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SMAD. An Organ of Student Opinion. 1936. Volume 7. Number 10.

Visit to Lost Lakes

Visit to Lost Lakes

It may have been that the "physical fitness essential" phrase was rather frightening or perhaps the Sunday Pencarrow trip with thirtyT.C. girls was too enticing, however, only three doughty souls started out to help Chas. Watson-Munro find the romantic Lakes of the Orongorongas.

We caught the one o'clock boat on Saturday and proceeded into the Oronga riverebed where the frost from the previous few days was still lying and the river itself tried to prove that its origin was a glacier. Then up Boulder's Creek (more wading) to the top of the Oronga Range, where we were able to put out our torches, as there was a full moon. The jagged valleys and cliffs, the scars one can see from Wellington, looked under moonlight like the Lost World or a vast fantastic impressionalist picture. We travelled down a very overgrown creek and negotiated two rather perfet-looking waterfalls with glow-worm studded banks, to the Papatahi stream, and thence to the Eglinton homestead in the Wairarapa. But here our ambition got the better of us and we decided to do not only the Lost Lakes, but Lake Pounui (two hours farther on) as well. We walked p the valley road and arrived at Lake Pounui at 1 a.m. on Sunday morning. The party was a little irritable during the cooking of our meal, but after two pounds of baked beans and a pound of spaghetti had been consumed we felt better. Sunday morning we were to cut across country from Pounui back to the ridge leading towards Lost Lakes. We somehow failed to find the track, however, and after two hours had to give up the Lost Lakes projects and return over one of the southern passes.

This was accomplished without undue difficulty, but on Sunday night four at least of the V.U.C. Tramping Club were very glad to get into bed after a total trampng time of twenty-two hours.