Tararua Hutbagging 7,8,9th October
Hutbagging is where you travel through as many huts (and any other points provided worth points) as you can in a given time. Huts are worth different amounts dependant on how difficult they are to get to. We have three 48hr periods to get as many huts as possible and here’s the write-up from the first trip:
“Our team is called the Fortune Hunters; you can forget checking your star sign in the paper, the real fortune is found in a little cookie which a famous proverb states must be opened in the wilderness amongst good company and freeze-dried food.
Our first trip on 7-9 September was the result of a substantial planning session, many emails, and some quite extraordinary computer modelling. The final route was a work of art, modelled on computer maps for distance, height gain, and terrain. Our route started at Kaitoke Waterworks, headed up the river to Eastern Hutt Hut, continued on to Alpha, Kime, Maungahuka, Neill Forks, and then Totara Flats, with options for Cone hut and one or two others if time allowed. The trip would take almost 30 hours of walking out of our available 48 hours.
We kicked off at 6.40pm from the Kaitoke Waterworks in balmy spring weather, stopping an hour later to set up for the first mountain radio sked at 8pm. Sadly they informed us that the next day we’d be getting snow showers coming in at midday, in contrast to the fine weekend we’d expected.
The first hut we were aiming for was the Eastern Hutt Hut. Unfortunately, what seemed like a good day-time route took about five hours of difficult travel up the river, sometimes on the sides, but often straight through. The dark made a huge difference, making it difficult to find the best options for travel.
At the hut we started our new tradition of opening the fortune cookies, with Matt’s rule that they had to be read out with the words “in bed” added at the end. The first cookie then gave us “Confucius say: When anger rises, think of the consequences in bed.” Very wise, but not useful to us at the time.
We revised our plan to continue on up the river since the going was tough, deciding it was more reliable to head up a spur onto the much loathed Marchant ridge. It was a 700m uphill bush-bash, manageable, but pretty tiring. We found the Marchant ridge track at 2.15am, about the time we’d hoped to be arriving at Alpha. Instead, after the usual dreary walk along the ridge track, we arrived at Alpha at 6.40am as the sun was coming up. A fairly long twelve hours after we’d started on Friday night, and about the time we’d intended to get up and leave.
With all of us being a bit shattered, we jumped straight into our sleeping bags. We woke again at 11.30am when another tramper arrived, and started the painful process of getting ready to depart. The plan for that day was Kime, Maungahuka, Neill Forks, Totara Flats. A good twelve hours or so.
We left Alpha at 1pm in the rain. In a few minutes we were up onto the tops, where the rain turned to horizontal sleet, and then snow. The biting shards blew under our jacket hoods and into our faces, making the trip to Kime pretty unpleasant going. We only stopped for a minute at Hector to take a photo of the cross for the points.
By the time we arrived at Kime we’d all individually given up on the idea of pushing on to Maungahuka, so not much discussion was needed. The wind was continuing to pick up, and crossing the Tararua Peaks in a snowy gale wasn’t worth the risk. That, plus the ache in our knees and muscles made for a sound and sensible decision to stay at Kime for the night.
Before tucking ourselves in for our first real night of sleep, we had to do the 8pm radio sked. Simon and I drew the short straws and headed outside into the snow to set up the aerial, while Matt directed from out the hut window. That job done, we had dinner, and opened our fortune cookies. There were three to catch up on for Alpha, Hector and Kime, giving us the sage words of:
“People may not always believe what you say, but they will believe what you do in bed.”
“Bide your time, for success is near in bed.”
“A smile will gain you ten more years of life in bed.”
Bearing those lessons in mind, Matt texted his wife to ask her to pick us up from Otaki Forks the next day instead of our planned exit point back at Kaitoke.
As usual, having shortened our trip due to bad weather, we woke up on Sunday morning to a beautiful, warm, sunny day. We gave ourselves a bit of a sleep in, then put all our gear outside to thaw out. With the temperature at minus 3 when we went to bed, and no doubt dropped further overnight, all our wet clothes and gear from the day before had frozen solid over-night, making getting our feet into our boots especially difficult. My socks could have been used to club a man to death they were so solid with frozen mud and water, Matt had to peel his pack off the floor, and Simon resorted to beating his boots with a stick to try and get his feet in.
The trip out to Otaki Forks took us past Field Hut, where we found Matt’s dog waiting patiently for us with sandwiches and a thermos of hot chocolate. His wife was also there, and the two of them accompanied us out to Otaki Forks. We almost forgot to stop at Parawai hut, which would have lost us a valuable ten points, but we bagged it to make the most of our truncated trip.
All up it would count as a solid warm-up trip, leaving us a little fitter, a little wiser, and feeling about 15 years older than when we’d set out.”
While it’s live, more info can be found at http://hutbagging.wordpress.com/
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