This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
n Saturday morning the Medium group set off to Rangiwahia Hut on a beautifully clear, sunny day. Great views of a steaming Mount Ruapehu and the surrounding area were had all the way up to the hut. With Rangiwahia Hut being ideally situated above the bushline, the views from the hut must be among the best in the North Island.
We continued up the ridge and the views continued to be great. We had lunch on the tops and Jeanine's and Lane’s binoculars were put to good use searching out Andrew and Roger (the Fit trip) whom we thought we spotted on the skyline in the far off distance.
With some reluctance, we set off downhill into the bush, in the direction of Triangle Hut. It seemed such a shame to lose all the great views but the bush and the valley below were quite nice.
On the way down, Lane had a small fall, and he twisted his ankle. He was all right, but I was disappointed that he managed to avoid falling in a large mud pool next to where he fell. I thought I could get a good photo, but not this time. The rest of the drop down.to Triangle Hut was largely. uneventful,
After arriving at Triangle Hut and having set up camp, we were interrupted by these two strange, sweaty guys. They looked somewhat familiar, but they were really weird. One of them had a habit of dropping his rubbish everywhere and making strange monkey-like noises. The other guy had an appetite which was quite shocking, and definitely not normal.
This guy, after he finished his meal, promptly ate all of our leftovers and the remains of everyone else’s meals. What an appetite! Jo, our glorious leader, admitted to knowing this guy, and said that once they managed to go for 8 weeks in their flat without putting out any rubbish ~ wow, does that mean he eats onion peels, bones, food wrappers etc... hell, what an appetite!
On Sunday the two strange guys left before us and headed back out over the tops. We all continued down the river to Iron Gate Hut. The trip down the river was quite pleasant and we were at Iron Gate Hut by lunchtime.
At Iron Gate the map on the wall of the hut said it was 5 hours to Heritage Lodge, and then a further hour from there to the roadend. We were a bit surprised at these times, and - thought the trip should only take 3 hours max. Jo cracked the whip,.and we had a short lunch and were soon off.
The track down the valley is in excellent condition and we made good time. It was soon obvious that we were not going to take 5 hours to tramp to Heritage Lodge. We did manage to find a wasps nest on or next to a tree which had fallen and blocked the track. Jeanine and I got over the log ~ successfully but Andrew got one sting on his back. The others were promptly warned and managed to avoid the wasps by making a bit of a detour from the track. .
Later on, I just missed out on an excellent photo when Lisa stepped into a mud hole and her leg disappeared into the mud, up to the bottom of her shorts .. . uuhl!! Just as I was getting my camera out, she managed to extract herself ... darn.
We arrived at Heritage Lodge and found a guy there with two young children. What a noise . . . these two kids .. . girls, of course .. were yelling and screaming. I can still hear them in the back of my head ... who ever wants to have kids? After completing the remaining _ half hour walk out to the roadend, we were met by the Easy group and those two strange guys again. Now! know where I had seen them before, they were Andrew and Roger . . . heck, I think they should teach some social skills at law schools at university. They were wellbehaved this time, and we set off in the Duchess back to Wellington.
Scribe: an impoverished exstudent. Those on the trip: Jo, Leah, Lane, Diane, Andrew, Jeanine, Wayne, Lisa, Vicky, John, Bruce.
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By Wayne Stevens