Family-Friendly Adventure

Atiwhakatu Hut track
Holdsworth Road End, Tararua Forest Park 

18-19 September 2021

WTMC Families Trip (7 Adults, 7 walking kids, one infant in a carrier)

 

Lockdown ended just nicely in time for us to go on this trip, which I had been looking forward to for several months (really, a year, I had planned to take Spike in the October holidays in 2020, but my ankle would NOT have stood for it).

Meeting everyone in the carpark, there were a lot of people around. We felt ok about that, because we had booked the hut, and nearly every space in the hut was booked by our party, so we didn't feel any need to rush just in case.

Having such a number of kids, including several who knew each other through cubs, in addition to those who regularly met on families group trips, meant the kids mostly walked super well. They kept each other occupied, talked kid rubbish all the time, and easily fell into the standard families group situation of just asking whichever parent was closest for permission to do anything.

A couple of the kids struggled a little bit with the massive swing bridge that marked just beyond half way to the hut, which wasn't surprising. It was long, and a long way up. A little bit of coaxing, and some unique solutions got everyone across to stop for lunch.

We arrived at the hut around 3pm. The kids all decided they wanted to share the biggest bunkroom as a group, which we allowed for the time being. It was cold and dark inside the hut, as the sun had already moved off it, and there was no dry wood around, even in the woodshed, because of recent storms.

We limped a fire into existence, all enjoyed some quiet(ish) time, the kids explored down to the river and we eventually had dinner.

Since it was my birthday, Mark carried about 3kg of caramilk brownie cheesecake mix into the hut for construction into pudding for everyone. This was devoured rapidly, with the last piece shared to the family who arrived at darkness with their 4 year old, having come down the hill from Jumbo late.

We reconfigured the kids and families into family-pod bunk allocations, especially since several of the kids had decided they wanted to sleep with their parents after all, crowding the parents spaces and leaving huge swathes of empty bunks around, and started prepping everyone for bed.

Our exothermic 8yo was cold in the middle of the night, despite the three of us crowding in to two mattresses. We wrapped him up in some extra clothes and he warmed up. Not the first time he's been cold in this sleeping bag recently, I think it is partly because its getting too short to keep his shoulders inside.

Morning came indecently early, but dry. It was still cool inside the hut, lovely and fresh outside. We spent a while hauling and chopping up more wood for the people who would come after us, leaving it in piles on various parts of the deck and in the woodshed, before taking some group photos to prove we were there and heading off.

Morning tea was had at the bridge. It really needs to be replaced, because a one-person bridge of that length, with a party of 14, takes a LONG time to get everyone across. The poor people we met going the other way who were out for a run and had to wait a good 15 minutes for us to all get across!

Some of us stopped for lunch in the shelter at Donnelly Flat, but several others just kept going the last 20 minutes back to the cars. Change of clothes, change of footwear, use the flush toilet, and back on the road. We stopped for an ice cream on the way home.

All told, we had an AMAZING time. Tramping with the families group kids is a fantastic way to get Spike out there. His new pack meant he happily carried all his own gear for the weekend (including water, but no food other than some snacks) with no complaints, no pain, and no requests to have a break.

 

Hell and Blisters

29-30 December 2010


Jumbo - Powell Loop, Holdsworth Road End, Tararua Forest Park

Party: Mark, Myself

Tuesday and the weather was awful, but predicted to clear for Wednesday and Thursday, so we thought "why not"... And suddenly we had decided that this years summer tramp would be the Jumbo-Powell loop, since Mark was due back on call on the 3rd, and we didnt want to have to go away per se.
Tuesday night we had Mike and Stacey over for dinner while they were both around before dissappearing off to Melbourne for the forseeable future. So after a couple of drinks each and tidying away the dishes, we decided to just go to bed and see how we felt in the morning before we packed.

