Doing (red)lines in the Tararuas

By Richard, 01 March 2007

When you get a bit old and a bit crusty and have spent too much time in the Tararuas there are not many options left to you.  Some leave Wellington and move to the South Island where they take up paddling or mountain biking unable to adjust to tramping in an environment where if the weather is bad it makes sense not to go (in Wellington this is not an option as the weather will always be bad!).  Some prefer to don the yellow vest of SAR and look for people who have turned on straight ridges, some give up tramping all together and fold once-knobbly knees under a desk in a public service job.  Some however continue to return to the Tararuas, dragging their feet up the hopelessly familiar tracks, spurs and streambeds spurred on by the increasingly desperate addiction that is Tararua redline, a state of mind where the hope of getting a fix is better than the fix itself.

This article relates two tales of that fix.

Bannister Ridge 29-31 July 2005

Ben Clark,

Richard Davies (scribe)

I hadn’t been over Bannister Ridge for 5 and a half years, and last time I had Ben Clark was living in blightly eating mutton flaps thinking New Zealand was near Denmark.  Actually he was probably asleep due to the time difference but you get the picture, he was keen for the walk.  Blue Range was empty on a Friday which was a nice change and we slept well before bombing down to Cow Saddle and making good time up to the bushline above it.  From there to Waingawa was a bit of a slog in the hot sun, but we didn’t need to worry as Bannister Ridge looked claggy enough for anyone.  We dropped off Waingawa into the murk and headed along.  Bannister was straight forward as I remembered it but still gives a good workout, by the time we hit the Dundas Ridge the clag had got more penetrative and we were fairly wet and cold.  We hurried across the sidle under Arete peak and navigating-by-memory got us close enough to the biv to spot it through the clag.  It was damp and cold inside so we settled into our pits for a bit to warm up before cooking tea.  A fairly wild night ensued with sleet splattering into the biv repeatedly overnight.  Not as bad as when Kathryn Gow and I spent over 40 hours in pit in a raging storm in 2000, but then again biv was a lot more weatherproof back then.  There was some heavy rain interspersed with the sleet although it seemed to go away many hours before we got up.  We were away at first light, in light rain and strong wind and made good time across to the top of Pinnacle Spur, the last bit was a real struggle in the strong wind so we bailed out on the Tarn Ridge option and made the knee jarring drop to Arete Forks.  The cloud cover was much lower than I thought, and unfortunately the river was much higher than I thought.  We linked up and struggled across with quite a few difficulties in the fastest bit.  Luckily this was closest to the far bank and we could use some fallen trees to scramble out.  We admired the new firebox in at Arete Forks, but we couldn’t stay and from there it was a wet, chaffage inducing two and a half hours along the sidle track to Cow Creek.  This was redline for me, and I could see why people don’t like the track – you really need to enjoy your uphills!  It wasn’t so bad for us, we were pretty cold so the regular uphill grind kept us warm and it was actually quite pleasant.  After lunch at Cow Creek it was the mindless slog back over the hill to the car, with the fix of redline barely keeping the angry dog at bay.

Deception Spur 20-21 August 2005

Ben Clark

Hannah McGregor

Richard Davies (scribe)

Mangahao Flats was the hut in the Tararuas that I had not been back to for the longest time (sorry Billy), and I felt that this alone warranted a trip there.  Hannah and Ben were keen for something laid back, so a Saturday morning start was agreed upon and up the Ohau river we wombled.  At the North Ohau confluence, I spied the opportunity for some redlining, so we departed the river and headed up Deception Spur.  The bottom is fairly steep, a series of rocky steps, but with lots of Kie Kie to hold onto it was no-wukin-forries.  As is usual for the majority of spurs in the Tararuas there was a decent groundtrail.  In fact Deception Spur is so named as the early people in this area (e.g. Leslie Adkin) believed that it lead up to Dundas, so it has history as a route.  I don’t think it has much of a future though as lots of storm damage and bush lawyer hampers progress.  Still it was a piece of redline that I was keen to have.  Some careful compass work took us off the top of the ridge and down towards Girdlestone Saddle.  At the obvious flat bit, just past the big slips we dropped straight down as best we could towards the Mangahao, popping out at Avalanche Flats.  The track is annoying so we spent lots of time in the river and reached Mangahao Flats just on dusk where we cut up quite a bit of firewood and burned a bit too.  On Sunday we returned up the river then popped up the track to Girdlestone Saddle, we dropped down into the stream below it, which was more redline for the boys but not Hannah.  It was really slow going, and my free advice is stick to the stream on the way down by ignoring tape and small triangles that entice you up, but when you reach the big triangle you should take the sidle around Dowling Falls.  Once around this obstacle, we raced out down the Ohau which was nice and fast and left me feeling more positive seeing that I forgot my torch and was looking at a fairly uncomfortable walk out in the dark!