By Tommy Thomson, 04 May 2024
Lewis, Lochie and I had formed a bit of a routine throughout the first half of the year. We were all confident in each other's ability and all quite spontaneous and disorganised. Every week, around Thursday, typically Lochie would send an email(always without a subject line) saying he was keen for a tramp that weekend. In the subsequent clutter of short emails, many ideas would be thrown around that involved biking to some obscure road-end or bush bashing to some random point. This week, we had our eyes on Hector Forks, and the trip even ended up on the calendar so that Neve could sign up, although I'm not sure she knew what she was in for. And we threw in the extra spice that Lochie had to be back by Sunday morning, because his parents were down from the Waikato and he needed to make pancakes.
Friday 4:30. I arrived at the old hunter carpark slightly late and very disorganized, with the basic overnight tramping essentials thrown in my absurdly large 90L Osprey pack. We picked up some random extra food at the Petone Pak'n'save, and a 70c Value Raspberry Soft Drink to use as a water bottle since I had forgotten to bring one. Lochie decleared that he was going through a phase of listening to opera music which provided the perfect backdrop for the drive over the hill as the sun set. It was well and truly night by the time we got to Carterton to pick up Neve from her parents' grand country Villa, and somehow past 7 by the time we reached Holdsworth Lodge.
I hadn't done the grind up to Powell at night, but we stormed along quickly and talked loudly about the club. The only water I had was the 70c Value Raspberry soft drink, which just doesn't do it for hydration and I was feeling a bit sick by the time I got through the entire 1.5 litres. The mist and cold closed in up the hill past Mountain House, and living in it was this bizzare flatworm that streched out to about 30cm long while it was moving. I raced off up the last part to Powell in order to take a dump, arriving just in time as you always do.
Powell hut is somehow on it's 4th iteration, Powell 3 lasted less than 20 years from 1999 to 2018. Powell 4 is far too flash to be a backcountry hut, with gas stoves, electric lights, helicoptered firewood and massive double glazed windows. We stayed up far too late enjoying the fire and probably pissed off everyone else in the hut. As we were about to go to bed(in our own bunkroom, which is also missing the spirit of the backcountry hut), Lochie tried to turn off the lights... and pushed the button in again, losing us another 10 minutes of much needed sleep.
Next morning I tried to rise the others up early, then realizing I hadn't brought enough gear or food to faff with I set off up the hill to watch the sunrise. This was pretty exhausting but the view from Holdsworth was magic. We are blessed to be able to visit these mountains on a whim on a random weekend.
I realised I forgot to fill up my water bottle at the hut, but found enough puddles to make do on the way back. Mountain tarn water tastes far better than 70c Value Raspberry soft drink. I met up with the others back at the turnoff to High Ridge.
High Ridge is an absolute delight! It starts with a flat section of low scrub with a steep slip on one side and the Isabelle Creek canyon dissapearing on the other side. But we had no time for looking at canyons, Lochie had pancakes to make! The bushline is a bit confusing, but there is a marked track if you look hard enough. We skipped through the gorgous goblin forest, only getting lost once, and made quick time for morning tea on Flaxy Knob.
From here the main route continues left down to Totara Flats hut, but we headed right down what looked to be the most logical spur down to Hector forks. We had heard tales from Uncle Dugal about getting lost down here and spending the night out, and I can see why, it was a confusing spur that at one point splits in 4. But Lochie's compass directions guided us safely, so we only went down the wrong spur a few times and realized our mistake quickly. For the most part, travel was OK too, the bush was dense in places but mostly open with good pig tracks. Near the bottom the bush opened out into scrub and you could see down into the Waiohine Gorge, and in places see the river on both sides of this steep spur slicing into the guts of the Tararuas.
Once we reached the bottom it looked rather like we would have to jump into the Waiohine Gorge, but luckily we headed left and some convenient animal tracks lead us down to a big stony beach. Time for a swim, obviously! In the Waiohine, in May!
