This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
~ Meadiun (72?) tzip ~ Barbara Johnsen .. (‘We were’ail a little surprised, on arriving at the railway . J‘, Station on Friday night, to find that Dale had decided. to re. bring herscwn. flors with her. I must say though, that she 1 did. look ‘very. fetching in full tramping getup carrying a .. particublarly tasteful bunch of red roses. Tne bus.trip to - .,.. Holdsworth ptoviésd another surprise when Paul started wy ® talking about going: to Mountain House that night (we had SWAN as innocently assumed that medium trips don't walk anywhere < Wf 2, 0n-Friday nights.) A slight hint of mutiny in.the ranks _y .:,. resulted in us camring at Donnelly's Flats with a zillion w-. boy scouts and: Patl muttering ominously about an early start and a long day tomorrow. ‘On Saterday morning we awoke to still, humid: shag overcast weather and set off for Mountain House at 3) o! ‘clock (Dale's roses were now decorating a number of different “Ht packs): During the ascent my spinal column begen Ue, tie itself-into.a rather unconventional knot, brt after i morning tee at Mountain House’ end off loading seme cf try grar onto 5 ‘some vexyyganerouy peovle it felt a littie bestet's we ‘Carried on through rain to Powell for an “ear ty izmch. The weather: began: to clear as we started along High Ridge allowing us gone aded views of the Wairarapa and the Waichine Valley. . By eats stage my recalcitrant vertcbrae were slow- . ing me cown considerably so the troops relieve? me of what little I was” still car erying including my now.emptied pack. (I'd like to take this opportunity.to.thank you cli for being so kind and considerate when I.was: being such a drag)» be Some geed navicating by Paul anda minimum: of tree’ “climbing brought.us' to Flaxy Enob/ at about 4 o'clock, end aftera I .. 6, good peste in the sun we ‘set off down’the spur to Hector > Forks n breeking cub onto a clear area about £00 feet above the - Boet om of the spur we were rewarded with a me ee spectaculex view cf the Main Range and the Waichine and? .s): ector gorges, s0 we stopped for a short but weiccme photo= “graph sessicn. A short, steep, thistle and nettle filled o, drop saw us at the suxprisingly warm Waiohine River where.” Debbie and.Dale went for a que ick: dip (the resi of us had grovel become:.eufficiently damp while crossing the river). “A quick/ over a low saddle (50 feat) brought us to the Hector River -just-abcve the forks, and as’it was already 7.o'clotk we set up camo phsk slightly congested. but. quite eommortable: site directly xoss the river from the saddle. ,: a ‘: _ Most of us ward pretcry well plumb tuckered out after our ell hour @ay so the’ majority cf the crew were into their pits mn arknezs £511. Some anonymous ang gels (I'm pretty 1 and’ Paul were involved) docked a delicious rey it to us’as we lay in our pits at about I SBS HT: . that night ‘(that‘s what I call real servi ice). ve . ; “sunday ated fine “ond. warm. and showed promise of turning ini - ~~ © to a real. scorchcr. We headed off at abeut @ o'clock for a syste pleasant rst trip up the Hector River. Karen oee/2
manageaG to wedge her foot firmly under a rock in mid-stream but a fine display of teamwork had her free quite quickly; Dale tried a spot of fishing with Janine and Jamie acting as official trout spotters from atop a handy rock outcrop (unfortunately no fish were caught}: Murray executed a rather impressive mid air somersault while negotiating his way over an awkward boulder: Terry entertained us with a spectacular display of Fountain books and poor Sue seemed to be continually digging around in her pack for the first aid kit (the cripple needed frequent fixer of Paracetromol to subdue the vertebrae). After morning tea at Neill Forks we headed up to Cone Ridge with the intention of lunching at the tarn on Cone, The climb onto the ridge is very steep but the beautiful bush, robins, fantails and great weather made up easily for the severity of the incline. : . The walk along the ridge top seemed never ending and we were all starting to feel a spot peckish,. Fortunately the advance troops rebelled at about 3 o'clock, and by the time us stragglers caught up they'd settled down to a dry lunch on the knob just before Cone itself. About an hour later we arrived at the tarn on Cone and spent a very pleasant hour soaking up the sun. Jamie decided he wanted to camp there for the night, but once he had established that none of the femalemembers of the trip wished to stay there with him he decided to continue on with the rest of us. After almost forcibly separating Debbie and Paul (the troops agreed that they should be banned from going on trips together if they can't learn to keep their hands off each other in front of young impressionable Club members) we set off over Cone and down to Cone Saddle. We made quite reasonable time considering that some of us were starting to feel just a mite exhausted, and made camp (again at 7 o'clock). just below Cone Hut on a sheltered grassy flat. Adrian and Murray chopped up an impressive amount of wood and Paul soon had a roaring fire going. Under Karen's expert supervision (she also did most of the work) a vast quantity of truly excellent macoroni cheese was produced while it was still daylight. Rfter scoffing the remaining full billy of macoroni cheese for breakfast we set off down the Tauherenikau sidle track at a brisk pace. We made good time down to. Tutuwai Hut and after a pleasant amble down the river we reached the big swinming hole just. above Smith Creek at about 11.30am. Murray treated us to a display of the feet first, boots on, tramping jumpdive off the log which currently forms a great natural diving board over the river. Then it was down to Smiths for a long leisurely lunch with the Easy Party. Dale decided to head out to Kaitoke via Dobsons, but as the rest of us were too. busy performing very creditable imitations of beached whales she had to go alone, - The last excitement of the trip occurred when we met up with Dale at Kaitoke. After a few broad hints had been dropped by Paul, Dale decided to closely examine the contents of her pack and what should she find but an absolutely masSive rock secreted there by a certain anonymous male (his name begins with J) that. morning. I must admit that’an angry victim and 11 people strongly denying responsibility makes quite a startling scene, ; The weather and people combined to make this a great trip but we all agreed at the end of the weekend that we'd completed a fairly epic trek for a medium party.
Trip Members: Paul Hughes (leader), Debbie Hughes, Dale Parsons, Janine Tooley, Murray Warsop, Sue Evans, Jamie. Clelland, Terry Leamy, Adrian Widgery, Aloma Hornby, Karen O'Byren, Barbara Johnsen,