This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
The Fit trip to the Ureweras was in trouble before the Duchess even left Wellington. Firstly Anita decided to do the FE trip and was trying to get hold of Tony Stone all week to see if he would lead the Fit trip. They eventually made contact on Thursday night when Tony rang Anita to say he would see her at the truck as he had a leaking header tank to deal with. As it turned out, Tony made it to the Club to find the trip had shrunk to two punters (including himself). Friday night arrived and Murray arrived with the Duchess and the punters were packed and off before you could say "tramping boot". It wasn't long before 227Z's were being stacked and it was quite a quiet trip north. The first high or low point (take your pick) was us having to take the Pahiatua Goat Track, as the back road to the Gorge was closed. Dinner was consumed in Dannevirke with most punters patronising a takeaway bar where a request for a scoop of chips in the Wellington dialect meant a shoveltul in the local lingo. Dinner over and Murray once again behind the wheel, we headed off for Napier which was struck at midnight. Various puniers staggered out of the Duchess to stretch legs and a queue soon formed outside the single-seater toilet.
Once everybody had been rounded up we once again headed north to be woken up by what appeared to be Murray attempting to take the Duchess off the road at Onepoto, on the shores of Waikaremoana. All very disconcerting. Once Murray had the truck parked to his satisfaction & the troops had had a good laugh at his catempillar-like tent sleep was once again sought. This was at about three arn. The first jarring note of the trip was the sound of Peter Jackson's voice at some ungodly hour of the morning. Rumour has it that Pete was within seconds of going for an early moming swim. After breakfast had been consumed and the Easy and FE trips set off, the Fit trip sti!l hadn't decided where it was going to go. A decision was made to go out past Lake Waikareiti & then navigate around the tops to the high point of the Park known as Manuoha. Atfer the Medium trip had been dropped off at Lake Kaitawa it was off to Park HQ to drop off the Duchess and start up the Lake Waikareiti. Not before we had a look around the visitors centre however. lt turned our that Murray intended to do some hunting north of Lake Waikareiti so the three of us eventually got going at about 10.30. It's a really pleasant walk through to the Lake and the bay where the boats are stored. We spent a while here talking to three fishermen who were having to carve a bung for their boat and I really thought a rendition of three men ina leaky boat would have been appropriate. A further very pleasant stroll brought to the other side of the Lake where Iunch was consumed in a beautiful tranquil lakeside setting. The afternoon was spent heading up past Lake Hennetta towards Kaipo lagoon. It was at about this ti 1e that we started to have doubts about the accuracy of our maps. We ended up camping north of the intended spot as the track was shown on the wrong side of a lagoon and we kept going looking for the right one. The area where we camped was covered in deer tracks and this was also reflected in the quality of the water. it was quite 2 long walk to get semi fresh water which we filtered and boiled anyway. Sitting around the primus that night, stimulating conversation was interrupted by a deer coming out onto the flats only about 20m from camp. However by the time Tony and Murray had got a torch and rifle lines up on the spot the deer had departed for a heathier climate. The chilly calm evening promised a frost and we weren't disappointed. The whole flat Lake was a glistening white, with the fly as stitf as apiece of iron. As can be imagined it took a long time to get going that moming and it wasn't until 10.45am that we got going. Murray intended going back down the track to find a decent campsite and the Fit trip hoped to get up onto the tops
onto Manuoha and down to Hopuruahine landing. Ten minutes up the track we came across the real Kaipo jagoon. This is a silted lake bed about one mile by half a ,mile in size, covered in tussock. It also had a perfectly clean, pure water supply. After spending about halt an hour exploring we headed off to tind that a route had been roughly marked across the tops, so the expected bush bash didn't eventuate. With an occasional look at a compass and altimeter to satisfy ourseives of our eventual destination, the rest of the morning passed very pleasantly. A couple of stags roared and we spooked an animal off the track and we spared a thought for Murray chasing animals around the valley. During lunch a marvellous view of Panekiri bluff showed us that we were a lot furlher along the ridge than we thought and that the Pukepuke trig which we had been looking for didn't actually exist {at this pint my faith in the map dropped even further). A final wander along the ridge brought us up under Manuoha Trig (which did exist) and down to the Hut. It was about 3pm and we decided to stay the night. The next morning on the way down the ridge the 160 degree view from the trig was fantastic. It took us 3 hours to get down the ridge and we had lunch down by the Lake. It was decided at this point to go round to Whanganui Hut to meet the Easy trip coming out. This we did and then returned to the landing the next moming to be met by Murray (withoul any meat) and the Duchess.
An excellent trip, a pity it wasn't a couple of days longer. Punters Tony Stone and Geoff Sloper.