This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Yeah, well me and a mate of mine called Johnny who looks a bit like’a Kauri stump with a Jet Pack when he boots through th¢ hills at:high © velocity, thought we'd give theold 2-day Herepai-Kaitoke a bash... This’ brilliant. idea.first occurred to us last April, so the next Friday Saw us up at Herepai Hut. for the night. ee et We planned to leave about 4.00 in the morning, so we gave.up all pre~ tence of sleep and had 4 look’ out the door every hour, the idea being to-cheék-the weather. Early reports indicated that seven or eight foot of snow had fallen, but the snow covered mountain outside the door furnéd out to be the white=painted inside of the front porch. Neverthe- . Less; visibility wasn't so we set off at 8.00am, We got up to Herepai and thought it was Ruapai. Then we actually did get to Ruapai but thought it was Ngapuke. It started to rain and hail quite seriously, so to get the maximum pain and hypothermia we Spent 3*hours wandering around up there checking out the various spurs and -: ridges\ Tt°was all véry interesting but when the compass pointed South *- anid we-'were’ convinced we were heading North we gave it away for the wéekend.’ "Now remember that point about the compass because it's “7t important later ‘on. Couldn't let this Dundas Ridge put one over us so we were back again in May to give it another shot. The weather packed in again so we wisely called off the attempt: before we could do any damage. Dundas Ridge was “beginning to get to us now,.so we. got it altogether in a big way right smack at the end of 1984.. Third time lucky the WX was OK so we ignor the compass and played it by ear. Good gtory too, we shot through to. Tarn Ridge for an-early lunch and had a rock slab and tussock sandwich to celebrate “The Killing of Dundas Ridge" (soon to be filmed in 30 etc.) Trouble soon cropped up though; -we got to MeGregor just North of Angle Knob and the bloody compass did the old 180 reversal trick just..as it. clagged in for good. Much consternatign, as by this stage due to an... unforseen delay at Girdlestone we had been going for a. good 11 hours or so. We. finally headed up to Angle Knob and found ourselves back at © South King. It started raining just then, so we headed off on a dead cert bearing for Mid King Biv, arriving in due course at the head of Baldy Creek. The novelty of turning up at an unexpected destination was wearing off by now, Anyway, not wanting to spoil a beaut 16 hours tramping we slept in plastic bags under a few dumps of fern that night . in steady rain. But that's a different story. The question everyones — asking is’ "What caused these Magnetic Aberrations on Dundas Ridge?" .-. Well, after some pretty hefty research I've come up with the answer: ,_
q af 2. hi Th “circumstances Beyond Our Control". The compass confusion was due to the widespread but localised occurrence of "Paeleomagnetic Stripes", resulting from the reversal of the earth's magnetic field within the Basaltic layer of the Oceanic Lithosphere. have been plotted as lsocrones on Geological
These Paeleomagnetic revergals Maps. If you tie all this up with the evolution of the hypothesis of Plate Tectonics and modern concepts of Oceanic Crustal Drift, then you realise that in April there was a localised reversal aroundabout Ruapai Peak, but by New Year, Continental Drift had shifted it to McGregor. can do. By now it's probably lurking somewhere about Jumbo,
Easy as Pie, mate, nothing you so next time you're heading into the Tararuas watch out for that one. If you do get into trouble, just set on Baldy Creek, and with any luck you