This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
he clan gathers at the Catchpool carpark at 9.30am on this fine Sunday morning, the 15" February ‘98, and the trip leader checks that all punters are present. They are, and shouldering their day packs we have: Judy Armstrong, Dave Catchpole (our leader), juliet Griffiths, Heather Jones, Don and Ben O’Brien, lan Scott, Diana Strang, and Lloyd Wilkin. A few minutes later, this nifty nine start tramping along the Orongorongo Track to the junction with the Butcher Track, only about ten minutes away. The party easily follows the well-kept and wellgraded Butcher Track upwards to its junction with the Cattle Ridge Track where we stop for morning tea.
Here we are not alone for there are many day packs already on the ground, unattended except for one solitary 13-year-old college boy named Philip, who explains that the Wellington College party, of which he is a member, is up at the Baker Trig and will soon be departing for the Orongorongo River via the Cattle Ridge Track. Our nifty nine pushes on to the Baker Trig at 465m and takes young Philip up too so that he sees the panoramic view from the top.
He rejoins his party which includes some adults, and who are already enjoying the extensive views over Wellington and the Hutt, while in the opposite direction, the main I Rimutaka peaks of Matthews (941m), Tapokopoko (843m), The Peak (864m), and Kotumu (786m) look impressive across the other side of the Orongorongo Valley which separates them from us. By now the early morning clag which restricted views of the tops as we motored to the Catchpool has completely cleared and the weather is brilliantly sunny with a steady breeze from the north-west.
At Mt Baker we move from the Butcher Track to the Baker Track whichruns-off the summittowards the east, but soon turns southwards and dips into a saddle as it descends towards Matai Stream. Once into the saddle, the track, which is fourwheel-drive, climbs up the other side before levelling off and then continuing the descent steeply at a point 376m high where a foot-track shoots off at right angles towards the east at grid reference R28/ 714799 on the Wellington Topo map edition 3. We stop briefly at a point about 50 metres along the foot-track to take in a splendid view of the Orongorongo River and its surrounds, looking upstream towards the north-east and Paua Hut.
The sun is also high in the sky in this direction so that the individual streams of water in the riverbed stand out in blue and sparkling silver against the light grey of the stony bed. No one has a camera with them.
My dictionary describes Shangri-La thus: Noun. A remote or imaginary utopia. (20" century, from the name of imaginary valley in the Himalayas, from LOST HORIZON (1933), a novel by James Hilton.) My Shangri-La is a river valley lo- I cated 16 kilometres south-east of I the Wellington Town Hall as the crow flies, and is named Orongorongo. Standing at this viewpoint, most of us are veterans of the Tapokopoko summit trip of one month ago when, on reaching that summit we searched in vain for a viewpoint.
Lloyd Wilkin
Now we look up at where we were then and discuss where we might find a viewpoint, should we visit it again one day. One last look at the scene below us and we turn, retrace our steps for 50 metres to the Baker Track junction and then continue our descent to Matai Stream where we stop for lunch at its junction with the river. Slightly downstream on the other side of the river, we see the big shingle delta as the Red Rock Stream tumbles down from Kotumu and empties into the river. Is there a handy swimming hole, as the day is very very hot? The answer is no; not here at any rate.
Lunch over and rested, we set off up-river making two stops on the way. First stop is about ten minutes upstream after we round a left-hand bend and view the place where senior marathon runners used to leave the riverbed and scale a steep track running up from a big shingle slide to point 376m on the Baker Track.
Our second stop is for a swim in Green Stream at its junction with the river at Paua Hut. Upstream from Paua we pass by the Wellington College party which is also working its way upstream towards Jacob's Ladder. We're finally on the Orongorongo Track, and for the second time this day, we meet up with Lyle Mason who has covered _a lot of ground by going from Catchpool to Butcher Track to Cattle Ridge Track to McKerrow Track to Whakanui Track to Orongorongo River and via the track back to the Catchpool. Not bad, eh! So ends a very pleasant day as the nifty nine return to the Catchpool, thank their leader, say cheerio and motor off into the late afternoon sunshine.