This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
~ Yalami and gerkhins, salami _ on crackers, or even salami in Mac Cheese sound like agreeable combinations. But curried salami? No, not a combination dreamt up by Alexander the Great on his conquest to the East, but a combination created by our trip leader as he shuffled the ingredients of two well-balanced meals to create a combination which would make any connoisseur of Italian or Indian cuisine squirm. Actually it wasn’t bad. Our editor was recently observed creating a honey and salami sandwich which must be a more questionable combination.
The Orient Express delivered us to our roadend beyond Nelson in comfort with entertainment and refreshments provided by our driver and tour guide. Campers at Maitai River campground were disturbed from blissful sleep as the Orient Fxpress drove through the campground with lights searching for the Mediums’ dropoff point. But campers at our roadend, another 30km on, inflicted revenge with intermittent blaring music. The music was apparently so loud (I didn’t hear a note of it) that the “raingod” Struan retreated from beneath the security of a
Stuart Palmer
waterproof fly to bivvy out in the bush.
Discussions of route options started 10 days prior to the trip and continued to each junction point en route. The route of travel was determined by a process of elimination and helped by descriptions such as poxy, gnarly, and grotty, which related to anything other than well-graded, gentle descents. There was the challenging clockwise option, the epic, and intermediate anti-clockwise options, and then the relaxed option. In true “fit” style the options were whittled down to what was the only real contender - a relaxed trip. The trip included the bagging of four 5000! peaks, or alternatively described as wandering along a pleasant ridge line and pausing in a horizontal composure at regular intervals-to take-in-the-sun-andgrand views of Abel Tasman Bay. There seemed to be disagreement on other details of our trip. Our leader claimed it didn’t rain all weekend and the only use we had for his coat was to repel sandflies in the hut. tn contrast, the “raingod” claimed his reputation had been,preserved with yet another poxy, wet weekend. Our coach driver spoke of gentle, easy travel on open ridge lines, while that string of adjectives —poxy, gnarly — was repeated by our less optimistic tour guide.
Our route comprised: Saturday: Anersede roadend to Slaty Hut Sunday: Slaty Hut to Roebuck Hut via the ridge between the Pelorus and Mates Creek Monday: Roebuck Hut to Anersede roadend
The Higgins’ were determined not to be late for Monday night’s ferry. Allen had us awake with tea at the uncivilised hour of 5.30am and then Sue strode out a cracker pace. Another member of the party of half Sue’s age was noted occasionally breaking into a run to keep up!
Our party-comprised: - Daniel Meares (Leader), Allen Higgins, Sue Higgins (pace setter), Roger Bolam (proud owner of lemons), Struan Little (optimist in his own way?), and Stuart Palmer (scribe)
Thanks fellow trampers for a great weekend. Pages