This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Tararuas 8 - 10 October 93
The Omen
It started on Wednesday night. "Can you organise the medium trip this weekend?" "Yep". . And so, on the blower the following day organising the tucker: “Hanne, can you bring a self-saucing sponge pudding in a tin?" "OK, one Spanish pudding in a can."
"Grant, your lot is four eggs." "Hard boiled?" 'No, just eggs." "And a cup of grapes." "OK, a couple of grapes." Obviously, dinner on Saturday night was going to be a challenge! A Spanish pudding, whatever that was would be interesting, not to mention a couple of. grapes divided between eight!
And so we were off. Waiting at the Railway Station, a lone sock (woo!) leaps from the open window of a passing VW and lands at our feet. We check for a body but it is empty. Could this be an omen? Arriving at Otaki Forks, and full of life after the ride from Wellington, we decided to head for Fields Hut. The night was still and dark (funny that) and still young. (It was only 9.00pm). It must have been another omen, but the tree roots seemed to be multiplying by the minute, and the ground was leaping up at you when you least expected it. The glow worms and odd glimpse of some faraway towns to the north added to the atmosphere.
"How long to the hut?" "About as long as a piece of string." It seemed that this piece of string was getting more knotted the longer we walked. Three hours and a number of torch batteries latter we arrived, glad to be at the hut, but just as glad we had made the effort to leave the road end. The next day was a beaut. Good views and nice weather greeted us as we headed towards Kime. But unfortunately it was not to last. As we climbed on past Dennan, we entered the white stuff, whence we remained until reaching Fields on the way down the next day. The cloud got thicker and colder and was to be the cause of mild amusement as we approached Kime. None of us had been there before, the map showed the hut just off the track and you could hardly see past your toes.
"There it is", said Zar. “tts a bit small!" "Doesn't look anything like the photo the other night" "Hey, look. Its got two rooms.’ 'Two &%# small rooms mate." Then, as if the omen was still present, we tumed around, the cloud parted momentarily, and there it was Kime Hut. We had been looking down the coldest two-hole long drop on earth. The Hut was not much warmer, but at least it didn't have holes in the floor. The afternoon saw the hardier souls venturing up to Hector for a look. The view was great ...... of the inside of a fast moving cloud. The even hardier souls stayed in their pits trying to keep the hut warm. The omen was to appear once again, when on the way back to Kime, we found a pair of mittens holding onto a rock beside the track. Closer investigation revealed that like the sock, they too were uninhabited. By late afternoon the hut was starting to fill with the "Fits" tuming up at about the same time as two men, a boy, and a dog. At least with the house being crowded, the central heating was working a bit better. Dinner turned out to be an interesting affair. The eggs were eggs, not hard boiled, the pudding wasn't Spanish, and there were enough grapes to go around. . The views the next morning were the same as the day before, but in reverse. Going downhill out of the cloud instead of uphilrintoit-A brief stop at Fields for an-early_lunch and.then.onward and downward. We dropped off the ridge below Fields toward the Penn Creek track for what tumed out to be a bit of an epic. The going was slow and the Penn Creek track was a fine sight when we finally got to see it. So with tiring limbs and an eventful weekend behind us we headed for the roadend, glad to be heading for home but also glad to have been there and done that. Featuring in “The Omen’, in no particular order were: Don, Grant, Ferrida, Zar, Rob, Hanne, David, Paul.