Tararua’s from Ohau

08Feb07

Tararua’s February 3,4,5/02/07

 We camped at Ohau roadend Friday night which was pleasant, a nice toilet is provided at least! In the morning we had just finished packing when (you wouldn’t read about it…) a helicopter landed and asked if we were the ones who had paid to fly to the top…and we said no…hindsight is a wonderful thing…idiots!

On Saturday we wandered up the Ohau river and started up Deception Spur. This was easy travel until the top and it is very tricky finding the right place to decend into the Mangahau if you want to be picky about where you come down. We fly camped the night in the Mangahau valley at the bottom of Triangle Spur.

Setting off Sunday morning we headed up Triangle Spur, which was easy navigation. Reaching the scrubline we dreaded lots of leatherwood as the map had around 2km or so of scrub to get through! But after an initial 20m of leatherwood bashing we got into open and it was very easy travel from then on. We even managed to surprise 2 hinds which would’ve been a dead shot at 40 yards standing side on for around 10 seconds!

Reaching Dundas around midday we were pretty tired after 4 hours of climbing the spur. We had some lunch then headed off towards Arete. The sun had beaten down during all of this and it doesn’t help make things any easier! We arrived at Arete and immediately filled all of our drink bottles in the nice cold fresh sparkling heavenly mountain spring…aahhh.

Due to some of the party feeling very under the weather (possibly giardia from Wellington Anniversary Weekend tramp) we decided to bail out to Te Matawai hut which turned out to be a good decision. It was great seeing everyone stick together as a team.

Monday we just headed down Gable End Spur track to the river and down the river track back to Ohau, again very sunny and very hot…what is happening to the Tararua’s these days??????

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