This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
By Michael Lightbourne Another far away trip, this time it was to the Ruahine Ranges. I've never had a completely fine weekend in these ranges and this weekend was no different. This time I was the leader of this Easy trip to the Hut, but the leading was easy with only one other person in the party. I think we were competing with a more glamorous Easy-Medium trip to the same Hut but via the Deadman’s Track.
We drove up in the bus, and stopped for dinner in Levin, strangely the bus was parked a long walk away from where the takeaway shops were situated. Oh well, we are trampers I guess. We arrived at the waterless Rangiwahia roadend and set up camp. It turned out to be an uncomfortable night's sleep, as the ground was on a 15 degree tilt from left to right, and I had to be careful because the other person in the small fly was on the downside! Morning arrived and it was clear with views across to Mt Ruapehu. We set off on the main Track to the Hut before the Easy Medium party left on their track, but it's much easier getting organised with only two in the party. The first part of the track is very easy-going and in no time you reach “the slip”. There was some uncertainty about whether the slip could be crossed or if you had to take the long one-hour detour around it. I checked it out and it's definitely not passable, it's an enormous slip and a long ugly drop to the river below. So we took the detour track and it was slow going. One feature along the track is the Rangiwahia Bridge, opened in 1988 by Helen Clark, and seemingly replacing an old swingbridge. This is a flash bridge and you don't have to see what you're crossing. Look over the edge and you're crossing a spectacular narrow gorge with a river hundreds of metres below! Soon after the bridge we reached the bushline. This is the great thing about tramping in the Ruahines. You start walking from the roadend at a height of about 800 metres, so the open tops are so accessible. We reached the hut a short time later and had lunch. Over lunch Renee and I talked abouf safety on the tops, and what we'd do if cloud rolled in and it became a white-out. Fairly relevant at the time, because the weather was beginning to deteriorate. Fortunately I didn’t overly scare new member Renee with worst-case scenarios, and appropriately equipped, we headed out towards the high point of the range. A few minutes after leaving the Hut, we came across the first of the Easy Medium party, nearly at their destination, which was a big surprise because everyone expected their day to be long and hard. I carried on up the hill to the top of the range, which runs parallel and close to the main Ruahine Range. One of the highlights of the trip was spotting Triangle Hut, dark reddish and in a tiny clearing, hundreds of metres below in the steep valley between the two Ranges. The cloud was coming and going in the windy conditions, so you could periodically see the main range which had some snow on it. It started to look like it could bucket down at any minute, so I decided to play it safe and head back to the hut.
During our game of 500 back in the large Hult, it did start to rain. We had a shared dinner with Lisa Tinkley’s group, which was a delicious curry-flavoured couscous. On Sunday it was still misty and quite cold, however a short way down the track it began to clear. We got out at midday, but had to pick up the Fit group at 3pm! We decided to head into Kimbolton to fill the time, but the whole town was closed! No dairy, no petrol station, nothing. Fortunately on our way to the Fit’s road end we passed through a place called Apiti, where icecreams could be bought. We then picked up the fit-looking Fit group and headed home.