We all met at the road end and made our way to the map. After the toilet stop the walk started, first at the flats followed by a reasonable climb up to Rocky Lookout, then lunch at the Mountain Shelter and finally the climb up to Powell Hut (so many stairs). It took us about 4h to make it to the Hut with three reasonably experienced kids.
We started out with good weather, then a cold icy drizzle with the weather getting better at the end. All layers taken were used this trip.
At and around Powell Hut the landscape was magical. With ice covering the trees creating icicles. This made the biggest impact on the kids.
Alex:
“My favourite thing on the tramp was probably having all the glistening ice formations all around me, and it felt like a perfect reward, considering all the effort we put in to get us there.
The thing I liked the second most is having that contrast of being cosy inside, with all the cold ice outside“.
Dante:
“Spectacular ice at the hut all around us, I thought it was super pretty and it was fun to grab it.
Someone at the hut gave us, marshmallows and a little candle. They said it was pretty cool for kids to go tramping.
I felt sorry for the girl that fell down the stairs, we had to be very careful not to fall ourselves.”
Some of us woke up around 6am to find the Matariki cluster while others stayed snuggled up. The sunrise over the Wairarapa plains was beautiful as always.
The next day we walked back the same route which took about the same time. The frost made the stairs a bit more dangerous to navigate.
Someone from another group demonstrated this fairly close to the hut falling down the stairs (lucky she was ok!). And we had many stops to pick some of the icicles as a nice snack.
The trip involved a good amount of games, with a couple of poor trampers meeting their end in an unfortunate way during the murder mystery sessions. Lolly stops and lolly negotiations were plenty with punters trying to swap their less desirable lollies with others.
