“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/

What a mess! Trees and branches down the whole way. Constantly pushing and bashing through, not the place to go at the moment if you like your paint scratch free.

The drive was issue free and was actually a bit boring as we probably only averaged 1 or 2 minutes drive at a time before getting to the next windfall and cutting it back before moving to the next…

We eventually reached a new slip, estimated to be about a quarter of the way to the hut from the top. We moved, dug, cut and winched a mixture of rocks, dirt and trees to make enough of a route through, but turned back shortly after as it was now just about dark and we had the return journey to do.

On the return I did manage to pick up a decent branch underneath which jammed in my rear coils but before doing so managed to sever my rear diff’s breather and locker air hose! Bugger.

The team:

Gavin – Landrover Defender

Leon – Landrover Discovery

Matt – Nissan Safari

Photo’s to come…

 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??????

We left Wairarapa at 8am Saturday morning, having enjoyed the views of McNaughts comet Friday night over the Wairarapa coastline. It was great to be off on an adventure at last as I hadn’t done anything fun for what seemed like years as having bought a house recently seems to take a lot of your time up doing bits n pieces here n there while it’s summer.

The plan was to head to the roadend, walk over the ridge track and down to Barlows hut, then out via the riverbed Sunday. As we approached the roadend the first problem evolved…it was literally the roadend…6km before the map said it was. The road literally ended at a farm gate into a paddock. So…not to be stopped we went through the gate and drove over the paddock, through a second gate and over a second paddock…and come to a crusty, ancient old DOC noticeboard announcing the Ruahine’s. A rough slightly rutted entrance was evident to the river…I had a 4wd…of course we locked the hubs and went into the river! But no road (if we could call it one by this time) was evident anywhere over the river so we decided to change our trip and walk up the river and back down, and of course I made that plan even better by deciding we should drive as far up the river as we could before we start walking! About half an hours driving saw us at a creek mouth where 2 other tracks disappeared into the bush so we parked up and prepared to walk.

It was stinking hot and it took us 3 hours to get to Barlows hut stopping and taking a good dip in a nice pool on the way and lying in the sun for a while. Barlows hut is flash and very comfortable…odd for such a “non-roadend”. It had no clouded over significantly at the hut and as we made hot drinks and had a snack it began to rain. This was a dilemma as we didn’t know the behaviours of Ruahine rivers and the trip relied on riverbed travel so we decided to play it safe and retreat to the car at 8pm. We arrived at the car at 9:30pm, just on dusk andpacked our stuff into the boot, and proceeded to drive back down the riverbed as it may get tricky doing it without a snorkel on the car if the river came up, and we could camp at the paddock where the road ended. Well it was non eventful driving and as we arrived at the paddock we decided we didn’t feel like that any more, so why not just go home? So off home we went…so all in all a nice afternoon walk out, leaving at 8am and getting back 1am the next morning!

 After what was apparently a day of carnage on the Saturday, quite a few vehicles joined the guys already at Glendhu for the shiny Sunday drive. The vehicles were: Vitara, Patrol, Cherokee, Hilux (absolutely brand spanking new), Landcruiser, Wrangler x2 and a Mu.

We headed off around the coast in what turned out to be a virtually breezeless, hot sunny day. The baches around Glendhu coast surprised me, a mixture of what was obviously the old original ones right through to a new one with big decks, from rough to brand new and quite flash.

The track was easy as pie and we headed back to the Honeycomb rock for lunch, where I scrambled to the top to investigate iron rods we could see poking out. There was fairly extensive concrete work on the top and we figured it was for an old coastal light to warn shipping (mustve worked very well…with a shipwreck on the beach approximately 100 metres south of the light!).

The rock formations were amazing, with perfectly spherical “marbles” set into the rock as well as other strange anomalies which I thought were definately invented to mess with your mind!

 After a good dose of sunburn for lunch we drove back around the beach and up onto the hilltop. By this time the sea was all whitecaps and the wind up on the hill was amazing. I jumped out to hook a strop onto a vehicle and barely kept myself from sailing out over the seacliffs, cars were rocking all over the show, and apparently we have eyewitness reports of the Cherokee’s roof panels actually rippling in the wind!

 Whilst the tracks were easy along the hills of course Murphy has other plans and only about 500 metres from the end of the day we came around a corner to a creek crossing and a hole which, as it turns out, a bulldozer appears to have been stuck in! Rather muddy and deep…

Of course this only added to the enjoyment! Mud for the shinies and without risk of any panel damage, what more could you ask for? So we winched and stropped everyone through.

 The only damage from the day was a Wrangler shock absorber got ripped off in the mudhole.

 No piccies though as some idiot left the camera at home!

We left Waiohine roadend and hit our first snag early on, the bridge was under repair! So into the river we went, which was quite deep and fast, in fact Julz managed to go right under!

It was still hot n sunny heading up over Reeves so we dried out alright, only for the rain and wind to arrive just as we were going over Reeves and that was the beginning of the end. We pitched camp on river flats in the valley with our MSR Fling (the purpose of this trip was to test this tent) which is a single skin superlightweight summer tent. It got more than it’s fair share of battering, we could hear the wind roaring up the valley from kilometres away and just sat there waiting for it to hit, wondering if the tent or the fly we had pitched would be the first to go. The rain was torrential and we could see in our minds eye as we went to sleep the river lapping at the tent…

We woke up dry and the tent was fine! The river was right up and very fast flowing and it was a bit cold so we packed up and headed off to Cone hut for breakfast. In cone we found a group of 6 who couldnt believe it, they said they were living in fear of their hut being destroyed all night.

Luckily the bridge was open for use on the way back as with the depth and flow of the Waiohine river I think we wouldve had another night in there if not!

No pictures as it was raining constantly so couldnt get the camera out!

6 vehicles turned out for the Sunday; 5 Suzuki’s and a Jeep. The Far Side (as that side of Riversdale is known) is usually very muddy and entertaining, but this time with all the fair weather we’ve had was very dry and we able to drive every track and really get around the place getting to know the tracks…of course planning which ones to do when it’s wet!

5 vehicles lined up for the day, it was a good mix of manafacturers with Toyota (Rav4), Suzuki (Vitara), Nissan (Patrol), Jeep (Cherokee) and Diahatsu (Feroza).

 We begun by heading up Poley stream, where the Jeep was the first casualty of the day with a front tyre going flat, then drove around some of the shiny tracks the farmer has bulldozed on the property. The only drama to begin with was meeting a slump in the track but a bit of digging to take the worst out and everyone got through fine. Then we headed down through the centre of the block and found some decent little mudholes until we got to a dam which had partially washed away so we had to find an alternative route. Luckily the farmer had put a track up onto the ridge so we were able to backtrack about 50m and head along a muddy section and onto that.

Then we drove out to White Rock and had lunch in the sunshine looking out over the coast which was very nice, before heading back into the farm block and doing one more track before going past the farmhouse and onto the track which ends up on Tora coast. The bulldozer was in the middle of some maintenance of the track here so we had a short wait for him to finish clearing a slip then we were past him and continued all the way down to Tora, and home!