This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
t 7pm prompt, 19-odd bods (some odder than _ others) piled into the truck heading for Otaki Forks. We arrived there at an earthly hour of 9pm. The enormous “Fit” group (ie. Jon and Prakash) headed off into the night with torches. Their destination was Field Hut. The Easy group headed off to
alias “The Battle of the Broccoli” Otaki Forks, Tararuas, 5-6 Nov
Parawai Hut nearby, and the __rest of us sat down fora brew. _ After an uneventful night's. sleep in the Duchess we awoke -to steady rain. After some procrastination we donned our packs and headed off to Field Hut at 8:15am. We, being; Lisa (our enthusiastic leader) Natasha, Brian,
By Sandi Ash (also known as Neville), —Iain,-Phil,.and.me(Sandi).We— — climbed steadily for several hours up to Field Hut. Despite my unfamiliarity with frequent, steady rain (I’m from Dunedin), I soon became accustomed to that wet stuff that seems inevitable for any trip into the Tararuas. However, we had delightful WT8&MC December 1995 views of the inside of a cloud. We had an early lunch at Field Hut, then when we could procrastinate no more, we headed up to Tabletop where it was really blowing. It was a steep, albeit short, grind down to Penn Creek Hut.
At the hut we boiled the billy, yakked and played cards until nightfall. As Ash burst Natasha’s personal bubble for the sixth or seventh time, he was heard to say, “I’m not looking at your cards ‘Tash’. We were joined by Jon and Prakash who’d abandoned their Fit trip due to high winds. Chicken satay, rice and broccoli (dare I mention it), and cheesecake with lashings of whipped cream (on which the conversation fixated), and congealed instant pud was consumed with great gusto. After a few stories were told, accompanied by raucous laughter, it was off to our pits. Some of us even slept outside while the rest of the wussies bunked yp in the hut.
At brekkie a can of whipped cream still lurked threateningly in the hut, throwing itself onto bowls of muesli and later, onto gingernuts. After a fierce battle of broccoli-hurling we set off up the hill. Rain drizzled continuously, giving the ferns a beauty of their own.
During the drive back home one of the guys kept us amused with his ice cream juggling antics, egged on by Allan at the wheel!
Thanks for an entertaining and cruisy trip into the Tararuas.