This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
TUTUWAI _ 11-12 SEPTEMBER 1993 by Darren Gedye This was nearly the trip that wasn't as both the Easy and Medium trip leaders decided to pull out at the last moment. The-first L-knew-about it-was-on Wednesday night when our "Friendly Chief Guide" informed me that since the next three names on the list were Darren, Steve, and Ilse, we were now the co-leaders of the trips. I have never heard of any such rule and a quick conference with Steve showed we both thought Ilse showed remarkable leadership qualities and was the obvious choice for leader! After a hands-on course in "How to organise a Club trip in twenty minutes", we were all set. Well, almost. The actual route planning was done in the back of the Duchess on Saturday moming. While the Mediums followed the suggested course down Block XVI to Tutuwai, we Easy's decided to carry on past our original destination of Smith's Creek and meet up with them at Tutuwai. After all, who would want to spend a night at Smith's Creek?
Saturday proved cool and clear, and a pleasant stroll was had up the valley. The only items of interest were Darren falling off a log board-walk headfirst, and Zar managing to almost twist his ankle. Amiving at Tutuwai, we found that not only had the Medium's not put a brew on as promised, they hadn't even shown up. We whiled away the hours until their arrival by making several attempts to light a fire. Eleanor’s reputation as a pyromaniac suffered a bit of damage when the fire only started showing any enthusiasm when she left it and went off to gather some more firewood. Another way of passing the time was debating the news that Wayne had offered to bike in with some ice-cream. Was he serious or not? Would he be serious enough to bike all the way up here? The Medium's cunningly showed up at dusk, when most of the campsite work had been done, and just as the crackers with duck and orange pate were being passed around, Unfortunately, towards the end of a totally excellent meal it started to persist down with rain. While some brave souls decided to stick it out in the fly's, the rest of us retired to the hut for the night. No sign of any ice-cream. The next moming, after watching the rather soggy Fit's squelch past in a determined fashion, we began the long trudge ~ Out. The return journey was made somewhat more interesting by three little trickles we had stepped over the previous day. Trickles no longer! The first was overcome by bushbashing our way upstream until a fallen tree provided a convenient bridge. We outflanked the second by heading downstream until it split into crossable channels. The third was a much more interesting proposition. While three of us were game enough to wade across hanging onto the single wire provided, the rest piked out and looked for a more inviting spot. It was apparently on the way back from this fruitless exercise that Toni managed to get hung upside down by a tree root and was gallantly rescued by Steve, who didn't even have a camera. The wire crossing proved easier than it looked and we continued on out to Kiwi Ranch to be greeted by Roger, offering us a hot drink and the use of their spa pool! More trips ought to end like that. Easy’s: Ilse Seilis (reluctant leader), Toni Van den Ende, Steve Gedye Darren Gedye (reluctant scribe), Ferrida Curwood, Zar Lily, Eleanor Howick. Medium's: Paul Aked, David Tildesley, Don Goodhue, Graham McCready.