Take me to the river

Turere Lodge, Orongorongo Valley
28-29 January 2022
Party: Mark, Mr8, Me, other assorted WTMC Families Group people

Turere Lodge is so popular, that booking it for a weekend night is basically impossible. We did the next best thing and booked the entire lodge out for a Friday night - giving us capacity to take up to 28 people in for the night.

We wound up with about 20 people, half kids, a good balance between filling the space and allowing for a small amount of quiet.

The walk in was mostly wonderful, although we had had to leave without a couple of groups because they were running so late, and at least one of them was a bit grumpy when they eventually caught us. Whoops. 

The big kids raced on ahead, the little kids took their time, and all of a sudden we were at the banana bridge. The toilet at the bridge was clean and pleasant, which was nice. The river was full of algae and running at an extraordinarily low flow rate, which was not so nice.

After a short second afternoon tea break here, we continued on to the hut, arriving around 4pm. Bunkrooms were sorted, the baby was fed, and the kids were taken down the rope trail to the river while dinner was prepared. We had nachos from our freezer - nice and simple to reheat, made even easier by the provision of all cooking supplies at the hut.

Bedtime was a surprisingly smooth process, given the number of kids and their excitement levels, and the adults followed hard on the heels of the kids.

In the morning, we were all up and about at a reasonable time. Trying to get a group photo on the deckw was hard because the sun was shining straight in everyones faces. The weather was still amazing, the track was dry and quick, Jacobs Ladder UP was announced as more interesting than it had been DOWN the day before, Macs Hut was explored (it has a new lock on the door since the last time I was there), and we saw a lot more people walking in to the valley than we had seen the day before.

We were back in the carpark before lunch, ready to head home. Last time we did this trip, Mr8 was only Mr3.5, and he was asleep in the back of the car almost before we left the carpark. This time he was bouncy and enthusiastic and amped about his awesome tramp.

 

12 go for a long walk

Turere Lodge, Orongorongo Valley, Rimutaka Forest Park
Me, Mark, Spike, Emily, Ivan, T, M, Amelia S, A, C, Marion, E.
3-4 December 2016



Planning for this started months ago. Not long after the really challenging overnighter we took Spike on to Waihohonu Hut in February. Because you have to book a stupid amount of time in advance if you want to reserve the entirety of Turere Lodge for a weekend night! Originally we had thought about doing this around my birthday, but by the time we booked in about late April, the first weekend of December was the first weekend exclusive occupancy was available.

We sent out the invite to about 8 friends who had kids (and a couple who didn’t), hoping to get 4-6 families total into the 32-bed, 4-room lodge. Eventually, after a couple of late pull-outs, and the addition of a family grabbed from the Tramping Club Families group, we had 4 families – 6 adults, 3 3-year-olds and 3 5-year-olds. What a group. What an appetite for chaos we all had!



Turns out, this was a fantastic sized group. We could all amble along at different paces, taking turns to keep an eye on each others kids. The kids kept each other motivated and moving, and even though it turns out there is a LOT of up hill going in to Turere Lodge, the kids all walked most, if not all, the way in.




After a late start at the carpark of nearly 2pm, it was after 5:30 by the time we got to the hut and got the rooms unlocked. Dinner was started immediately, to the sound of kids running around screaming. They all ate something at least, although some were too tired to eat much. After a shared pudding of chocolate cake, strawberries and custard, we started working on persuading them all to go to bed. Unsurprisingly, Spike was last to go to sleep, finally drifting off not long before we all headed to bed.

While Turere is a wonderful hut, and its awesome to not have to bring cooking or eating gear, the mattresses are in desperate need of replacement. I wound up getting up at about 2am and pulling down a second mattress. Mine was more air than filler inside its cover! But honestly, that’s my only complaint – the hut was warm without heating, there was loo roll in the toilets and hand sanitiser at the basin. It was clean and tidy.

