By Colan Balkwill, 20 February 2022
Party: Colan, Amon, Meike
Hypothesis: maybe carrying packrafts over one of the gnarliest routes in the Tararuas will save us some time
Methodology: Assemble 3 humans, 5 kebabs, 4 avos, 1kg of hummus, 2 packrafts, a mango, and a bag of cherries and set off into the hills
Results: it didn’t.
Outcomes: a pretty sweet haircut in the howling winds
Future Prospects: we need more packrafts!
Route description (times include faff which we did a lot of):
Day 1: Otaki forks to Field Hut - 3hrs
Day 2: Field Hut to Maungahuka Hut via Kime Hut - 9hrs
Day 3: Maungahuka Hut to Penn Creek Hut via Pakihore Ridge - 5hrs
Day 4: Packraft Penn Creek and the Otaki river to Otaki Forks - 7.5hrs
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It’s the last week of summer break. Amon’s love for mud and the eternal walk down the Turere streambed has cemented us into an unstoppable trio. Lying on the asphalt, exhausted, our minds drift to adventures our newfound packrafting skills will open up. The Otaki, Maungahuka. It’s time to reach for dreams the wind had so sadly spoiled four months earlier.
We made plans as we drove back to civilisation, took Sunday off and reconvened on Monday with an utter excess of food. We were about to take the club’s pack rafts places they had no right to be. Did I mention we only had two?
Kebabs in my pockets
Field hut in the dark
Wellington on the horizon
Sweat stained T-shirts
On a high
Kime hosted yoga
200m up 300m down, and up, and down, and up and
Boyd-Wilson, Vosseler and Yeates
Sundried tomato pesto
Sweet potato hummus
Cherries
Helmets, life vests and rafts
Spectres in the mist
Chains and ladders
Maungahuka
Its cheesecake (textured) tarn
Lying in ‘til 12 (because of the wind)
The wind
Mountain-top haircuts (because of the wind)
Pakihore’s mossy pillows
Penn Creek and a mango
Dunked in the Otaki
Dunked in the Otaki
Dunked in the Otaki
The Forks, at last
I’ll wrap this up with some sap - one of the most epic, jam packed adventures I’ve been on with two of the loveliest people I’ve ever known (and I’m no spring chicken y’all). We saw Taranaki from the ridgeline – it tickled our fancy and two days we were making our way up to Syme Hut. We’ve been adventuring since. Some people you just don’t get sick of x