This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
by Michael Lightbourne This particular weekend, we were the only North Island tramp, the focus being on (more glamourous?) South Island tramps in the Kaikoura ranges. Six of us gathered at the Railway Station, I was the only club member! I had a group of very inexperienced trampers, but in the end was impressed by the quality of their gear, and they all had the fitness to do what ended up being a harder than anticipated walk.
There was plenty of space in our rented van, as we drove first to Levin, and then to our turn off at Shannon. We drove past the Mangahao Power Station, and onto one of the worst gravel roads I've ever experienced. This long winding road, unlevel and full of potholes, is almost 4WD territory. To make things worse, we came across an intersection halfway down the Mangahao Road, which is certainly not marked on the map, and we had to guess which way to go! We chose right, being we thought (in the darkness, and in showers impressively lit up by the headlights on full beam) the general direction we wanted to go. Fortunately, we were correct and followed this road past the first two dams, and on to the end of the road at the No 1 Upper Reservoir. Here we set up the large fly, and Alex made extra sure the pegs were in hard, having had difficulties with a fly on a tramp a couple of weeks before. After a rather uncomfortable night for all concerned as is generally the case when using flies, we were up and away by 9am. The first step was crossing the dam, then following the lake on a level track until reaching College Creek. From here there was a section with no track, we were to just follow the Creek. This was very slow progress, due to every other member of the party being reluctant to get their feet wet! Too much time was spent looking forstones in the creek to hop across, and at one point, presumably due to a lack of stones, Alex decided to do a short bush bash, which became very steep at the end, and involved a lot of unnecessary effort. However, we eventually rejoined the track which is well marked. From here it is the inevitable Tararua climb and we eventually reached the tops in cloudy and windy conditions. You might imagine tops to be nice brown tussock, but in this part of the country it’s a track cut through leatherwood — anywhere between waist to shoulder high. We got occasional glimpses of the hills through the passing cloud, but really it was very windy and a long exposed track to Burn Hut, and we were grateful to arrive there, at about 3 pm. Burn Hut was rebuilt in 2002, though it has a run-down appearance and looks more like it was built in 1980 with a very limited budget. We are fortunate, however to have a hut here at all, because DOC were not going to replace it, and the local hunting club came to the rescue. I can tell you that to have a shelter on this track is essential. Ironically, you won't burn anything at Burn Hut, because there is no fireplace. In fact it's very basic, small and sleeps 6 — it's also free to stay at. We immediately launched into a game of 500, had some dinner, then carried on with 500 long enough to make John Hickey proud. In the end we changed to that terrible game called ‘President and !@#$hole’ but that was short-lived (even though I was President for a time) and then we went to bed. During the night the hut shook and rain smashed against the window to the point where I started wondering if we were going to get out on Sunday, but then I realized this was just a typical night in the Tararuas. We dressed like we were headed for the South Pole, and carried on with our tops travel, this time it was raining quite hard. Incredibly for this time of year
however, it was never cold. I found out later that at this time it was a beautiful sunny day in Wellington City. Eventually we dropped down into the bush and down to the Lower No 2 Reservoir, where we had lunch. It had been a messy tramp in terms of mud and rain, and I was feeling a little shattered. During lunch we looked across at the dam, trying to guess its age, and I realized there is obviously a human history in this area that I know very little about. After lunch we had to walk along the road for about half an hour back to the van, but this didn't take as long as expected. We had finished the tramp at about 2 pm, and I was left thinking that this is a very solid easy tramp, and really an easy-medium in the conditions we experienced, which going by the comments in the hut book, is the normal sort of weather in this area. It's certainly not comparable to a genuine easy tramp to Field Hut, Sunrise Hut or Rangiwahia, but I think everyone in the party felt they had an enjoyable weekend in our favourite forest park.
The trampers were: Michael Lightbourne, James Brown, Sara Nettleship, Alex Horvat, Emily Danby and Simone Musin.