Sunday morning rolled around FAR too early for anyones liking.  We stumbled through breakfast on the deck (having forgotten the brown sugar for our porridge), threw our gear in our packs, grabbed a team photo on the deck and headed off about 8:30am. Despite the bulk of the walk being downhill on the way home, it still took as long to get back – poor tired legs and all.

The kids all excitedly climbed up Jacobs Ladder instead of the newer benched track until the two crossed again, so that we could promise them a break at the seat 7/8ths of the way up the hill. From there, we stopped again at Macs Hut briefly, then continued on. Around Midway Bridge, the younger kids started to significantly flag, so elephant rides became a routine sight and bribery became an essential component in keeping moving.


 

We also regularly leap frogged a family group who had stayed on a hut across the river, including a mum wearing an old Mountain Mule that looked painful, even with a jersey wrapped over her shoulders as extra padding under the straps.



Arriving at the road end with very tired kids just as it started drizzling at about 12:15 was a relief. A quick toilet break, change of clothes / shoes and we were all off. McDonalds for lunch was a failure as Spike was so tired we should have let him sleep instead, as he didn’t eat.

A great time was had, and the parents are all discussing doing it again to somewhere else (maybe Atiwhakatu) when the kids are another year or so older. Spike loved carrying his little bag (this one was better sized for him than the one we tried in February), and we are looking forward to him using it again, perhaps with more than a bottle of sunscreen and a whistle next time!

Thwarted Effort

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!

Paua Hut

May 2-3 2009

Orongorongo Valley, Rimutaka Forest Park

Team: Sue (Leader), Ravi, Lillian, Amelia, Mark, Mike, Angela, Toby, Stacey, Bronwyn
Weekends like this are why I love tramping!

Friday night some of my workmates and I headed out for dinner at the Flying Buritto Brothers to celebrate surviving the dramas of the end of the financial year (and the seeing off of the auditors!). Even the CEO joined our small group for the evening, which was actually quite fun! Mark and I then headed home to pack for our tramp that was leaving on Saturday morning, and I have to say that my pack seemed MUCH smaller simply for not having to spend a night at the road end - not that I could think of much that I would normally take but didnt, although, I did forget hut shoes entirely, which is really kinda stupid when you consider that I KNEW we had to cross a river multiple times to get to the hut!


The track in to Paua Hut is a fairly simple amble. Well, it would normally be if I hadnt had too much marguerita the night before! It starts with a bit of a climb up the hil, then wambles up and down for what took us about 2.5 hours before reaching the river. We had Toby, a 6 year old, with us, which meant more frequent stops for all, and a slower pace than normal as well!
Before too long we reached the end of the track, where it drops rather steeply down to the river, and a really funky bridge...


From here it was time to start a half-hour or so amble along, across and through the river to the hut.

For the first couple of crossings, we practiced "good technique" even though the river was well down (given the heavy rain of the previous few days, this was a relief!), just so we could say we had. From then on though, it was every person for themselves, and we had quite a lot of fun in the river!
All of a sudden, we were at the hut and it was lunch time!! Mark, Stacey and I had arranged between us to carry some treat food for the afternoon, so we spent our time nibbling on crackers and cheese, and corn chips with salsa dip. This was a big plus, as the dinner was rather plain and dull to be honest - Mac n cheese with bacon, followed by choc instant pud with marshmallows... Edible, but given the easiness of the trip, I would have expected something a little more... extravagant... perhaps. The other groups Thai Green Curry Tuna actually looked rather appealing compared to ours!!
After an afternoon sitting in whatever sun we could find, reading books, still we all headed to bed for a reasonably early night - because we could!! I slept in as late as I could get away with in the morning, and when I got up, found that most of the hut were up and about and outside, reading or generally relaxing before breakfast!
The walk home was more of the same, only the other way around, and we ended up back at the road end at the same time as the medium group, who had taken a much more challenging route to get there!