual events wound up being rather different!
The night before the tramp we were at some family function or other in Masterton. Dad and I did the grocery shopping for the tramp without writing a proper menu, and we didnt have time to pack things down or limit quantities. I also hadnt tramped in ages, and had brought the bare bones of my kit up from Christchurch. The weather report also indicated that things were going to turn not very nice on about day two, with snow on the way - but we were staying in valleys, and had good exit routes planned, so we should be ok, right?
(can you see disaster waiting in the wings on this one?)
Day One
Welcome to hell on earth, part one
Mum dropped us off at the Kaitoke Road end and took a photo for the memory (AND I suspect, in case anything happened, so she had a photo of what we looked like!), and we headed off in the heat of the day.
Part way to Smith Creek, there was a big slip where the track advised you to go up and around. "Sod that" we thought, and we trundled off into the river for a while. Eventually we decided that we should really try and find the track again so we could stop at the hut for lunch. Thankfully this didnt prove too challenging, and we were on the track almost right at the hut.
Lunch (Marmite and cheese sandwiches) was had, and packs were re-shouldered for the walk to where the bridge over the Tauherinikau river USED to be. In February of that year, a massive storm had come through and washed away the bridge, and a new one had not yet been built because they hadnt decided where to put it yet.
Getting to that point seemed to take longer than it should. Perhaps we were just taking our time with our stupidly heavy packs. Anyway, once we arrived at the river crossing point, we realised that actually, the river was fairly high already, and there were only two of us (and Dad only just over a bad knee). It took nearly an hour to find a spot we felt comfortable crossing, and even then it went over our knees, which neither of us were comfortable with. I was exhausted - according to everything I had calculated, read and talked to people about, we should by rights have been at Tutuwai Hut at about the time we got to the river.
To then spend an hour looking for a crossing point, and knowing there was likely still an hour of walking on the other side of the river was enough to make me want to give up. But we had no bedmats, no groundsheets and no tent (stupid, I know and I've never made that mistake since), and with bad weather likely to arrive overnight, we had two options:
1. Go on across the river to Tutuwai hut and on from there
2. Go back to Smith Creek and sleep straight on the wooden bunks for the night, returning to the Kaitoke Road end to wait in the rain for a pickup since we wouldnt get cellphone signal until nearly at the carpark.
So we continued on. We made it safely enough across the river, and eventually to the hut, JUST in time for the end of the evening sched on the radio. This was because the track from the river to the hut was also badly degraded, including one gnarly bit where we had to take our packs off and pass them up a cliff higher than our heads that had no way around. I think the worst part though was going up all those STEPS to get to the hut!
After checking in with the Mountain Radio operator, we quickly cooked up some rice risotto with carrot, looked at the maps and had a discussion about how we felt and what the weather report indicated, then went to bed early.
Day Two
Welcome to hell on earth, part two
Just after I woke up on day two, it started to rain. And not gentle drops, but a torrent. Given the weather wasnt looking to clear for several days, and we hadnt been able to bring a book each for lack of room in our packs (so how on earth would we stay sane for up to three hut days), we decided to get out now before even worse weather arrived.
Having never tramped through this area before, we werent sure what the side creeks between Tutuwai and Cone would be like for crossing in heavy rain. (looking at the map now, I have more trust that they would have been ok as they only had small catchment areas). We also werent sure how exposed the ridge from Cone to the Waiohine Road end was (I now know it would have been the better way to go!). So we decided to go over Mt Reeves as it was the most direct way out from where we were, and if we managed to make it in the times suggested, (or even if we ran up to an hour late), we should have been able to catch the train from woodside station, which was only about 2km from the road end, at about 4.30pm to get us home to Wellington.
Yeah, Right.
To start with was the climb. Straight up for what seemed like hours in light drizzle. Getting across the top took forever because we had heavy packs that still had at least two days food in them. Lunch was a premade sandwich each, followed by an orange shared and a tube of sweetened condensed milk to keep us going, had in the lee of a large tree, still sortof being rained on. Dad was wearing a "gore-tex" he picked up in China that wasnt really waterproof, and a cotton tee shirt and had managed to injure his good knee at some stage. I was sore and miserable. We were exposed to the southerly that was constantly picking up, and at about the time we would have expected to be nearly at Rocky Knob, we discovered we were only at the point where the old track used to go down to the creek (about 3km short of where we thought we should have been).
By this stage we were resigned to the fact we were not going to make it to the train, and alternative arrangements had to be made. In fact, by this stage we were contemplating calling up one of Dads friends in SAR and asking them to come and help us out because both of us could barely walk and we had no emergency shelter, but we did have cellphone signal!
We managed to keep going by sheer force of will (and luck at not getting hypothermic), assisted by large quantities of whatever sugary stuff we could find in our pack.
Finally we had arrangements for transport in place, and made it to farmland (where I promptly put my hands on an electric fence. it was one thing too many and I wound up sitting on the ground in tears for several moments... Not my proudest moment!) to see Grandads car coming around the corner on the private road through the farm, having gone past the sign saying no access (bless him, we couldnt have walked that far!). He then delivered us to Upper Hutt where Mum and Dads friend was staying late at work to take us home.
Once we got home, Mum had the fire going, and while she helped Dad shower, I was told to strip in the hallway, given a fluffy towel out of the drier and sat in front of the fire. Then (embarrasingly!) Mum had to help me wash myself as well, as I just could not move. Dinner was wonderful takeaways.
Dad and I haven't been tramping together again since. Perhaps I should persuade him to come with me to do something easy like Atiwhakatu?... I still havent made it all the way through the Holdsworth - Kaitoke. I was meant to last Queens Birthday, but we didnt have enough people interested. Oh well, still on the "to-do" list then!
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