This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
An Alpine trip to the Seaward Kaikouras, 18'"-21st August 2005
/ The trip began, as many trips do, with the group making camp at the road end in the dark. Alison shared a tent with Sharron, the trip leader. John slept in the other two-man tent. Harry, for reasons best known to himself, slept outside, under a tree.
tae
The next morning, the four set off along a four-wheel-drive track, which gradually gave way to an easy bash up the Kowhai River. The weather was clear and fine, though a cool breeze did force John to put on an extra jumper. It was a sign of things to come.
After walking for an hour or so up the river from the road end, the four reached the junction with Snowflake Stream and sat down to eat scroggin and consider their next move.
The object of the trip was to climb Snowflake, a peak of around 1870 meters. There were two options: either follow Snowflake Stream, camp low, and climb up and down the following day; or climb Snowflake Spur from where they now sat, camp high, then follow the ridge around to Snowflake next morning, before descending. The four lay in the sun for a while, idly pondering these options, before eventually deciding. They would climb Snowflake Spur!
If they could find a way onto it.
Harry had been here once before and remembered an unmarked track that led, via a saddle, onto the tops. But that had been many years ago, when the world was still in black and white, and things looked different now. Harry led them to the approximate area where the track began, and the four plunged into the bush to find it. They spent a long hour thrashing through the undergrowth in search of Harry's track, before Harry remembered that it actually began somewhere else entirely. He ambled off to find it, then waved the others over.
“Here itis,” he said, looking pleased with himself.
“Well done," said Sharron, and the others agreed.
Once located, Harry's track did indeed lead up to a saddle, from where a relatively straightforward, if more or less vertical, bit of bush bashing took them on to the open ridge. To celebrate (and to catch their breath), the four sat down in the sun again and ate more scroggin.
The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. In the afternoon sunshine, a steady climb and some easy scrambling led the four a good way along the ridge. The only question on Sharron’s mind was what to do about water, since there wasn’t any. Harry remembered a campsite by a stream, further along and a couple of hundred metres below the ridge, and that became the vague objective. But no-one was enthusiastic about climbing down what they would only have to climb up again in the morning, so when Alison spotted a patch of grubby snow in a small hollow just off the ridge line and suggested they camp there, it seemed like a grand idea. They could pitch their tents, melt the grubby snow for water, and watch the sunset reflected on the mountains across the valley to the east.
Except that Harry was not won over by the grubby snow. He thought melting it was a bad idea, that would use too much fuel and leave them drinking grubby water. Instead, he thought, they should find a stream and fetch fresh water.
Unfortunately, the only fresh water Harry could find was a thin dribble trickling off an icicle, three hundred meters below, around some bluffs and across a dangerously unstable scree slope. "Someone should go down there and get some water,” he said, as he sat down to watch the sunset, “before it gets dark”.
That night after dinner, as they lay in their tent, John asked Harry about his enduring love affair with the great outdoors. “I hate tramping,” said Harry, gloomily. “In fact, I retired from tramping long ago, But, every so often, I come back, hoping for a good trip, with good weather and good company.” He sighed. “A triumph of optimism over experience.” Then he rolled over and began to snore.
nak
When John woke the next morning, he unzipped the tent and stuck his head out to see what the day had brought. A ferocious wind howled ferociously around his ears. “My, this wind is ferocious,” said Alison, who had got up early to brew up and melt things on the stove. John could only agree.
In the teeth of the gale, the four struggled to break camp and ready themselves for the day ahead. The wind raged, howling about the tops, screaming through the tussock. A lesser party would have given up and gone down immediately, but our four were made of sterner stuff than that. They had come this far. They would go at least a little further. They shouldered their packs, lent into the wind, and continued slowly up the ridge, brave and uncomplaining.
For several hours they battled on against the elements. It was a glorious effort, but in vain. As they huddled together for protection, exhausted, Sharron finally said what needed to be said. “This is hopeless,” she said. “We must go down.” And down they went.
It is a curious but little known fact about the Seaward Kaikouras that their unique geography can generate extreme but highly localised weather patterns. It was for this reason that, just a few kilometres away, David Jewell and Gary de Rose were able to climb Manakau — more than a thousand metres above the highest point reached by our intrepid four — yet hardly notice the wind at all. But our four could know nothing of this as they beat their weary and reluctant retreat, stopping only for an hour-long morning tea in the sunshine as soon as the wind had abated. Getting off the ridge proved as difficult, if not more so, than had getting onto it in the first place. This time, Harry's track proved impossible to find, so the four simply pushed their way into the trees, trusting to their well-honed bushcraft skills to see them safely down. A less experienced party might have become lost and disorientated, snagged by bush lawyer, ripped by thorns, and repeatedly forced back by bluffs as they attempted to regain the river. Such a party might well have stumbled onto the river bank, dazed, confused and exhausted only after several hours, and largely by chance. Fortunately for our four, they knew their stuff better than that.
Once back down in the valley, it was the matter of an easy hour or so along a track beside the Kowhai River to « reach Kowhai hut, for a lazy afternoon spent drinking tea and playing Five Hundred. That evening, after dinner, John lit a roaring fire and Alison delighted the rest of the group by showing them her collection of lichen photographs, taken at close quarters, from various angles. Ah, happy times! Afterwards, everyone settled down onto their bunks for the night. Apart from Harry. His hut pass had expired, so Sharron sent him outside to sleep in the woodshed eee The next morning, there was little to do except return to (Lovely, interesting one of excl green oH pink the road end and await the return of the Manakau Two lichen by Alison — even more exciting, interesting and with the minibus lovely in colour,
With time to spare, the group stopped on the way out to build a cairn, marking the beginning of Harry's track up fo Snowflake Spur.
“Get some rocks from the riverbed,” Sharron commanded, “and follow me.”
Everyone grabbed an armful of rocks and struggled after Sharron. This would have been hard work at the best of times, but it was made doubly difficult by all the rocks underfoot, which the four kept stumbling over as they made their way to point where Harry's track began.
“Phew! That was hard work,” said Alison when they arrived. She dropped her rocks onto the rocky ground, and the others did the same. Sharron gathered the rocks together and tried to build a cairn. When she had finished, however, it just looked like a pile of rocks, indistinguishable from all the other piles of rocks lying naturally around.
Harry, Sharron and John building the cairn by Snowflake Stream
Though still tired from fetching all the water the night before, John was obliged to start the job again. He set about the task with skilful dexterity. “That just looks like a pile of rocks!’ cried Sharron bitterly, as he put the finishing fouches to his amazing cairn-shaped cairn. But Harry and Alison agreed that it was probably the finest cairn in the Seaward Kaikouras, if not the South Island, and would probably stand forever. John accepted their congratulations with his usual modesty.
By the time the cairn had been completed and the four had made their way back to the road end, the Manakau Two were waiting. So it was into the bus and up to Picton for a fish supper and the ferry back to Wellington.
And so the trip came to an end.
(Trampers — Sharron Came, John Marney, Harry Smith and Alison Stevenson)