This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
, August 4-6, 2006 Melissa Hewson (The Leader, no jellybean preference), Clinton Hunter (The Arsonist and The Scribe of This Report, prefers black jellybeans), Renee Habluetzel (The Scone Taster, prefers red black and purple jellybeans), Mark Wild (The Woodchopper, no jellybean preference), Derek Moore (The Computer Wizard, prefers orange jellybeans), Ailsa Taylor (The Co-Leader, no jellybean preference).
While the snowcraft folks were away on their weekend in a snow cave high up on the slopes of Mount Ruapehu, a few of us who decided to spend Saturday night in a warm comfortable hut took an easy tramp to Blythe hut on the southern slopes of Mount Ruapehu. We were six in number and we began our trip on Friday night at a campground, just off the Ohakune Mountain
Road where the night wasn’t too cold. The next day was a short drive to the start of the track. It was pretty damp and raining lightly. We began our climb up through the thickly forested slopes of the mountain through muck, water and mud up over our gaiters in some places. To solve the problem of the mud, logs had been placed across the trail so that they formed a corduroy walkway. We found out later that some of these logs had been laid back in the 1920's, about eighty years ago! It was amazing to see that they hadn’t rotted away through the decades. During one of our stops on the way up, our trip leader passed around a bag of jellybeans. This led to a discussion of the Melissa Hewson Jellybean Theory (MHJT). The MHUT states that people with certain personality traits prefer certain colours of jellybeans. For example, I prefer black ones while Melissa, the theory's inventor has no preference. As we climbed up, it was also interesting how the vegetation changed from thick forest to smaller scrub that finally petered out to tussock. The easiest part of our trip was from the junction of the Blyth track with a track that came directly from the Ohakune Mountain Road, across some boggy tussock. This part was easy because of a boardwalk through the grassy tussock and that the track was so well graded for a ways that somebody said we could probably take a pram or a wheelchair along the trail. The views of the mountain from the boardwalk were great, although it was quite cloudy.
Leaving the tussock behind, we headed downhill back into the bush. It was at this point we started to see snow. Certain individuals, who will remain nameless began to toss the snow at the other punters. The snowball fights had begun. The descent ended at a set of spectacular waterfalls that we decided to sit by and have lunch. We met a number of day walkers at this point. After lunch and a rest, we pushed on. It seemed as if the easy part of the trail ended, as we were back to a normal tramping track as soon as we passed the falls. Shortly afterwards, we came to a fork in the trail where we had a choice of continuing for two more hours to a hut further along the Round The Mountain Track or walking a shorter distance to Blyth Hut. After a short debate, we decided to go up to Blyth Hut, after all it was an easy walk. We climbed up out of the valley and on up the hill through beech forest, though this didn’t bring an end to the boardwalks, as there were some across some boggy bits as we headed up the mountain. At this point the group separated. Myself, Mark and Derek were in the first group and we stopped for a while as we reached the edge of the bushline to take some pics, admire the views and wonder about how far away the rest of our group were.
Somehow, it became clear to the three of us that the tension from the first snowball fight had boiled over, and the remaining punters were engaged in a cheerful snowball fight. We didn’t see this snowball fight, but we heard the fighters, and called out to them, with no response.
We reached the first hut on the trail, which wasn’t Blyth. A wooden sign told us that Blyth Hut was only another five minutes away. We looked ahead and sure enough, there was the hut high above us atop a cliff, a short distance away, we slogged up the stairs that someone had built , reached the hut and dropped our packs. The snowball fighters reached us a few minutes later, and both me and Mark, went after our trip leader, joining in the fun and gently tossing snowballs at her. The Chief Arsonist of the group, me and Mark, the Chief Woodcutter then got straight to work, starting fires and chopping wood. Once I had a fire blazing away in the fireplace, we sat around having hot drinks for a while, admiring the stunning views to the south and sorting out our gear. Me, Mark, Melissa, Renee and Derek decided to take a shorter walk up above the snowline on the slopes of Mount Ruapehu, leaving Ailsa in charge of the fire. We didn’t have any ice axes or crampons like our friends up the mountain, but the snow wasn't a teal problem, we walked for quite a way, through a snowy, rocky landscape. in some places the drifts were deep enough to fall through up to our knees but the scenery was spectacular.
We eventually turned back because of the approaching weather and darkness. We returned to the hut, glad to see a large plume of smoke rising from the chimney. Ailsa had done a great job. We then prepped a scrumptious meal of Malaysian beef noodles for dinner and then a few of us sat around playing cards until bedtime. All the while I, the chief arsonist kept the fire roaring away.
The morning brought steady rain and strong winds, and the spectacular views from the hut from the day before had disappeared. I awoke to the smell of some delicious scones being made by our trip leader. These were eventually served with jam and whipped cream. The scones were served in bed to our “official” scone-taster for the trip Renee, who gave them the thumbs up. After this scrumptious breakfast treat, we all packed up, cleaned up and departed. Because of the wind and the rain, it was a pretty quick trip back to the van. We decided not to walk back down the trail we came up on, since it would have been even muddier than the day before. Even so, we still had two river crossings. When we crossed the open tussock on the boardwalk I was nearly blown off by the blast of the wind. We reached the end of the trail and walked back down the road to the van. We then drove up the mountain to meet up with the brave souls who had gone to spend the weekend up in the snowcaves, only to find that the weather had closed in and most of the groups involved were now trapped somewhere on Mt Ruapehu. The jet blast of a wind and stinging cold rain at the Turoa ski field were a pretty good indication of what it was like even further up the mountain. We turned around and headed for Ohakune to anxiously wait for the other punters and have a coffee and talk with some of the snow cavers that had come out already. The remaining snow-cavers arrived several hours later. We heard stories of white outs and more of the weather that we had gotten a mere taste of on our easy trip to Blyth Hut. Allin all it was a pretty fun, pretty easy trip.