This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
by Spencer Clubb MetService have a couple of great services on their website that I have become addicted to. The first of these is a 10-day rural weather forecast, allowing you to check out the weather for your next tramp before you have even set off on your previous one. The other service I discovered is on the weather warning page and predicts weather warnings for the next few days — always handy for the Ruahines where the majority of routes are along the tops or down the rivers, with few all-weather routes below the bushline.
The downside to “knowing” the weather so far in advance is that it often looks great, then gets worse (depressing) or it looks bad and stays bad (even more depressing).
For this particular weekend it gradually progressed from a forecast of heavy rain to one of galeforce winds. I didn’t fancy our chances of pitching — and keeping pitched — a large fly on a northwest facing slope in a gale-force norwester, so decided to slowly drip-feed the idea around my group of climbing the 2-3 hours up to Purity Hut on the Friday night. Just as I had succeeded in convincing my party, Dirk and Alistair (from the medium fit trip) promptly told us that it was not to be recommended, that we might get lost crossing the farmland and that it was a dog of a track and after all why bother? I was a little disgruntled with this untimely information and even more disgruntled with the people giving it when I learned that they had smartly decided to bring a couple of much smaller and hardier Huntechs instead of a large fly. Luckily this salt-in-the-wound conversation had a silver lining with Alistair offering a spare spot to one of my party, Magalie offering to sleep in her new bivvy bag and lan kindly opening the doors of his capacious tent (handily brought along) for Corwin and Chris. We were sorted. No nighttime navigation nightmares and no battles with the big blue monster either.
As it turned out the night was surprisingly calm (although the easy group somehow successfully lost a fly during the night) and the weather looked pretty good for a trip over the tops. We set off full of hope that the wind would hold off and after a 2-hour grunt managed to get to Purity Hut -— a cute, new 8 bunker. We had anticipated that the wind would be strongest for the next part of the day — up to the high points of wooden peg and iron peg. After that, I reasoned, losing height and getting in the lee of these tops would allow easier travel.
Visibility was poor and snow was lying increasingly thickly on the ground as we navigated our way up the pegs. The wind had also got up and was blowing uncomfortably from the West rather than the North. We were almost bowled over a couple of times but it was manageable and we decided to head on down the ridge, feeling like things would get a bit easier from now on. Well, they didn't. The ridge was tricky, with big drop-offs on one side, patches of soft snow coinciding with the narrowest bits and a vicious crosswind. In fact, the Westerly direction of the wind meant that instead of being sheltered by the tops, we were feeling the full force gale with no protection at all, as it blew in down the valleys and swooped over the saddles that we were traversing across. At one point a group of Paimeston North trampers blew past us, wearing shorts and looking just a little cold and miserable.
We probably spent 4 hours pinned to the mountain, picking our way up and down what would otherwise be a very pleasant ridge. At one point I couldn’t be bothered to go on and just clambered and crawled my way up the vegetation. It brought new meaning to the word ‘grovel’.
We were pretty knackered by the time we reached the turn-off to head down to the river and our hut for the night — Pourangaki. Heading down we swapped the tremendous wind for an almost equally sapping steep descent on a muddy track. No let up for concentration as we all ‘stacked it’ a number of times on the way down. We rested at the bottom, which was a bad idea when we inevitably had to get going again, with Chris telling me that he would have to be surgically removed from the ground that he had lain down to rest on. Corwin, also looking like he needed surgery, steeled himself with some chocolate and off we went. After 9 hours we crossed the river, headed up a small but daunting hill and dropped down to a lovely hut for the evening. We were greeted by the medium-fit group as they had decided to change plans to avoid another day of hellish winds. Everyone was happy but tired.
Next day we parted company with the medium-fits, who set off up another hill because they were missing that feeling of being buffeted by a heavyweight boxer. Except for Dirk, who smartly decided that travelling down a river was a better way to go than over a mountain ina gale. Or was it? Actually, the river looked pretty tough. I checked it out the evening before and it looked quite big, with snowmelt probably lifting it above normal flow, despite the relatively dry conditions.
The river was gorgy, with not much room to walk on either side, numerous tight bends and countless river crossings. Each of the crossings was safe and relatively easy, but there was always a current and usually knee to thigh deep, requiring care. It was slow going and cold. At one point our luck looked to have run out as we were the wrong side of a deep pool. Dirk and lan managed to rock-climb their way out of the problem, but it looked a bit sketchy to me. I opted to cross the pool and set about preparing the others for a bit of pack-floating — a skill I learned earlier this year on a WTMC river crossing course and was keen to try out.
As it turned out, it wasn’t quite deep enough to pack float, being only just above waist height. Still, it made for some entertaining preparations and Dirk and lan were clearly loving the prospect of seeing us plunge into the cold depths!
We got out after 3 hours and took a long, warm, rested lunch in the sunshine at Kelly Knight's Hut. Another great spot with hardly any visitors in the hut book despite its proximity to the road end and some fine tops. The medium fits showed up pretty soon and we all headed out together along an easy track and across some farmland. I really enjoyed the trip, though I found it to be reasonably hard for a medium trip, largely due to the high winds and slightly high river level. Otherwise, it would have been a breeze!