Totara Flats Hut, Waiohine Gorge Road End, Tararua Forest Park
Party: Myself, Mark
Queens Birthday long weekend, 6 weeks of unemployment for me, and a variable, but not BAD weather forecast saw Mark and I getting up at a reasonable time on Saturday to head for the hills for a night, just to get away.
Our original plan had been to complete the Jumbo - Holdsworth circuit, but the weather report indicated that the best way to do this would have been to complete the tops on Saturday and be on our way out on Sunday, which would have been do-able, but we didnt feel like the early start that would require!Instead we decided on Totara Flats Hut, somewhere neither of us had been before, and therefore another hut to cross off our list - sweet - and a reasonably flat tramp to a reasonably large hut, so hopefully not too hard (since I havent tramped since Easter), and fingers crossed not a full hut!
Reading up the information we could find, all indications were it would take about 3.5 hours, so we allowed for over 4 hours of afternoon daylight and left the road end at about 12.30. An hour later, we rounded a corner to a spot that looked like it would be great for lunch to find it already occupied - by Megan S from club, and a friend of hers! Small world!
A quick lunch was had and we continued on, reaching Clem Creek after only a short stint. It wasnt too bad to cross, but getting down to it and back up again was a challenge, as access was very steep. In very bad weather, it would be impassable, and so we had a very brief discussion here about returning to the car, given the weather report. We decided to press on and hope that the weather report was right, and only light rain came through overnight and on Sunday morning.
There wasnt much memorable along the next part of the track, until the point where we first came down to nearly river level. This involved a short clamber down a slightly slippery tree root "ladder", and after one good step I lost my footing and started falling headfirst down the bank! I had enough time to realise that this was NOT a good place to do this (just on 3 hours from the road end, and we believed about 45 minutes from the hut), before I landed somehow feet first, jarring my neck a little and rattling my teeth together, Marks hand wrapped tightly around my upper arm, where a long graze and large bruise was already showing. (Photo taken later that evening at the hut, where the bruising is starting to become evident under the graze. This later turned black, then deep green for a couple of days, before fading within 10)
Thank god I landed feet first and not head first... Sunday night at home I kept having nightmares of the fall, and the aftermath if I had landed badly - pitching tent on a narrow bit of track, having to send the next people through back to the road for help (we knew they were there), a helicopter ride back to town, ringing my parents with the news...At this point we could see river flats ahead, and instead of pulling out the map, we assumed that these were the last flats before the hut, meaning the hut should be about 2km along the valley - perhaps 45 minutes. So I put on a thermal top to limit shock and we kept going. My first aid kit was somewhere in my pack, and when a moments rumaging didnt dislodge it, I gave up on finding a bandage and pain killers in preference for moving on towards the hut.
A short way further on was a decision point: The high-river track or the river-side track? The river was low, so we took the river-side option and clambered down the rocks to it. Ambling along the riverbed, we suddenly found ourselves starting to sink into concrete-like mud with every step! Looking away from the river, we saw the obvious scars of a fresh slip (Megan said later it must have been that week because DoC didnt know about it). We were about halfway between the river and the bank, and so wound up with no option but to start running from large rock to large rock across the face of the slip until we got to the other side and out of the quick-sand cement!
Going in to Totara Flats from here there is a LARGE orange triangle that marks what is obviously a track people have created by trying to get back to the track from this marker, as at that point it is not at all obvious that there is another route back to the track. There is, however, a much easier track to get back on to the main track about 20m or so beyond this marker triangle. Trust me on that one.
At this point we thought "yay, we MUST be nearly there". Not quite. We were back in to bush and climbing away from the river again... So once at the top, the map came back out and we realised that only now were we at the point we thought we had been at over an hour earlier. Getting across the bottom of the slip had taken quite a while. It was well on to 4.15 and we were down to less than an hour of daylight left. By all accounts, we should have already been at the hut by now, and the map indicated another 2km to go!
The stomp down the valley across the plain was slow and tedious going, and by the time we reached the bushes near the hut, it was dark enough that we pulled out my head torch to light the way. Arriving at the hut in the just-darkness at 5.15 we were exhausted, having taken over an hour longer than we had anticipated (4hr 45 min as opposed to 3hr 30min). AND we were worried, as we knew there were two other parties a good distance behind us in the dark.
At 6.30, the group of 4 girls who had left the road end at the same time as us arrived, reporting that they had last seen Megan and Ruth at the river more than an hour previous, as the light was fading. Megan and Ruth finally stumbled into the hut at 7.30pm, having been walking in full darkness for 2 hours, including some interestingly steep scrambling, and having had difficulties finding their way off the river in the gloaming.
Dinner was a yummy rice risotto with canned chicken and carrot, followed by steamed pudding for dessert! Then after re-dressing my graze, and taking a couple of painkillers it was off to bed fairly early. Every time I rolled over I woke up because that arm was dead, and I had to consider my sleeping position carefully to ensure minimal pain...
At some stage overnight it started raining. Just a steady drizzle, rather than an intense downpour. So we were out the door not long after 8.30am, aiming to get back past Clem Creek before the rain got any heavier and caused any issues with crossing. Thankfully it did. Getting across the slip was easier on the way back too, as we stayed closer to the river, where the mud was less sticky. Another group went the long way around the top of the slip and found it only just passable.
Clem Creek was up, but only by about 5cm or so, and crossing it was made more fun by having 10 of the 12 of us coming out that way all arrive there within a few minutes of each other, and therefore crossing together.
The road end was reached in just on 4 hours, with only about 5 minutes of stops (apart from the 10 minutes it took to get everyone across the creek), with the party of 4 leaving the carpark as we arrived, and the four girls arriving at the shelter as we were re-packing to leave.
Pizza and Chips at the White Swan for lunch was the next order of business, and this attended to, it was time to go home!
