This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
A weekend away with the Tongue and Meats to the Kaweka/Kaimanawa Range. With four trips planned the weekend promised to be great. But alas, Club night came and went with only 10 punters down for one Medium trip. Friday night I set off for the Johnsonville onramp to the motorway and waited patiently for the Duchess, when along came Graham in his car 'What?" I queried. “There's only 8 on the tramp. Lyndsay and I are taking our cars up instead" he informed me. We turned the car around and headed out to Petone where we met the others from the trip at the truck compound. At 6.30pm we left the truck compound and headed north to the Kawekas. We discovered the definite advantages in taking cars - comfort and speed. With only two stops on route we arrived at the Kaweka roadend after midnight. We quickly set up camp in the Carpark. And when I say carpark, I mean carpark - on the bare stones. Several hours and a few zzzzs later we were rudely awoken by the morning chorus of the fly. I leapt from my damp pit to explore the area which had only been viewed in total darkness. Behind the Carpark was this massive range of hills called the Makahau Range (the longest range in the Kawekas). I soon learnt that we would be climbing these hills and it was going to be HOT. After Packing up, donning the suntan lotion, sunnies and sunhats we left for day 1 of our tramp. We got off to a false start by navigating ourselves onto the wrong track, but we quickly came back and started up the long, hot, arduous track. This hill Proved to live up to it's Maori meaning (Makahau meaning long, steep and prone to landslides). I now knew why there was so little interest in this tramp - everyone knew what it would be like. There was a trig at the top of the hill. Some of us went the extra distance of climbing to the trig basically just to say we'd done it. After all, we'd had panorarnic views all around us during the morning's slog. We couldn't stay long as dehydration was quickly setting in. While the group relaxed during the lunch break John and I ; Stupidly volunteered to search out the spring which was located on the map. This involved a 15 minute trot down hill to : a trickle of water. What wasn't drinkable landed on me. The rest of the day was spent waiking along the tops (fortunately the weather was deteriorating) till we turned off down the hill to Ballards Hut, where we spent the night - some in the hut, some in the bush under flies, in the bush and on the helipad (ideal on a starlit/moonlit evening). On arrival at the hut the water gang gathered anything that resembled a water carrier before embarking on a trip to the small stream a few minutes away, for the evening's supply of water. This time almost everybody went. The temptation of being near water was too great. One member went the extra distance, bringing his soap and shaver along! Once again we were woken to the sound of the humming flies. After drying out my dew filled pit, we packed up and left for what Lyndsay described as a one hour bush bash to the Makino River. A bad description of a 3.5 hour grovel ’ through dense bush. At a clearing (the only one for miles!) Lyndsay offered the challenge to anyone foolish enough to ‘ accept it of leading the party through the bush. John and I took this challenge up. Eventually we got to the river after negotiating some pretty tricky climbing and met up with the three others some distance away down stream (they'd gone ahead and had to negotiate a waterfall in order to get to the stream - in other words they went the wrong way).
Lunch was had at a swimming hole. Several of us could not hold back our enthusiasm for a swim and went in boots and all. After lunch we had a couple of hours river bashing. This would have been a lot easier had the rocks been a little less slippery, but it was good for concentration skills. John and Robert entertained themselves with a game of ‘skeet shooting’ with stones from the river on one of our tea breaks. We emerged from the river at about 6pm, a bit bruised and battered. Well Andrew in particular. His method for river bashing meant toppling in head first, falling under logs and the ‘straight into the water and not being able to get up’ approach. We set up camp on a grassy patch where the Makino and Mangaturutu Rivers meet. A wonderful evening with a wonderful dinner finished off an otherwise grovelly day. Day 3 saw Harry first off at 8 o'clock - he insisted on going to the Te Puia hot springs (this item was off our agenda due to lack of time and lack of speed by me) - there was something in the bushes he informed us. So with a gleam in his eyes he set off. We left considerably later than Harry but it would have been even later still if Lyndsay hadn't taken it upon himself to pull our fly down, after John had told him he couldn't make us get up. We spent 20 minutes or so walking on the flat next to the river before the hill work began. If we thought we'd had it hard before, we were wrong. This hill seemed to take forever then finally we were at the top and over the other side climbing steeply back out of them. This process was repeated at least three times. We stumbled into Middle Hill Hut (so named because it is located in the middle of a hill) at 7pm. 3 of us spent the night in the hut, while the rest sprawled out into the nearby trees. After 3 days of hot grovel, I wanted the luxury of a soft mattress as opposed to the hard ground. Dinner was served late as Harry had not yet arrived back from the hot springs. But the minute the dinner gong was banged, who emerged trom the track but Harry. Had he just arrived or was he lazily waiting for us to call we wondered. While we dined Harry told us how he'd spent 5 hours in the pools, and what he'd found in the bushes. Another fine day greeted us on this, our last day. What? Four days of brilliantly fine tramping in one weekend?! But at last, a cruisy day - the track was flat and we were in the cool of the bush. But then somebody sprung some more hills on us and once again they were big, mean and full of landslides. Our last lunch was in the shade next to a decent sized river. Everybody was generous with sharing their food but then they didn't want to carry it out with them. There was only a couple more hills left before we arrived at the carpark. To be eligible to ride in Lyndsay's car you needed to be clean, so with the multipurpose bowl, we vigorously rubatubbed, changed filthy clothes for relatively clean clothes and piled into the car. The ride home was not completely without incident. Lyndsay's car had a flat tyre on the Rimutakas, but with speed and efficiency this was quickly fixed (one disadvantage of taking your own car). We were all dropped off at the door late on Tuesday night. So endeth the Kawekas tramp - take out the blazing heat and 90% of the hills and we had a wonderful, relaxed tramp. We were: Lyndsay (leader and driver), Andrew, Harry, Robert, John, Chris, Graham and Lynley