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New Year's Kaweka Tour

by Peter Mansell

Warm humid mist hung over our party of four on the first morning's grunt, a long and nasty one up Makahu spur to Kaweka J. After peering through clag for a place to go, we spotted our first waratah and set off northward along a flat and easy section of the main Kaweka range. A feature of the main range, (though in the gully heads), was the extremely bad erosion. This is the reason for the triangles experimental contorta protection planting.

Lunch was had at Ballard hut, the first water so far, and was followed by a quick saunter across to Venison Tops hut (or Kelvinator Lodge, Prestcold Palace a history of no stove or hut).

Fiona's moselle time-trials didn't seem to make her more delirious than usual, as we made good time along the bushy ridge for Mangaturutu hut. It's situated on the bushedge of a high tussock plateau, and further on towards Te Puke. The mist cleared, allowing views west to the slips and scars of the main Karweka range.

Plans of staying at Te Puke hut soon changed after one look at all the pits, and a few stick books. So down, down, down to Harkness hut we went.

Heading on down Harkness stream we criss-crossed our way through the upper tussock area, and sidled along in some nice beech to Ngawapurua hut - an ultimate frisbee clearing on a high river terrace. Once all together again we quickly strung ourselves out on the other side of the Ngaruroro river, on our second sweat up to Otutu bush. As I recall the gradient did in fact ease off, several hours later. But at the first rocky outcrop our only view was of a grey wash of rain looming up from Boyds. So we pressed on through messy windblown mountain beech, across daisy fields, past a few menhirs, and eventually dipping back down to the Ngaruroro river.

With jelly legs at Rocks Ahead hut, we gorged on our New Year's eve pancakes. Ronnie being a professional flipper from way back. We finished the wine off and being a little fatigued we did the sensible thing and crawled into pit quite early.

The last leg of our non-stop Karweka tour was up and over the Karweka range, staying at Back Ridge biv. amongst more daisies. Here we gulped down lunch and untold Refresh, then carried on for the memorial.

Since lunch we had: sun, mist, thunder, heavy rain and sun again. Once past Karweka J. we descended Makahu spur in the familiar thick humid mist, but was Huey content? Never! The next torrent was really one to write home (or to 'Heels") about. We even had to take shelter in Dominie biv. As the biv. was not the answer to Fenella in the Cobb, we couldn't stay forever. So we splashed on down to the waiting car, sitting on the first of our three flat tyres.

All in all, of the area we saw, there are easy tops, plenty of good huts, interesting bush ridges and rocky outcrops. A good place to spend more time exploring around or just lazing in the summer sun.

Tourists:

Fiona Clend[unclear: o]

Ronnie Lock

Ian Carlysle

Pete Mansell