This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
by Bronwyn Bell
Punters: Bronwyn, Sam (Buckley), Stacey, Derek, Stan (from Levin), Helen (Law), Ray, Jackie I decided this would be a good tramp for leaving on the Saturday morning from the train station, as it is not far to Levin when the traffic is decent (which I bargained on for 8am), and the tramp itself is mostly flat. From my research, the TTC did it as a Medium day walk also, which made me think that it would be 4-5hr max one way for an easy group. I was correct in all my bargaining. It's also not hard to find, there's a sign that says South Ohau, you just follow that to get into the river which is marked by the top of an old 20L plastic fuel can, and an orange arrow. The confluence of the North n' South Ohau's is pretty obvious too. And after you've gone past the really obvious giant slip (true left) on the North Ohau, you know you're not too far from the hut which you can see the chimney from when your up on the true right bank, as you come closer you can see a big orange triangle. The huts maybe 30-50 m up a wee track from the river. The Kapiti Deerstalkers helped build it, and did a very good job. Its also surprisingly a no fees hut, I thought for sure it's worth at least one hut ticket! The rain gods held off, in fact we had sun on the Sunday. I forgot my sunscreen and hat murphy's law. The river wasn't too cold, surprisingly, in fact, it wasn't as cold overall as I thought it would be. Took about Shrs to get to the hut (could easily be done by a Medium party in 2.5-3hrs) including nice lunch break. We were surprisingly the only people at the hut, I thought for sure there'd be hunters or some other people there. So that was nice, we had the girls inside and the boys outside, which was kind of funny. Everyone was doing the old polite thing - ‘oh no I don't mind sleeping outside...’ whatever - Sam wanted to test out his new thermal sleeping bag liner so I quickly offered him my tent and claimed a bunk. Ray had a bivy bag. Derek had a tent. And Stan (the last minuter from Levin) had a tent also. There's not much room around the hut itself for tents, but Ray and Sam managed to squeeze in, the other two went down below, Stan was on the 1st terrace bit you come to below the hut, and Derek was down beside the river on a bit of flat terrace. Derek said he had ice on his tent in the morning. The hut itself is a 4 bunker, the bottom bunks have heaps of space for ppl to sit up etc, funnily the top bunks don't really. The top bunks also were like a sauna, once the fire got roaring and we were all in the hut for dinner/lounge time. Not much room for 8 ppl really, but I'm sure we could've squeezed a couple more in. And the hut itself could possibly sleep 3 on
the floor. We found a put together camp bed thing under one of the bunks after we left, so 5 ppl could have beds at least. We met up with the Medium group, Alistair, Mike (mcG), Dirk and Enrique on our way out at about 11am, at the confluence of South and North Ohau rivers. They'd gone in on Friday night then Saturday bashed up Deception spur, over to Girdlestone Saddle then to Te Matawai Hut, then come down the Yeates track to the South Ohau river on Sunday. They had Te Matawai hut (18 bunker) all to themselves! They'd had a good trip on Saturday too. So we finished the walk out together, stopping for lunch just where the river meets the track back into the forest. We stopped at Otaki on the way home to get ice cream (or frozen yogurts with fresh berries! Yum) and coffee. (but no ice breaker or swazi...) I'm determined to get a pair of sandles (like teva style) before my next tramp (since mine died 6 months ago, the duct tape kept coming off too, and liquid nails... gave them an extra 3 months though) this is the 2nd tramp I've been on with Helen that I've borrowed hers when she's not using them. And I know everyone loves their croks, but I seriously don't have room for them! And I've done some comparison squish tests, sandles still take up less room!