This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
By Rob Brown
Those on the trip: Shane Connolly, Rob Brown (Leader)
Well, we didn't spot any moa, but there were two near extinctions. Read on......... Saturday morning starts are quite a good idea in that it gives you an extra night to get organised. However, the reality is that I was still packing at 11:00 pm on the Friday night before the 8:00 am departure time. Not exactly as much rest gained as I had intended. The truck ride was about three quarters of an hour up to Kaitoke from the Railway Station. We got started at about 9:00 am, said goodbye to the Easy/Medium's and headed up to Dobson at a good sustainable pace. We got up to Marchant, snatched a few looks at the view back down towards the Hutt Valley and headed off down a reasonably nondescript track which led us down to the Eastern Hutt river - land of certain solo HVTC trampers, adventure seekers, hunters and real men. The old Forest Service hut nestled in the valley was eventually found after a quick bite to eat to re-orientate ourselves. It is here that certain club member's names lurk in the hut book as testimony to bygone, and also quite recent days of rife human activity in the water supply catchment area. Enough said! It was about 3:00 pm when we started on up the spur which would take us onto Quoin Ridge. Our "deadline", pardon the pun, was 7:00 pm at Alpha Hut. This time we didn't think navigation was an issue as we were mostly going UP. We had used the altimeter on Shane's watch for a "second opinion" earlier on and it was almost bang on, but we became too dependent on it and it became clear that the altimeter would overestimate heights by up to 200 metres as Soon as we entered into more severe conditions. The thing that we really couldn't get ahold of was our progress up the ridge. We soon learnt that being able to estimate PROGRESS as well as POSITION can certainly make for less stressful times. As soon as we broke out of the bush we were at the full mercy of an incessant nor'wester. Here we donned all of our clothing for what we slowly came to realise was one of the riskiest situations we had ever put ourselves into.
We were pushed for time, we didn't measure our progress accurately, and we were getting tired. These three things made us a bit scared and pulled on all of our previous experience in dealing with difficult situations in the hills. The snow was mostly shin deep, a bit hard going up the slippery snowgrass, but perseverance was the only way to make headway. Here, Shane was starting to waver, the wind was getting stronger as we climbed and the point of no return was fast being reached. At one point, I remember saying, "Shall we escape?" For some reason, this question was impossible to answer without first asking, "How?" We decided to press on. Shane suggested that as the wind was starting to blow us over, we link together river-crossing style. However, a better solution, we found, was to drop down from the ridge top and get into the lee. This gave us relative warmth and allowed steady progress. We still had to keep our wits about us as there was quite a substantial slide on snowgrass down to the right. Our navigation was appalling. Even with near whiteout conditions we should have been able to do some dead reckoning from the glimpses of terrain that revealed itself every now and then. However, it was plain, with 20/20 vision of hindsight of course, simply by keeping to the right of Quoin Ridge and following it round underneath Alpha peak, that we would find the ridge track to Alpha Hut and get to safety.
Neither of us realised this of course until we chanced upon the track itself, looking much the same as it did two weekends ago, winding its way down to Alpha Hut. What an overwhelming relief that was. We knew the hut was only 20 minutes down the hill so, in a matter of minutes we were swept through a transition from complete desperation to elation. The hut was reached at 6:40 pm, amazingly as planned.
We lit a fire. We ate pasta and listened to the hail outside. It seemed like heaven. I kept thinking, "No, we actually perished on Alpha and these are our spirits living through what could have been", and having visions of two human popsicles huddled together in a snow trench. The next morning, up at 5:45 am, breakfasted, left the hut at 7:00 am, ready for a bash down to the Tauherenikau River via the Omega Track. This day wasn't planned to be all that much of a challenge, although the thought of swollen side creeks did cross my mind.
On leaving the hut, lots of windfall was the thing that surprised us. Whole trees, obviously recently fallen, that had, in many cases taken other trees with them. It must have been one hell of a storm the night before. The Omega Track was-Ok, but we-needed-to-keep-a-weather-eye on the-direction-to aveid-straying off the-track. We-got-dewr te the first stream. It was up and dirty. My heart began to race and I started thinking "Damn, should've gone down the Marchant!" As it turned out, we ate that first stream for morning tea and had the rest for lunch. By the time we got to the last stream to cross, the Marchant Stream, we were certainly well practised in the river crossing department. On the Marchant Stream crossing, we decided to use the cable provided across a portion of river which would otherwise not be used as a crossing point, it being perilously close to the chundering main river. One slip could have been fatal.
Happily, that crossing was to be the last life-threatening mission for the weekend. On reaching Smith's Creek Shelter, we were pleased to at last shed some of our wet clothing for the last leg out to Kiwi Ranch. A short grunt over the — puffer track and it was into the Kiwi Ranch kitchen for a nice cup of tea and a bit of a yarn.
No more epics please!!