Wednesday dawned bright and breezy with a few clouds and a continuing good weather forecast online. So we packed up and headed out the door about 10am. Meals had been planned from whatever was in the pantry and lightweight so that we could avoid having to stop at the supermarket. Minimum required gear had been taken. Packs still felt like they weighed a lot.

Arriving at a very busy Holdsworth campsite, and absolutely packed road-end, we were a bit nervous. We were made even more so when we arrived at (the now very different looking) Holdsworth Lodge to discover in the hut book about 14 people indicating they were headed towards Jumbo, possibly for the night. We jotted down our plans anyway and made our way along the Atiwhakatu Valley. At the worst, Mark had a inflatable mat, and I knew there were a few spare mattresses at Jumbo to put on the floor.

Although its not a long walk, the hike along the valley seemed oddly interminable. It just never wanted to fricken end. By the time we got to the hut, I was all for the idea of actually just staying there for the night and not bothering with the rest of the loop. Mark was having none of it, since the weather was meant to be actually nice the next day and it might be the only chance either of us had of doing the crossing with a view.

A short way up the spur and I felt a tearing on both my ankles. Oh dear, that felt like blisters. Even more Oh Dear, my heavy-duty, stick-like-anything strapping tape was on the computer table, where it had been deposited after finishing its duty as tape for the injury Mark did to his hand 3 weeks before our wedding. The only thing for it then was to harden up and keep going, which I did.

With no small amount of grumbling, by the time the heat and general tiredness made it take us three hours to get to Jumbo Hut, half our precious supply of chocolate was already gone (as were half the cornchips), and we had belatedly realised we had bought no rehydrating powder with us to make up for this distinct lack of sugar.

Dinner was an unusual concoction: Rice cooked in Chicken soup mix with carrot and zuchini, served with cheerios. Yes. That is what we had in the pantry, so thats what we made for dinner. It was actually surprisingly edible. We then finished off the pineapple lumps and snagged a piece of carrot, apple and walnut cake off a fellow tramper who had bought half of said cake with her.

The weather being good, at 8.30pm it was still light, but all 14 people in the hut were obviously used to the idea of having dinner and going to bed soon after, so well before dark everyone was asleep. This led to an interesting occurance of about half the hut residents taking turn about to the bathroom at about 1am.

7am came along with sun shining into my eyes through the hut window. I had slept through sunrise and to be honest didnt really care. The weather report that came at 8 via the warden indicated the weather would be "fine", so packs were shouldered and off up the hill we meandered.



The tops are a lot of up, then down, then up then down, then up then up then up then down. Mark wandered off to the summit of Mt Holdsworth, but I just didnt care by that stage, I was starving for lunch at Powell Hut. Our time across the tops had seen some interesting moments - some boggy areas that didnt have clear paths through them, a freezing cold wind above 1400m and eating most of the last of our snack food - but we made it up, across and down to Powell in 3hours40minutes, which is about the time we expected to take.

After a 45-odd minute stop at Powell for lunch, we struck off back down the track towards Mountain House, the road end and home.We were both tired and hungry (completely out of food and sugar by this stage, bar an emergency packet of two minute noodles), and I was very sore, so the trip was slower than usual. We stopped at Mountain House for nearly 25 minutes, just to rest, and snagged a half biscuit off a lovely couple who stopped there for lunch with their dog.

The track down from here was some of the worst hell I have ever experienced. My blisters hurt, my knees were sore (always are, going downhill), I only had one walking pole (so that slowed me down more than having none, as I couldnt use it the way I wanted - as my downhill brakes) and the bottoms of my feet ached. I am ashamed to admit that it took me nearly 2 hours to get down from Mountain House.

Eventually, though, we made it to the road end. We dumped our packs in the shelter and Mark went and moved the car to it so we could both use the toilet there and get changed at the same time without having to shoulder packs again. Our first stop on the way home was the dairy in Carterton for icecreams and powerade. Next stop was immediately to my parents place for dinner. I was so thrilled to not have to cook.

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.



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!