This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
ASCENT OF HECTOR = == - Catherine Croucher ~"" § so") °%: Rob. Fox": s "Ascent of Hector" medium trip. assembled in the usual way. on Friday 28th August and. leter, seventeen people bedded down at Otakiorks carpark or in Parawai-Lodge across the river... - The next morning we. began the long grind up Judd Ridge, which had a lot less sheep and more ring-fern than I remembered... I had also © learned 4a more efficient one~foot-after-the-other technique since my previous attempt €° “we years ago, so the climb to Field Hut didn’ e ; ie hurt nearly so much. ja ]- : We travelied in increasingly warm and sunny dondithenm and arrived at- Field too early for lunch, so after a drink of slightly tacky tank water we plodded on out of the bush, across the mush on Tabletop and up towards Bridge Peak; This climb looks horrible but it's quite pleasantly gradual (if rather sustained): when you are actually doing it. - We had good views, especially to the north the whole way. By the time we got to Kime Hut I was starving,and my pet sore knee’ ~ was ; -playing up, so T didn't really want to go any further after my blue v2in cheese and bikkies. However, everyone had put on parkas _. and-hats (including two energetic types, who decided to follow the “4 fits to Alpha) and gone up Field Peak hehind the hut,,so I followed, knee and all, and fortified by a Mint Imperial, made it to Hector — another thirty minutes further on. Up on Hector, Helen, Gerard, Andy and.Noel had a map out and were waving their arms around. We could see right down to the, Petone foreshore and our house (well, just about). Funny how you can never see Hector from Petone, let alone the memorial cross which is at least _ eight feet high. oe ‘
On the way back to Kime Hut I lagged behind a bit, nursing my knee and enjoying the silence and the solitude, feeling warm but tired, and looking forward to Rob's stew. That evening we ate in style, by the light of an acetylene caving lamp. I got up just before dawn the next morning for the usual purpose. The mud on the track to the loo was conveniently frozen and the nearby tarns had a very solid look to them. I stood and watched the lights of the Kapiti coast as the sky got pink behind me. There was not a breath of wind, so in spite of the hoarfrost underfoot it was pretty clement for a midwinter expedition. The trip down began for. me at 7.45am and my knee being what it WAS ,. finished five hours later, quite a while after everybody else. After blue vein and crackers (and blackcurrent tea) we started the roadbash to the bus. I for one limped and thumbed as hard as I could. There were lots of‘ Sunday drivers about so quite = few of us got lifts. Relief! Thank you Rob for a great weekend.