This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
he name fascinated me so it was a place I just had to go; would there still be cows there? standing in creeks? the mind boggled. It was a bit like Roaring Stag Lodge, where we did see a deer, or parts of one, on the slightly non-breathing side of life. Anyway, on with the weekend. There was a full truck so four of the group went over by private vehicle. I was expecting to see them when we got there, but they hadn’t turned up. Visions of either a pub stop or a breakdown were in my mind, but I decided not to worry until 10:30pm, by which time they’d turned up. In the morning we were greeted with the unlikely story of them having been geographically embarrassed, but we all knew it was just a cover story for the time spent ina local pub... We were underway fairly early and had a regrouping by the turn off to Blue Range Hut. The group split and the faster ones went on to drop their packs at Cow Creek Hut and do further exploring, while the rest of us carried on at the back. We had a lazy lunch _stop in the sun before.carrying I on to the next turnoff. The group split again with some heading down to the river while the rest went to explore the Saddle and to see if we could spot any cows, which we did, on the sign. The track down to the Saddle was a bit
Pageé
DECEMBER 1995.
By Sue Walsh
overgrown in places but rather enjoyable. We carried on down, sort of following the stream until we got to the river and crossed over. A slight misreading of the map gave us two unnecessary crossings, but we eventually got to the hut.
A good spot was found for the flys and everyone settled in. Bit by bit the members of the other group came back from their various explorations; Howard had headed for the tops and managed to get part of a stick stuck in his hand, while the rest had headed upstream via the track then back down the river.
Dinner was soon underway with heaps of helpers pitching in and then the usual silence descended while the food was eaten, apart from some talk about gruesome things that just shouldn’t be mentioned while people are eating. Everyone relaxed after dinner and bit by bit people disappeared to their pits. The wind picked up during the night and_beeame-quite strong. Lying in the dark you could hear the wind whistling through the trees and I was pleased to be in the valley rather than on the tops. Morning came around too soon and we were away quite early. The group split again and half went back via the Saddle while everyone else headed downriver to start the grind up the hill. No one was hanging around as the wind whistling down the valley and over the ridges made it undesirable to stop in any place for too long. Particularly with the trees bending so much, the movement of the roots in the ground made you wonder if there was a slight earthquake.
Blue Range Hut was our lunch I stop and we were surprised to see the Easy’s had already left. Mind you, it would have been uncomfortably crowded with 25 people in the hut! After lunch we headed back to the truck and waited in the sun for the Fits to arrive.
A game of cricket (of sorts) started and that kept the spectators quite happy until the rain started. We disappeared into the back of the Duchess and continued to wait for the Fits (which included the driver) who were now late. We finally assumed the weather was the problem and after making a couple of phone calls, this was verified. Shortly afterwards Eric and Andrew appeared-and-we were off with a roar into Masterton for food, while Eric went off to pick up the others from the Mitre roadend. We eventually got into town around 10:30pm and headed for home. Thanks everyone for a good weekend!