This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
By Anna Lambrechtsen Over Easter Rachael, Craig, Victoria, Stuart, John and I headed up north to the Whirinaki's for four days of tramping, lured by tales of fantastic podocarp forests, we were expecting great things. It was not un-tinged with sadness, Amanda, who none of us could remember tramping without recently, was supposed to be coming along but she was at home sick with the flu, leaving the token extrovert mantle free for any talkative person to pick up. It was pissing down as we headed up the island, and drizzling lightly when we arrived at the camp site for the first night, however, that was the last we saw of rain for the entire trip. The weather smiled on us, even without Jane, and the sun shone.
As we were sifting around at the track start waiting for Craig and Victoria to drop the cars off at the safe car place, I examined with interest the DoC times for the trip. Craig’s description said there was to be a 9-10 hr day on Saturday, and as a marginal medium fit, I was interested in whether this was true or not. Unfortunately it appeared that 9-10 hrs was optimistic, my not very strong maths still managed to loosely add up the times to 13 hrs 45 minutes... when this was mentioned to Craig he said “bah, DoC, what do they know?”, it’s not like we had a lot of choice in where we could go — we had to do the loop, so I shrugged, hoped he was right and started walking.
The Whirinaki track is a seemingly random mixture of tedious benched track and nice fun normal tramping track. It started off with benched as far as central Whirinaki hut, which was fine because the trees were so fantastic, with beautiful towering podocarps stretching above us, heaps of birds, forest nothing like the standard beech that so often tramping tracks go through, and not having to look at your feet was a bonus. From central we decided to go to the caves and then up a stream track DoC isn’t marking on the terralink maps. The caves were neat and pumice like, no solid limestone — felt a little less permanent...
The trip up the stream was good fun, it was nice to have something slightly challenging to follow. There was a bit of lead swapping, but most people got a chance to lead for a time and to learn a bit about finding tracks up streams — best to learn by doing! We saw a couple of pairs of Whio on our way up the stream — hopefully they weren’t too disturbed by us, it was great to see them so close.
Next day was our 9 or 13 hr day depending on who you believed. Looking at the map, it was a hell of a long way, so I was fairly certain the 13 hr was closer to the truth. We were contemplating having two 10 hr days or one 13 and then a 7 — popular opinion was leaning towards the 13 hr option, but decided to make the decision closer to the end of the day. It was also Rachael’s birthday, and as a special tramping treat for her, it was cold, wet boots and socks on a frosty morning — lucky thing! She didn’t seem to be enjoying the treat though...
Early on in the day, we came across a hunter, and the usual discussion of the distance and times occurred. He thought we should stop at upper Te Hoe (7 hrs) rather than Central Te
Hoe(10hrs), and if we managed to achieve the next hut whose name escapes me (13hrs) then we were “kick ass” trampers. Trying not to puff out our chests too much, we modestly said we'd see how it goes.
The rest of the day consisted of lots and lots of tramping. We walked up to a ridge, along the ridge, down to Upper Te Hoe, up onto another ridge, along that, and down to Central Te Hoe. The track continued its semi-random benched/normal track swapping, with just before Central, it went benched again and cut through cliffs, DoC had provided cables so we were unlikely to stumble to our deaths.
At Central (10 hrs just like DoC said) we sat and re-grouped and contemplated options. It was around Sish I think and going to start getting dark soon. The track was supposed to stay benched for a while so finding it in the dark should be easy, a bit more discussion, and the decision was made, 13 hrs it was, kick-ass trampers that we were.
For some reason walking benched track in the dark was easier than in daylight, maybe there was more to concentrate on so it wasn’t so boring? Who knows, we were tired but not broken by the time we got to the hut. Victoria provided us with another delicious dinner, Rach blew out the candles on her mallow puff birthday “cake” and we collapsed into bed. It felt like I'd only just shut my eyes when it was time to wake up again — we had a sleep in till 7.30, but it wasn’t enough.
Once we were past the benched track, it was following a stream/river along one of the prettiest gorges I’d ever seen. Criss-crossing the river and struggling over logs, all good fun. DoC’s 3 hrs for this section proved to be crazily optimistic - especially seeing the distance and DoC time estimate was the same for benched track and river travel, however, we reached the hut in good time and actually had a few minutes of daylight to sift around and relax.
The final day was a mere 4 hrs, no worries for us hardcore trampers. The benched and std tramping was even more random on this day. It was really sad there was any benched track at all, because it was a fun little gully with a stream in it, quite steep in places with a waterfall with a rope to look forward to — the hut book mentioned something, and seeing 3 kids we past yesterday said it was fun, I wasn’t expecting death defying.
We got to the waterfall in good time, our intrepid leader failed to see the rope and started climbing up the bank, I saw the rope and figured it looked like fun and clambered up, no worries, both were valid ways past the obstacle. Rach, who'd been charging like a fit thing the whole way, on what was her second ever proper tramp, was cruising up after the waterfall proud of herself for negotiating the obstacle, when she watched in horrified slow motion as John “stomper” Hoffeins stood on a really neat weta of a species I'd never seen before. Hopefully it wasn’t the last of its kind, because that weta didn’t have long left after John had finished with it. In John’s defence, it was an accident — the weta was well camouflaged and track coloured, but it was sad none the less.
From there it was a bit more fun grovelling before the ridge was climbed and the benched track was reached. The only casualty after the weta was Stuart’s Achilles, but I’m sure he wasn’t that fond of them anyway, and the trip was done.
A beautiful part of the country, and one we couldn’t've done in 3.5 days if chunks of it hadn’t been benched, but benching it is ruining the tramp — if you want to do the trip, I'd recommend sooner rather than later, while there’s still some fun stuff left. Many thanks to Craig & Victoria for organising the trip, and Victoria for the yummy food we ate along the way, and to everyone on the tramp for making it such a neat experience. Cheers!