This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
FE Trip, Urchin - Thunderbolt - Junction Top - Umukarikari Day 1 Eric Evans The punters were woken by the Easy Trippers rustling away cooking breakfast, packing packs, etc. It was cosy In the pits and the morning drizzle did not entice a hasty getaway. In all honesty there was a hidden agenda. You see there was a stranger amongst us, a crazy Canadian who's first trip with the Club was an FE. The Chief Guide had grave doubts about her ability, the theory was to leave after the Easys so that this Canadian could drop back with the Easys and the FEs could do their epic trip. To fill in time rocks were hidden In packs while various people were at restrooms. (If only they could be found). it was not to be. All 5 FEs were soon over the top of Urchin and down to the beautiful Waipakihi Valley for a munch. There they had to cross the river. Our Canadian punter took the opportunity of demonstrating how to cross a river In Canadian style ... - Take boots and socks off - Hobbie a quarter of the way across, swinging side to side to minimise the agony on your feet - Fall into the river wetting your upper body and catch trout with your water-filled boots and wet socks - Hobbie across rest of river ignoring the agonising laughter of your fellow punters Considerable time was lost with the river crossing, so It was a wander up to the start of the Motutere track for lunch. The planned half hour lunch break turned out to be longer. Discussions centered on the claggy weather and the worthiness of leaving the nice warm valley for the cold claggy tops. Fortunatly the trip leader spotted a clearance which was enough to inject some enthusiasm Into the punters, they were off.
The climb up to Motutere was quite a grunt, but the mist vanished to reveal excellent views. It was good tops travel, quite even with tremendous views. We were soon at a most pleasant campsite on the northern side of Thunderbolt. We proceeded to have a great dinner - Thunderbolt Tuna Casserole’, and bedded down for a good night’s sleep for some of the punters.
Day 2 Karen Serjeantson
This report is strictly in chronological order, not in order of the event’s significance. In the wee hours of Sunday morning, the tent came loose at Eric’s end forcing him to hop out of his deep snoring sleep to repair it in a chilling wind. Keith did all he could to help him from his cosy sleeping bag, while the rest of us struggled to ignore the flapping tent altogether.
At approximately 0600 hours Eric bellowed out a wake up call and issued orders to Paul to put on the billy. Much to our distress we departed at 0730, instead of the intended 0500. What did we have for breakfast you might ponder? Well, you can never have enough smoked fish and rice paste -- that is if you’re an FE (fish essential).
Since we had some trouble finding the water bottles in the morning there seemed to be some resentment amongst the FE members that I wasted water on brushing my teeth. I’m told true Kiwi trampers don’t wash. Is this true for all trampers or just FEs (face-cloth extraneous)? My fine feathered Kiwi campers decided breakfast was a good time to share their extensive New Zealand wildlife knowledge with me (a naive Canadian). Paul and Stuart commenced with a story of mountain oysters (for more information, please see Paul or Stuart). Eric had an informative story of blood-sucking crabs from the sea, with ferocious claws, which can be found up to 100km inland. This lesson was accompanied by majorly life-like demonstrations of how the crab sucks your blood. Although Keith hid his head in his sleeping bag to smother the sound of his laughter, the shaking body gave it all away. Unfortunately, in the morning we all required to use the restroom, and since it was most inconvenient for each of us to drag along our backpacks, we risked leaving them behind. Of course, there was no risk for Paul, because the rest of the group members are all nice folk. There were no rocks in the area, except for the 5 rocks which Stuart had considerately brought with him from the starting point the previous day. Three of these rocks were found in my pack and one was found cleverly disguised in a large candy wrapper in Eric’s pack. A quick calculation and a degree ..; mathematics indicated to me that there was still one rock unaccounted for. I was about to search my sleeping bag, when Eric insisted we quit fooling around with rocks and get a move _ on. So away we go. My pack felt heavier than the day before, but not wanting to sound like a wimp, I kept quiet and chalked it off to be a bit sore from the previous day. An hour later, my fellow happy campers hinted I should search my .. sleeping bag ... for that last and largest rock! It’s all on film ... pictures to follow. Stuart lead most of the day, springing in leaps and bounds. We attribute this to the previous day’s training (courtesy of the man in the funny green hat) of carrying the extra 5 rocks. Whether in front or behind Paul was big time moral support to push on, through thick and thin, as fast as possible. We owe him many thanks for arriving at our final destination in a timely fashion. Thanks Paul. Upon arriving at the van we commenced to make ourselves more presentable. After wiping 2 days worth of dirt off my feet, I offered Keith the face-cloth to wipe his feet. Keith thought I said face, not feet and gladly accepted. Yech with a big capital Y. If I seem to have forgotten to describe the scenery, it’s because the purpose of the trip was to exhibit our fitness (or lack thereof) not for sightseeing! I must confess, I stole a couple of glances and it was worth tripping over my feet for. At all times Eric kept cool and could be heard saying "not a problem".
aN
Clearly, the trip was VQE (Very Quite Excellent)!
Punters: Eric Evans, Karen Serjeantson, Paul Critchley, Stuart Palmer and Keith Strode-Penny.