Olivines (23rd Jan. - 8th Feb.)

Party: Fraser Walls, Peter Barry, Steve Reid, Geoff Norris, Ann Walls, Janice de Lisle, Linda Redmond.

On the evening of January 23rd we staggered off down the Hollyford track towards Hidden Falls hut. After 3 hours tramping we were blundering about in the dark with little idea of how far we had to go, so we gave in and pitched camp in the rain beside the river. By morning it was pouring and the water was rising fast (the fire had to be shifted during the cooking of breakfast) so we made for the hut and sat there recovering from our long day's tramping (3/4 hour) and hoping that the river would fall by the next day. The weather turned fine and the party camped beside Pyke hut, leaving early next morning (except for Steve and Geoff, who were still in bed) to go round Lake Alabaster and up the Pyke. The rear end of the party caught up at mid-day at Alabaster hut, and we plodded on up through the bastard- grass to the Olivine river. At this point the ideal route is neither obvious nor known to us; suffice it to say that Moir does not mention an extensive and hazardous swamp full of bush-lawyer and scrub, and occupying most of the area between the Olivine and the Diorite. We pressed on into this until it got about waist-deep, then retreated to the Olivine. Our route to the Diorite next day was through slightly drier bush right up against the hillside.

The track up the Diorite climbs up a very steep spur on the true left bank, and calls for advanced vegetable- climbing technique. We camped (again in rain) in the most salubrious Diorite flats, and next morning crossed Four Brothers Pass to the Forgotten. The party sat here for four days, looking at the Forgotten icefall of the Olivine Ice page break Plateau and wishing that the thick cloud would clear. The time was passed in playing five hundred, washing, eating, sleeping, cursing Hughey,... On the second day we were alarmed to see a maniac bounding down a slope towards us and uttering loud noises. We recognised him as a fellow tramper from Wellington and invited him to share our campsite but not our food. He had been sitting on the other side of the river for a couple of days, as unaware of our presence as we had been of his. We stopped being worried by the footprints we had found across the river.

On our fifth day in the Forgotten the weather cleared and we moved to the upper bivvy rock near the plateau. In the afternoon we climbed Destiny from where we had a magnificent view of the Joe and Dart rivers, and Aspiring. After a successful episode of bivvy - cramming we returned to the plateau and ate a leisurely lunch in the sun while admiring views of Tutoko, Madeline and Aspiring. After lunch we climbed Noah's Mistake and glissaded down, then returned to the bivvy. The Olivine Ice Plateau is a vast expanse of snow about three miles by one and a half, surrounded by peaks - Blockade, Climax, Intervention, Destiny, Ark, Little Ark, Gable, Tower, Paschendaele and others.

The next day the party split up and Steve and Geoff set off to cross the plateau. The other five of us went down the Forgotten to the Olivine Flats, and later spent a day pushing up the Olivine along deer-trails to the upper flats. We were entertained by a duck which whistled instead of quacking and spent a whole evening flying up river and joy-riding down. We crossed Cow Saddle into Hidden Falls Stream, which is full of small bivvy rocks, and then climbed to Park Pass. From the pass we sidled round steep snowgrass slopes to a series of small lakelets and then to Lake Nerine. A minute after our arrival the Lake was shrouded in mist. A biscuit-eating contest was held (winner uncertain) and the party set off to sidle in mist, rain and steep snowgrass to Routeburn North Col..... Some hours later we arrived at what had appeared the day before to be North Col, only to be confronted with a totally unknown stream some hundreds of feet below. Those who had not been to Routeburn North Col were most reluctant to believe those who had. As it was late we descended and camped, thinking, "if this isn't the north Routeburn, then where the heck are we?" Peter and Fraser went off to see whether we could get out down valley, and the cooks caught a fawn. They let it go, to the disgust of the others. At the end of the hanging valley in which we were lay a very large valley (Hollyford? Dart?) and in the morning we climbed out of the flats and sidled round and down into the large valley. We had cherished fears that we might have been is High Falls Creek, but fortunately our suspicions were groundless. Our route was steep, but the way out from High Falls would have been much worse, We eventually found ourselves in Swamp creek (and in another swamp) and made our way to the Hollyford and back up the track to the Dodge at the road-end.

The trip was most enjoyable, although very different from that originally planned (over the Ice Plateau, down the Joe, up the Arawata, over Arawata Saddle to the Matukituki, over Cascade Saddle to the Dart, and through the Routeburn to the Hollyford). Many curses upon the head of the unspeakable Hughey.

L.M.R.