This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Ruahine Forest Park Bara - Triangle/Heritage ‘3 Medium Trip 22-24 September
?ictures and words by Spencer Clubb
'eader: Simon Ward*
Punters: Spencer, Chris, Constanze, Bronwyn, Melissa, Gareth, Steven and ‘guest starring) Jenny
Right: Reward for getting wet feet
I got back into the country after 2 months in the UK and my first thoughts turned to tramping. Luckily Simon*, a benevolent leader if ever there was one, allowed me to sneak on to his medium trip at relatively short notice and I was back in the hills quicker than you could say “Tony Blair is a *&%#$!”. We stopped for dinner in Levin, after the usual Friday night traffic jams, and selected a fine looking Chinese takeaway complete with buffet dinner and (encouragingly compared to the competition) customers. There were even four sizes of takeaway carton to choose from. Now, something happens to men when they encounter a situation like this. The mere presence of an extra large takeaway carton somehow justifies in one’s mind that it is perfectly normal to order such a thing and, having done so, that's it’s rude not to finish it. So, as if drawn by some unspoken rule of manliness, Chris and I scoffed a monster portion of Chinese while our female companions, lacking that all important Y chromosome (Y did you order that much food?) selected a more human portion.
As is the want of the WTMC, we arrived at the roadend at 10.30pm and headed off on an hour and a half tramp up a mountain to Rangi Hut, on the bushline. In some cultures, walking up a mountain in the dark for fun would be viewed as a sign of madness, but like a circus animal raised in captivity we knew no different and headed off into the forest.
The path was cruisy and wide, but after a while it came to an abrupt end and we were directed up a steepish slope to avoid a rather large and inconsiderate slip. The group split into two and I found myself in the back group, just plodding along following a pair of tramping boots. On one occasion I hit the front of our little group. Unfortunately this was coincident with a rather enticing riverbed that headed up in the direction of travel, and looked much more appealing than the rather well hidden path that I completely failed to notice. Luckily my fellow trampers were more diligent than me, and quickly pointed out my mistake.
After the slip we rested and were surprised to hear voices behind us. Had the others changed their mind about camping at the road end and come to follow us to the hut? Were we being stalked by another tramping club? No. After a few seconds, the group of trampers from the front half of our trip emerged looking hot and embarrassed. They too had taken the riverbed instead of the trail, only no one had told them to stop.
I was reminded of the words of Bruce Springsteen, “Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going”. Bruce wrote some great songs but he clearly wasn’t a very good tramper...
That night the skies were clear and the stars were beautiful. And the next day we set off from the hut across the sub-alpine landscape in glorious morning sunshine. We walked across patches of snow and admired snow-capped Ruapehu and Ngarahoe in the distance. At times the going was muddy, and the slipping and sliding was soon to take its toll on our high-tech tramping gear. First up, Bronwyn had borrowed Gareth’s shiny and new looking trekking pole to reduce the incidents of falling A over T. Curiously, after a short while, she offered it back to Gareth, mumbling something about not needing it anymore. Oh, and by the way Gareth, I sortof broke it as well. Sure enough, the locking mechanism was cracked and the pole rendered useless for the rest of the trip. Soon after, Constanze realised that her trekking pole had also developed a rather terminal looking technical hitch when the locking mechanism jammed. It’s not often a trekking pole bites the dust, but two in one day? And only one of them was from Kathmandu...
I offered Constanze one of my poles. After all, I didn’t really need two as such, and it was a good deed to share the love around. I found tramping with one pole quite tricky after over 1,000 miles using two poles. If you were thinking about getting one, my advice would be get two. And don’t lend them to anyone either. No.
After lunch at Triangle Hut we headed into the river for some off-track travel. The water was surprisingly high given the distinct lack of rain and after getting in to the river it was soon evident why — the river was fed by snowmelt from the nearby ranges and was VERY COLD! We must have crossed the river 50 times in 3 kilometres - on more than one occasion the water came up above our unspeakables. Brrr. After a couple of hours we headed up over a ridge and back down again to rejoin the river further along. Dropping back down to the river was tricky — there was a slip and a very steep and exposed descent above a rather threatening looking side-stream. I was near the back and decided to wait at the corner for the final two trampers, just in case they missed the turning. I waited and waited, but no one appeared. I decided to backtrack a bit and find out what was happening.
