This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Medium Tramp - 27 to 29 April by Alistair Young Photos by Sonia Waters I had become a little jaded with tramping almost exclusively in the Tararuas and decided to head further north, so the Ruahines were an obvious choice - I signed up for a medium trip to Waikamaka Hut starting from the Triplex road end in the North Easter Ruahines. The forecast for the weekend was bad with rain and strong easterlies predicted, so I packed plenty of warm gear and a few books in preparation for the worst. We arrived late on friday night and slept the night in Triplex hut with the easy group. The next day saw overcast and damp but very still weather, so we set off early to exploit what we supposed would be a window in a wet claggy weekend. we arrived at Sunrise hut for our first scroggin break, the weather was still pretty good - we had a strong group and decided to keep our breaks short and press on while the weather held, so we set off to Armstrong saddle and from there to Te Atuaoparapara up through the scrub and Leatherwood - which fortunately was not very fierce by Ruahine standards. Interestingly one of the punters was a trained botanist - this was the second trip in two weeks which had such a punter on it - so in addition to tramping we all got an intensive weekend of alpine botany instruction.
We made the top of Te Atuaoparapara shortly after lunch and the clag lifted almost completely giving quality views across the Waikamaka and Kawhatau valleys to Hikurangi and Mangaweka - it was fantastic stuff. From here it was plain sailing to Waikamaka Hut via Waipawa saddle we arrived at about 2.30 in the afternoon and settled down for brews books, cards and a fine vegetarian dinner, followed by discussions ranging from veganism to religion it was an interesting tramp. We left the next day via the Waipawa Saddle and Waipawa Forks lodge.
Punters: Spencer, Alistair, Jon, Steve, Dave, Dirk, Sarah, Sonia.