This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
to the Tararuas - Easter.
By Spencer Clubb
Why is a cheeseburger with pineapple cheaper than a Hawaiian burger with cheese? So began our quest for knowledge and excitement at the Featherston chippie. A quest that would take us deep into the Tararua bush in search of enlightenment. Preferably enlightenment of our packs, as they were quite heavy with 4 days of food including no less than 6 vegetables and 2 pieces of fruit each to keep us healthy and to combat the pimples from the inevitable chocolate overdose that comes with tramping trips!
We parked up at “The Pines” and walked in the dark for an hour through farmland until we reached the bush edge and a nice little campsite that also doubled as a track. But don’t tell anyone cos we’re not suppose to fly camp on tracks.
Pitching the fly is a skill known only to select members of Tramping Clubs. I’m sure outside of this elite circle it is impossible to buy, beg, borrow or steal flys. For most other mortals they are probably thought of as confined to museums and exhibitions on ‘how we used to live’. The question was — did we have one of the elite in our crack team of five and, more worryingly, was our fly destined for that museum piece?
Luckily all went well and we were an equal match to the ageing droopiness of the fly. No wind, no rain, no worries.
The next day was big. Very big. To be precise, 1571 metres big. A climb to the top of Mitre Peak, the tallest mountain in the Tararuas. We headed off and reached the foot of the climb by lunchtime. It didn’t take long for us to get to know each other quite well and lunch was followed by an after-dinner speech by the Vice President of the Tramping Club, Margaret. We quickly came to realise why Margaret was the ‘vice’ President, after this, and a few more equally risqué stories from her extensive repertoire. Margaret quickly earned the more accurate moniker of President of Vice!
The climb was long and hard, but the weather held and we reached the summit as the late afternoon sun slowly sank towards the horizon over Kapiti Island and the Tasman Sea. It would have been a great place to sit and watch the sun set, but we had the small matter of 2 more peaks to climb and a descent over some pinnacles to reach Tarn Ridge Hut, our destination for the night.
The rest of the afternoon seemed to slip through our fingers and we found ourselves climbing up the final peak in the fading light, as the sun dropped below swirling cloud into the ocean. We were pretty tired, but we managed to keep ourselves going and descended in torchlight to the hut 11 hours after we had set off. Dinner that night tasted amazing. The next day brought more perfect weather — sunny and calm. Were we still in the Tararuas? We crossed Tarn Ridge without incident, and without finding any tarns to speak of either. Next came a series of precipitous pinnacles, like the back of dinosaur, heading downwards back to the bushline. Handholds and footholds were sometimes hard to come by, and those of us carrying trekking poles soon found that they were about as useful as trying to eat soup with chopsticks.
Having reached the bottom of one pinnacle, the ‘boys’ encouraged the ‘girls’ down a particularly steep section by suggesting that they freed their hands by dropping any unwanted tramping accessories to the bottom. What we didn’t count on was the fact that we were standing like sitting ducks right in the middle of the projectile flight-path. We sustained heavy casualties. Colin was struck by a half-full water-bottle, and Dirk was speared by a superbly thrown trekking pole. Luckily Margaret had left the safety on, and the rubber tip bounced off with no permanent damage other than perhaps a bit of psychological scarring. After a steep and slippery descent involving several close and unexpected inspections of the forest floor we reached Arete Forks Hut. For those of you who may be trying to visit every toilet in the Tararuas I have some good news for you - Arete Forks does not have one. After a humongous meal, and after Dirk and I had scrounged yet another cup of tea due to simultaneous packing errors, we hit the sack for another well earned sleep. Luckily for us, Dirk had thwarted the local resident rat (Roger?) by cleverly nailing his entry hole up with the lid of a tin can. Kiwi ingenuity at its best. The next day was a slog along the ‘sidle’ track to cow creek. Described in the hut book as follows by one unhappy punter, “Is this the worst track in the Tarauas?”. I don’t know the answer to that question, but it took over 6 hours to go not many more than 6kms, and I certainly had flashbacks of Stewart Island gulleys and the Southern part of the Taranaki round the mountain jungle-like low route. We somehow seemed to get by on the rather unlikely diet of Margaret’s risqué stories and my bad jokes. I think in those 6 hours almost every animal, vegetable and mineral walked into a bar... The final day was no walk in the park. 10 hours along river valleys back out to our waiting cars. One idiot in our group (guess who) left his waterproofs hanging outside the hut and only realised after over an hour of walking. After running back for them, it was a struggle, and a relief, to catch back up with the rest of the group and head out together after a total of 35 hours tramping. Awesome. The trampers were: Margaret (Leader), Spencer, Wingya, Colin and Dirk