Ngamoko hut with a dash of bush bash

By Chris Russell, 09 December 2023

Omg I wrote like half of a regular trip report and didn't save it. Instead you get this:

FRIDAY NIGHT

• Night drive in the wops with possums crossing the road around every corner
• Campsite booked out!? Then no one was there

SATURDAY

• 30m clay cliffs either side up piripiri stream, spectacular! Also saw weird seashells embedded in the rock
• Piripiri hut was mostly visited my this one dude Andrew Meyer according to the hut book, there was also a Wayne Meyer, both of whom made it very clear that they weren't related
• There was a stream next to Piripiri hut, despite the fact the hut is on a spur, not sure how that is possible
• Dugal immediately grabs stinging nettle which had disguised itself as a fern
• We met an inpenetrable wall of leather wood that is like 3m high
• We manage to somehow always find a small gap to squeeze through, summarized by Dugal when he stated "Oh hang on, yep, I can see somewhere where we can travel an entire 5 metres!"
• We utilized slips because we can cover ground on those quicker than we can through the leatherwood!
• Chris rips his shorts in about every way possible due to leatherwood
• Jack offers Chris his spare shorts for later
• Jack also rips his shorts
• Jack announces "Yep I'm stuck" a few dozen times
• As we get closer to meeting an old track the leatherwood gets shorter, yay? Nope, this is the 'devil height' of leatherwood (where it goes just above your head) where it is almost impossible to push through.
• It takes us 2.5 hours to cross 500m of leatherwood
• Tarn! Track! (kinda the track barely exists but at least the leatherwood became more sparse)
• A wall of clouds ambushes us as we have lunch at 1350, we dash off the ridge and head down to Ngamoko hut before the wind hits us
• We took 8.5 hours which was a lot better than the 13 hours we were expecting from a past report
• DOC sign tells us what we just did should only take 3 hours!?
• We nap immediately upon entering the hut
• Dugal had mentioned that he has only been to the Ruahines twice, both to Iron Gate hut
• This was a lie because Dugal is astonished to find himself in the hut book
• All of the these huts seem to only get visited every 1-3 months, but are very clean and nice, especially the fire place in Ngamoko, cleanest fire place I have ever seen
• We lay on the amazing lawn that Ngamoko hut has and watch the clouds go by
• Chris finds the ultimate piss spot, a tree stump overlooking the entire river
• Dugal finds whio (blue duck). It is apparently common on the Pohangina river

SUNDAY

• Cruisy 1.5 hour river bash down to Mid Pohangina hut. It is also a in a cool location with a waterfall nearby
• Next is just a marked DOC track home, this should be the easy section
• The hut book warns us it is "hairy in places", and that some people got lost on it and that it took someone 10 hours (marked as 5 hours)
• Track immediately takes us over an unnecessary hill to a swing bring which no longer exists
• Chris puts his hand out to break a fall but places his hand on stinging nettle
• Track is then cut off by a slip around half way. We check topo to find we are way higher up than the track is supposed to be
• We slide down the slip and search for where the track is marked on the map, no luck (I think we did miss a turnoff to go over the top of the slip)
• We decide to do more river bashing, except on hard mode this time because the flow is now higher, and the boulders are huge!
• It has started raining, this is concerning since we are river bashing
• The river becomes to tricky to get down. We pull out topo to find that we are at a track junction meaning we can just do a tiny bush bash up the hill to get back on track, but the track is god awful.
• The track crosses another slip, this time we go over it
• Jack is still getting stuck
• Lots of quoting 'Bottom Gear' from everyone, an absolute classic (iykyk)
• We get back onto the known territory, the junction for piripiri stream!
• We find an old DOC sign that is 20+ years old, and it says what we just did should take 5 hours, which was actually extremely accurate, did they know the track would become this bad and unmaintained??
• Jack does a comical fall where his legs fly into the air
• The car is a welcome sight after about 7 hours
• Car ride tunes included a mixture of Dubstep, Glitch, Classical, Rap, Star Wars soundtrack and Jazz, you know, the usual stuff

Final stats:

• 2/3 trampers stung by onga onga
• 2/3 trampers have ripped their shorts
• For some reason we rate this a 10/10 tramp, it had good plot