I could see Simon and Constanze up the hill by the steep slip. Something was clearly amiss. It didn’t take long to realise what was up. Constanze had taken a pretty bad fall, doing a full somersault and landing face down in the river. Things got worse when Simon showed me the damage — a clean break quite high up. I was visibly sickened. My poor trekking pole. Just lying there in two pieces on the ground. I got quite upset. Luckily Constanze fared somewhat better, and miraculously escaped with minor cuts and bruises. I like to think that the pole died a hero to save her...
We all got to the hut in one piece and after a bit of R&R everyone was feeling perky again and ready for dinner. Some people were feeling very perky. As soon as dinner was ready, Melissa quite literally swung on the rafters down from her top bunk and assumed first place in the queue.
Dinner was an interesting experiment. Steve pulled out an enormous plastic bag from inside the billy, which retained its shape exactly. The bag contained 600g of spinach — possibly the lightest cooking ingredient known to man. He was supposed to bring 750g but I think New World didn’t have that much and, besides, at several $$$ per 100g it was an expensive hobby, being a spinach addict.
We cooked up two batches of asparagus-rice-spinach-onion-carrot-mushroom surprise. I have to say, the biggest surprise was that it all worked out and tasted fantastic. Full marks to the chef and to the creator of the recipe!
I should probably mention at this point that there was a ninth member of our party — Jenny, who had taken a somewhat longer route and had not yet arrived at the hut. Simon cautioned that we should save enough for her to have a feed, and we went up for seconds with restraint. I dished up in a ‘flash’ and we tucked in again. Jenny liked tramping. At 8pm on the dot she turned up, having crossed rivers, scaled mountains and clambered up rocks to find our well-hidden little hut. Jenny offered to take some of us up and over the tops on the Sunday, but there were no takers — we were all too scared of getting blown away by her superior fitness and tramping prowess. That evening, Gareth and I decided to prove that the British were an intellectually superior race to our poor Kiwi cousins. We would unequivocally demonstrate this by helping Chris (also a Pom) with the cryptic crossword from the Guardian Weekly.
There were probably about 30 questions to grapple with, and we powered through them all, getting to the end in a matter of seconds, with only one drawback — we hadn’t understood a word of what they were going on about.
“Eats banana with vacuum cleaner, early to bed?”
Stupid cryptic crossword.
We did actually luck out and get one of them right, but only because it had to do with bad smells...
No matter, the evening was topped off in style by a masterstroke of over-indulgent creation by Simon, who whipped up a chocolate fondue on the stove. This delectable piece of melted heaven was consumed by dipping pieces of fruit in. Or, when they ran out, by dipping anything in, including fingers (Bronwyn).
After all the excitement of the day before, Sunday was relatively tame. We walked out in about four hours on a decent track, with only the odd bit of crazy-steep scree-like descending. This was trickier than normal as we were now an amazing three trekking poles short of a full complement.
As we sat and waited for the bus we decided to satisfy our curiosity about fit trips. What was the difference? Well, believe it or not, it’s all in the packing. Jenny gave us some tips. Cut down on your toothpaste, chop the end off your toothbrush, ditch that huge tramping waterproof, leave those spare clothes behind, replace your hut shoes with...cardboard...and burn that when you get to the end of the evening. And stride, dammit, if you want to keep up! So, you see, they’re no fitter than us really, they just don’t take the kitchen sink with them. Don't worry fits, your secret’s safe with me.....
One last thing had been troubling me all weekend. How come Melissa had an almost identical pair of hut shoes to my Holey Soles, but they cost half the price and came from the Warehouse?
The thing was, they looked the same, they felt the same, they even appeared to have come from the same sweat-shop factory in China (I know, I’m ashamed) and they were also of a pretty funky colour. In desperation I theorised that the difference lay in the very useful characteristic of Holey Soles to float on water. Not to be outdone, Melissa decided to empirically test this out by floating her cheap imitations on a nearby pond. To my horror and her delight, the fake-Holey-Soles floated perfectly, mocking me from across the water. It was obvious that I had paid dearly for the privilege of not shopping in the Warehouse. A price worth paying?
Ode to a fallen Leki
Farewell my Leki, I’ve known you well We've been to heaven, we’ve endured hell We took Everest base camp in our stride Mt Kenya, me and you side by side But now all you’re good for is spare parts To help mend other people’s broken hearts I know we’ll meet again down the track But for now, bugger it, I’m off to Bivouac
Looking back on a top weekend