This text was read by OCR from a scanned newsletter and has not been proofread yet, so expect odd characters and mistakes.
Easy Tramp - 13 to 15 June by Simone Krauel It was supposed to be an easy tramp! Input: 7 keen trampers, one chief guide with a broomstick! Output: 3 broken backpacks, one boot broken horizontally, one cracked scull (bruise actually, myself), one spectacular fall with sound effects (Tamara), one mud bath for the bum, leaving the bum first wet and cold, then wet and warm and finally crispy, one attack of the hound of Baskerville (Dave), one knee fall (Mike), and finally what we all came here for, one gourmet dinner which lead to a gain in weight for the team of at least 10 kg. So here the story goes: On Friday night Paul (our guide), Dave, Katherine, Paul, Heather and myself met up at the train station to head towards our night camp, which actually consisted of the day shelter at the Kaitoke waterworks campsite. Here we were joined by Mike, who came all the way down from Palmerston North. In spite of initial worries we spent a dry night and all got good nights sleep. Then, after a good breakfast we were joined by Tamara and drove to the start of the tramp. So far so good. By the way, I never before saw a tramp guide walking with a broom stick! After an easy climb we reached the saddle and heard the good news from our leader: this is it, from now on only downhill. Yeah, (um, weren’t we supposed to walk upstream?) and off we went, the sun was shining and it felt more like a summer tramp. We had fantastic views into the hutt valley. But soon things turned out to be a bit more demanding! A landslide had swept away the track, so the detour forced us to climb almost vertically up a hill; however tree routs gave us a hand. On the other side we had to abseil, using vines and hugging trees as not to slip. At the Smith Creek shelter we stopped to clean out the shelter (Tamara, Mike and Paul did most of the work) and here the mystery of the broomstick was solved. . On we went, this time without the broomstick, and soon had to claw our way across a roaring Waterfall by only holding on to one steel rope. The water fell at least 50 cm, but still, quite an adventure. And all the time while we were scrambling up and down we were followed mercilessly by the paparazzi (Dave). Finally (and quite exhausted, at least me) we arrived at the hut. After munching lots of cookies we prepared a delicious korma meal, rice with beef and lamb, yam, pumpkin, mushrooms and lovingly cut onions (Dave). As dessert we had a Banana chocolate cake with caramel/butterscotch sauce. As usual, toilets area bit removed from the huts. Dave came back at some stage telling us: Hey Guys, there is a dog out there. No one believed him; maybe it was a wild boar or even a possum. But soon the howling started. Isn't that how all the horror movies start, eight friends in a remote hut, no cell phone reception and they get picked off one by one? We all shivered. Gee, where is a broomstick when you need one! But as it turned out it actually was a nice dog, accompanying a German aren Lady was her name (the dogs) and she became quite friendly with us.
The next day we started our way back, the sun was shining, no clouds in the sky! And again up and down we went, no more caring what the boots would look like and made it all safe back to the parking lot. Thank you Paul (with the broomstick) for a wonderful tramp in the Tararua Forest!