This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
nd finally, the weather, from Met Service for the weekend. Mostly fine in the North Island with a few cloudy spells in the east later in the day”. This justified a 6am start on Saturday for Andrew Downes and I to drive to Dawson Falls for some climbing on Fantham’s Peak, Taranaki. Alas, infamous Taranakiclag deteriorated the walk to Symes Hut into a mission. Cold, drizzly mist turned to sleet, snow and 40 km/h winds above Kapuni Hut with visibility down to 30 metres. The poles from Kapuni to Symes, if you could call them that with one foot of ice on them and becoming increasingly buried, were a Godsend. On more than one occasion we simply had to wait for five minutes for the clag to give us a clue as to where the next pole lay (though vertically above you was a good clue). Once at Fantham’s Peak it took us 45 minutes to find the hut in the poor visibility as the poles leading to it were almost entirely buried with snow and ice. Andrew had been there 12 months before but I more than two years ago. Recollections faded like the visibility. At one point we were within 30 metres of the hut but turned away for lack of sighting. Finally, a slight break in the fog and a due-south compass bearing took us to the hut. Our footprints in the snow the next day looked like Winnie the Pooh and Piglet walking round a copse, phaffing about. It took ten minutes to dig into the hut for snowdrifts
Charlie Batho and ice. The door was found ajar because of intruding snow, which had created a one-foot snowdrift stretching inside the hut. Access into the hut was only via the top half of the stable door. The wire holding the roof down was coated in one foot of ice. Snowdrifts and ice reached the windows making it bunker style accommodation.Inside the hutthe water tank was frozen and the thermometer never got above —2° C the whole time with a wind-chill of -15° outside with the strong winds. We were in sleeping bags by 7pm. Rarely have I had such a satisfying sleep as I did that night. Thanks DOC for a brilliantly located hut. Worth far more than $4 per night that night. The next morning was clear, settled, crisp, and eerily quiet after the storm. The sunrise was stunning with Ruapehu in the distance and Taranaki gleaming orange above. The rest of the day was spent toproping from Fantham’s Peak. And the rest is history, as they say. Oh, and the trip report was written (wearing gloves) on some toilet paper in the hut. And when we got down to the carpark, DOC had left a note on the windscreen saying “Please see me” since we had not registered our intentions. They had informed Police Search and Rescue that the car was left overnight, who tracked Sarah down in Wellington via the number plate and made inquiries as to our experience and equipment. No call-out was required after Sarah's reassurances. Praise again DOC.
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