This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
W: could hear the waves lapping against the shore as we stumbled our way across the rolling sand dunes. The sky was brightly lit up by millions of stars, and the moon hung like a suspended banana. We admired the night sky and the planets changing colour. It was freezing cold. If this hardly sounds like the start of your average trip report from yet another grovelly weekend in the Tararuas, think again. Stargazing at Hokio Beach proved the perfect excuse to extend bedtime Friday night, after we all agreed that hanging around Levin with the local lads hardly was a viable option. After this unusual prelude, the pipes at Ohau roadend became our camp for the night.
Makaretu stream awaited us Saturday - a pretty little stream, and our party of five made its way up it. There was hardly time to delay the inevitable — i.e. cold wet feet — and we crossed the stream a number of times. Gorgy at first, and with deep swimming holes to be avoided, our toes became numb - and then got used to the cold. After a while the stream opened up, and travel became easier over large grassy flats. A “large goat spied on-us, and ther we had lunch. It was unusually warm, and the clouds looked strange. At about 3, we were looking up the spur that would take us up to
Oriwa Biv. Six hundred metres of bushbash — that should take about 2 hours we reckoned. Wayne counted the contour lines as we grovelled our way up with one hand out of order, and just three minutes past five we spotted the quaint little ‘dog kennel’like shelter of Oriwa Biv. And, who else occupied it but the FE group!! They tried to convince us the trip had momentarily been downgraded to a “Fairly Easy” one, .and that their the day had been a “doddle” — well if this is FE standard these days standards are certainly slipping! I thought these buggers were supposed to tramp, sorry run — from pre-dawn to post-dusk... Anyway, we made our camp under the trees, and tried to warm up. Dinner was exquisite, but even the thought of chocolate fondue could not keep us from our warm sleeping bags. A very long sleep later, we crawled out into the misty goblin forest at the civilised hour of 9am. My disillusion with essentially fit trampers increased, as, sometime later the FE group was seen emerging from their biv. Presumably the previous day had been so knackering they needed to sleep in. What we thought could-qualify to be the mysterious “lost lake of the Tararuas” was shrouded in mist, and as we had a closer look at it, we determined that there could have been some water there once, and it could certainly become a lake again if enough water was put into it. Assuming the day would be fairly straightforward, the departure was delayed until 10, and joined by the so-called FEs, we then set off at a fast pace following the ageing long-haired groover who had been there before. Some time in retirement and too many movies must have had its effect, and we were soon lost. Much muttering over maps and compasses ensued, and people were running up and down spurs looking for the track, shouting back unintelligible messages in strange accents. After much activity by the male component of the party, some good female sense made us all realise where we were, and after a bit of backtracking we ended up where we should have been an hour earlier.
A short bushbash, and we were on top of Waiopehu inside thick porridge. The view was nowhere to be seen, and we proceeded — on a track! —- down to Waiopehu Hut where we had a short lunch. The rest of trip consisted mainly of mud and more mud, but it was otherwise a good track. We hit the roadend just on four, and the OE took us back to Wellington.
Punters:
Ruth (leader & navigator), Harry (gearfreak extraordinaire), Mike (lost lake enthusiast), Wayne (one armed bandit) and Jeanine.
[Photo captions and page text that interrupted the story:]
Jeanine Langvik