We contemplated our options. Every route out of here was really steep. We knew we had to get to the Cone Ridge track by dark, but Tararua footprints reckoned that following the Waiohine down from here was fairly straightforward and "only had 1 mandatory swim", which sounded far more fun. So we went down the river. In May. Without proper drybags, wetsuits, or anything floaty. Very soon we came to a point where we had to swim. It was a crossing of the river, and we could have easily been swept down a rapid, but luckily everyone made it across fine. Mandatory swim ticked off! After a bit more boulder hopping, we passed Hector Forks, the goal of the trip.
It felt a bit anticlimactic considering we had already reached the Waiohine river, but it's always good to acheive your goals. Then we came to another mandatory swim. This was a long one, down a bit of a gorge. None of us had much experince packfloating but we quickly got the technique, turn around and make big rhythmic kicks with your arms and legs. I noticed I was a lot slower and colder than everyone else but blamed being tall, tall male people tend to lose heat easier. Oh well, I can take the loss here since being tall usually makes me faster at tramping. Then we had to cross the river again, and reached a large boulder field, similar to the boulder filled rivers on the West Coast. But now I was really struggling, my pack weighed a ton and I could barely clamber over the boulders. Thankfully it was sunny, so we took a short break to eat. I still felt very unsteady after this, I basically couldn't stand up straight and had to hold on to rocks in order to walk. There were a couple of short swims where I could barely force myself into the water, and when I did I was panicking hard. Thankfully the rest of the group had enough brainpower left to realise that I must be getting hypothermic, and decided that we would cross one final time to the south side of the river and head up to Cone Ridge. That final swim may be the hardest thing I've ever done, but we made it and I opened up my pack to look for warm dry clothes to change into.
And there weren't any. My entire pack was soaked. It had got through the pack and several layers of pack liner, and everything in my pack was soaked through. My sleeping bag and puffer jacket had absorbed so much water and weighed a ton. No wonder my pack felt so heavy I could barely walk. The water must have gotten through all the zippers on the bottom and sides, so after this trip I sold the Osprey and went back to a Macpac canvas sack. It's less comfortable and convenient, but much more trustworthy. I did my best to drain as much water as possible out of everything for the walk up the hill, but it was still much heavier. Lochie must have also been cold as he almost dropped the car keys in the river.
One of the nice things about the Tararuas is if you pick any random spur, even out of the deepest gorge, while it might be absolutely horrible but it will eventually be traversible. This was such a spur. We hauled ourselves up this near vertical ladder of rata, grunting and groaning to the point of near exhaustion, but also glad to be out of the river and warming up. After a monumental effort climbing some bizzare overhanging root systems, we emerged to the safety of a river terrace. Exhausted, we were all dreading the long grind back to the car.
I don't remember much of the 600m ascent grind up to Cone Ridge, but it was very slow and tedious. Near the top, I deployed my favorite trick of sideling around to the ridge, but the others were doubtful and bailed on me, heading straight up instead. I reached the ridge track first and smugly waited. And waited. I shouted a few times and heard a few responses, but they seemed to be getting quieter. Confused, I walked off in pursuit and luckily managed to catch up with the other 3 heading the wrong way on Cone Ridge. It still baffles me writing this how they managed to do this, but it was quite scary for a second when I though I might not catch up. Anyway, we headed the correct way down the track and soon it got dark. Luckily, for just this occasion, I had just bought a $10 Kmart headtorch after the USB rechargable battery crapped out on my old one. After a string of tramps without a working headtorch, I had one with AAA batteries that weren't going to fail. But of course, I'd left it in my jacket pocket and it was water damaged. One more tramp with the phone torch I guess.
By this point I could feel the layers on the swiss cheese model being stripped away, but luckily the night was warm and we made it back to the car without any more incidents, just 26 hours after leaving it.
Another sucessful spontaneous tramp, but I'm probably going to give the victory to Hector forks on this one. Another Thomson down to the stunningly beautiful, but tricky, guts of the Tararuas.