This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
By Matthew Grainger
(Well not all that epic really, but it does make a catchy title). After a typically fast. smooth ride up in the Duchess, the magnificent seven (that's us) grovelled off into the damp, dark night. Before long we had reached the traditional campsite by the Ohau River, where we spent the night. At various stages during the night. Eric was apparently woken by what at first sounded like a particularly large ‘possum at the other end of the fly. Or was it someone having a fit? The violent, thrashing convulsions would suggest so. It turned out it was actually Tod being violently ill. By the morning he was still looking rather green but managed to join the rest of us in our stroll up the rapidly rising river to South Ohau Hut and then up the Yeates and Dora tracks to Te Matawai Hut for lunch. By this time we were experiencing horrendous rain. In fact. in the WT&MC rain scale. this wasn't drizzle, rain or even torrential rain. This was a Force 1 Struan in all its glory.
At this stage, Tod was feeling too ill to go on and decided to stay put and wait for the Mediums to arrive. After lunch the magnificent six (7) slogged through the bog up to and down the ridge to Girdlestone Saddle. In no time at all. we reached the southern fork of the upper Mangahao River, which we grovelled our way down, to the junction with the larger northern fork. There the river became a raging torrent, so we decided to camp at the forks. Flies were pitched. pits were out and brews were boiled and before long we were as comfortable as a dog lying on a sofa in front of a fire who has just been appointed Professor of Comfort at Oxford University. Following a rather delicious and satisfying meal of Eric's beef stew and Eric's cheesecake it was off to the Land of Nod, at the ridiculously early hour of 7.00pm!!
Around midnight the rainfall increased to a Force 2 Struan and this continued for the following eleven or so hours, by which stage we had woken up, packed and headed off to Te Matawai again on our rain-imposed route out along the Waiopehu Ridge. Apparently the Mediums didn't reach Te Matawai and after a rough night Tod had headed out with someone else via Waiopehu Ridge. Around 11.30am the weather cleared briefly, enough for us to catch a glimpse of the view up the coast and inland at parts of the northern Tararua tops. I was amazed at the colour and clarity of the view, something I had forgotten after two days of grey, rainy weather. From Waiopehu it was all downhill to Walopehu Hut for lunch. The door opening mechanism-was broken-and-itloeked like we weren't going to be able to get in. It seemed that apart from climbing down the chimney or busting the door down, we wouldn't be able to get in, but persistence finally paid off and in the absence of a credit card, we finally managed to open it by sliding a knife down the slot in the door. Lunch and a hot brew were gulped (or slurped in Eric's case) down before a quick blast down the ridge and along the farmland followed by a tedious roadbash back to the truck for some dry clothes and a ride home, reminiscing about a wet but enjoyable trip. The punters were: Matthew Craig, Tod Rutter, David Mardell, Daniel Meares, Robert Cross, Matthew Grainger (scribe), and Eric "slurp" Evans (leader).