My very first tramp: A Week in the Kawekas
Dateline: 1992, The August school holiday. I have plans to spend it up a mountain range north of Napier — travelling in my car — in an activity I was not exactly skilled at.
My parents were, understandably, concerned.
But I persisted, they eventually helped out with various bits of kit, and soon I was driving up the Waiarapa on the Victoria University of Wellington Tramping Club’s Kawekas trip.
The only items of interest on the trip were getting lost in Hastings and the terrifying drive out to the roadend. Heaven only knows what would’ve happened if someone had been coming the other way.
Saturday night was spent under fly on the flats near the Mohaka River with one Sarah D and a Mike C. (Incidentally, his car stalled and got rather wet when trying to cross a ford, while I simply bashed on through. We didn’t find the bridge until we left.)
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Sunday, and I learn a lesson about river tracks. Just because they follow a watercourse does not mean the track stays at the river’s level!
We pause at Te Puia Lodge, then make a side trip to look at the hot springs, about half an hour away.
The springs have changed a lot since mid-‘92. Then the springs were little more than hot springwater falling out a length of drainpipe into a modified DoC fish trailer. Now, there are two pools (one warm, the other hot) and nice decking all about. Last time I went here I stayed for a long weekend with fellow clubbies and soaked. (Our party was crashed by a pack of naked canoeists. I cannot promise this will happen when you visit!)
However, in ’92 we didn’t stop at the springs, but retraced our steps to the main track heading up to Makino Hut. I was pretty well dead by the time I reached the little six-bunker with the amazing views (I wonder why?)
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Monday was unpleasant. Cross the Makino River valley. This in practice meant going down to the river, then back up again — an 800m climb — to Mangaturutu Hut. As we climbed I shed layers like mad, snow began to appear, then the hut. I was delighted to see it, as I was Mangaturooted.
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Tuesday, and the tramping is easy… the snow is hard without being icy, making for quick travel over Venison Tops to Tira (or Kelvinator) Lodge, where we are met with the sound of bleating. This is the Vic Tramping Club’s way of greeting each other on trips. Oh, didn’t I mention there were several parties running around the hills?
After some thought, we decided on staying where we were; having a pit day. Nothing to do but play cards, talk, read the logbook, eat and sleep.
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Wednesday saw another group of Vic sheep appear in a flurry of snowballs. Our pit day drw to a close, and we headed off for Ballard Hut. This is a small four-bunker squatting about 100m down from the ridgeline; no reliable water supply (but now…?) and a big hole in the longdrop toilet’s floor. When we got here I stayed to try to start the fire while Mike and Sarah trotted back up to the ridge, cameras akimbo, ready to catch the sunset.
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Thursday had us walking at about 45 degrees to the vertical, due to a fierce southerly that seemed to be blasting straight out of Mount Ruapehu, clearly visible in the distance. To my amazement, Mike and Sarah pause to talk to another set of trampy types. I just wanted to get out of the wind.
Hitting the bushline gave time for a break, where Sarah and Mike discovered my irrational fear of striped insects.
There are a lot of beech trees in the hills, more often than not coated in a moss that exudes a sweet fluid that wasps cannot resist. Hence where there’s beech there’ll probably be wasps.
For some reason, every Vic tramper in the area seemed to converge on Makino Hut. Don’t ask me how a dozen bods got crammed into a six-bunk hut — it just happened!
We ended up taking turns reading from an antique novel. Dog with a Bad Name was one of those turgid turn-of-the-century novels where a kid called Cad Jefferies seriously injures another kid during school rugger (yes rugger not rugby) and then gets all eaten up with guilt and so it goes on for pages and eventually Cad rescues a cripple from a burning garret and lo and behold, it’s the guy he half-maimed at rugger years and years before and relatives start crawling out of the woodwork and They All Lived Happily Ever After. Feh.
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Friday: Mass scramble down to Te Puia, followed by a mass exodus (save me — I couldn’t move) to the hot springs. A massive cook-off ensued that night as everyone tried to polish off all the surplus food. You’d be amazed at what passed for billy stews that night.
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Saturday: the sheep migrated back to the roadend and headed home. Arrival, after dropping Mike and Sarah off, was about eightish. Heaven was a bath, a shave and rest for my aching tootsies.
For some reason, I decided, as I always do after a trip, that despite the aching shoulders, blistered feet, exhaustion and general I-Wanna-Go-Home-ness, that this tramping lark wasn’t so bad after all.
Posted in Articles (Writings,Non-Fiction) by R Cruickshank 04/08/07 01:21 PM Tags: nonfiction, tramping
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