This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
van for the nine of us on Friday evening. We got to the Puniho roadend at 11.45 pm. Two flies were put up — one was ina position that if it had rained a lot people may have got wet. We finally settled down to sleep around 12.45. Fortunately there was only light drizzle overnight.
[ was a long drive in a rental
In the morning some of the party did not wake up until around 8.00 am. Asit was a “dry” campsite and some people had empty water bottles we had to drive down the road to get some water for our morning cuppa. We headed off from our misty campsite at about 10.00 am.
The Puniho Track that runs through low bush was followed for a while. After some discussion we decided to follow the track up the Stony River instead of going straight up the hill towards Mt Egmont. The Stony River track was initially quite rough with a lot of stones to walk over. In one place the people at the front of the party temporarily lost the track. The sun came out and it started to warm up. It was quite noticeable that we were constantly climbing, climbing, climbing. Lunch was on top of a cliff look-"~ ing down on Stony Creek. By this time it was really sunny and warm. After lunch the party wandered on towards Balis Falls. Along the way there were some up and down bits on the track that caused the party some problems, as they were really steep and slippery- At the river below Balis Falls everybody sunbathed on large river rocks for about three-quarters of an hour. The falls were spectacular as they were really high and had a lot of water coming down. A couple of people decided to be “brave” and went swimming in the river, but the water was too cold for the rest of the party. Eventually we headed up the hill to Holly Hut. To get there we climbed an awful lot of steps. We were quite surprised to meet Hazel’s party walking down the hill on a day trip from Holly Hut to look at Balis Falls. We arrived at Holly Hut at about 4.00 pm. The party was by this time feeling very lazy and only two people went for a day walk to look at the sphagnum moss swamp. As the hut was dark and quite crowded we cooked dinner outside. To start off with it was fine and then the mist came in. It was suggested we should move the cooking inside; however, we persevered and it became fine again later. Dinner was very nice. All bar ~two of the party-slept in-the-hut-— Next morning we bid Holly Hut and Hazel’s group farewell at about 9.30 am. The northwesterly was strengthening and the cloud was coming in around the hut. It was a steady climb up around the side of the mountain. Since the party was refreshed they covered the country really fast. Then instead of following the track down to North Egmont we continued to climb up and around the side of the mountain. On this part of the mountain there was a fresh norwesterly and it was fine and sunny (the mountain seemed to be stopping the clouds coming through). As we continued we crossed over a few gullies that were filled with snow. You could see Mt Ruapehu in the dim distance. Lunch was had in the lee of Tahurangi Lodge — there was a nice view and the lodge sheltered us from the cold wind.
We then wandered down the road that led from the lodge and TV aerial to North Egmont roadend. By this stage quite a few of the party members were suffering from sunburn. Once we had dropped about 300 metres we were out of the wind. We had quite a long wait at the roadend sitting in the sun. After setting off in the Orient Express we were surprised to find it was overcast with light rain at the bot- --tom-of-Mount-Egmont..[-think-ev=..—. erybody had a good time. The party was: Leanne, Ted, Lisa, Kim, Kathy, Szusza, Chris, Christiane and John.
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10 - 12 October 1997
John Hoffeins