By Chris Russell, 20 June 2024
I had this idea for a long time that I wanted to do the Tararuas or the Ruahines as a crossing where I hitchhike up one coast and then hitchhike down the other. However I am not the most experienced hitchhiker so I didn't know how feasible this was. I was originally going to do this solo but I was having trouble motivating myself to actually get going so I invited Tommy to join me with very short notice. He was immediately interested in the idea. I went with the Tararuas because it would be an easier hitch hike and I would probably need a week of good weather to do this with the Ruahines.
We both barely made it on the Wairarapa train around midday on Thursday. We used the 2 hour train ride to plan where we want to go because so far the only plan was that I wanted to go bag some of the central huts I haven't been to like Carkeek, Dorset Ridge, Nichols and Dracophyllum. We still didn't manage to make a full plan at that time but we at least decided how we were going to get to Dorset Ridge and Carkeek by Friday night. The plan was to actually go to the Ruamahanga road end, which is a very unpopular road end as the Kiriwhakapapa road end is usually just a better one as it is a quicker way to cow creek. But interestingly since we were hitchhiking the Ruamahanga road end was perfect because it starts by SH2 meaning we only needed one hitchhike not two. We would stay the night at cow creek and then head up table ridge and down to dorset ridge and across to carkeek.
After getting to Masterton we had a quick supermarket stop and headed to the end of town for a hitchhike. Tommy was quite pessimistic on the time it would take to get a ride. But to our surprise we didn't even have time to stop and put our thumbs up before someone stopped next to us and asked if we wanted a ride, perfect! They were driving to Woodridge which worked for us as the Ruamahanga road end is on the way. We had a nice chat and they dropped us off by the Ruamahanga bridge. We had to sprint across that bridge because there was no pedestrian sidewalk on it and it was quite narrow.
We had set off quite late for a winter hitch hike and so the sun was already setting and on top of that it was raining. But we didn't particularly care. The Ruamahanga track crosses some farmland at first and walking access told us to go down into the gorge which turned out to be not great. The track was overgrown, I slipped off of the bank off the side of the track unexpectedly at one point but I found this hilarious, but most importantly it made us cross the Ruamahanga river twice which weren't the safest river crossings, but they were just doable. By the time we got over the farmland it was completely dark and there was still at least a few hours to go. The track turned out to be pretty wide and flat most of the way but we did lose it a few times anyway. But after some long conversations and some downhill creek bashing we made it to cow creek hut, which was empty but this is not surprising on a rainy week day. Next morning Tommy felt a bit ill and so table ridge was a bit of a slog. Once we got out of the tops I was disappointed to see the weather wasn't fine as forecast but instead we were in clag and it was insanely cold despite the lack of wind. On Brockett and Girdlestone the tussock had thick chunks of ice on them, but there was no snow which looked odd. We made the detour to tarn ridge for an extra bag and had lunch there. Then we went to dorset ridge. At this point the weather cleared up so it seemed the forecast was correct for the majority of the tararuas but there was still the end of a front hitting the eastern side of the range. Tommy wasn't bothered to run down to Dorset ridge hut since he has been there but I hadn't so I made the detour. At this point we had about an hour of sunlight so we would be walking to carkeek partially in the dark but we were still keen. The dorset ridge track was great until it split off from the dorset creek route to the park forks route which was very hard to follow but we managed. Then I got to experience park forks ‘the heart of the tararuas’ for the first time at dusk which was a magical moment. Then it was time for the uphill carkeek ridge in the dark which made me feel nauseous for some reason. But we made it and had a fire and discussed our plans from here. My original vague idea was go back down to the forks, up to Nichols and past Dracophyllum to Te Matawai or South Ohau for the Saturday night (it was important for us to be close to a road end for Sunday since we assumed it would take a lot longer to get a hitchhike from this side) and then Sunday out to poads. But Tommy had been to all of those very recently so that would be a bit boring for him. I still liked the idea of leaving on the west coast so I suggested we could go up to Nichols, but then go over mt Crawford to Waitewaewae and then up to island forks hut, which we both hadn't been to and cut out the boring Waitewaewae track and a road walk up Otaki gorge road. And then we could bush bash out to Otaki from there.
Saturday we left carkeek and as planned went up to Nichols hut and up to Mt Crawford which is when Tommy realised we left his raincoat at Carkeek hut which caused a big dilemma. We could go back and get it, but if we did that wasted time would mean we couldn't get to island forks tonight. But Tommy still wanted to go to island forks and saw this as an excuse to run another club trip to go collect his coat from Carkeek at a later date. So we continued to Waitewaewae hut after dropping our packs at the bridge and running there for the bag. There we met our first human in a few days. And we found out that we actually knew him as he was the father of someone from vuwtc! We ran back to collect our packs and with a boost of energy we continued up Waitewaewae stream. I wish I did this part in more daylight as it was spectacular and it was also extremely cold doing constant river crossings at night in winter. But eventually we stumbled across island forks hut which is a little two bunker which doesn't get a lot of visits. It also doesn't have a fireplace unfortunately but with two people, a candle and a cooker in a small place it wasn't too cold. We still had to decide for the next day how we were going to bush bash out exactly. Tommy pointed out we could go to Corbett's road as this was another place where the track from the forest park goes very close to the highway, therefore skipping another hitchhike.
Sunday we left island forks hut and went up left of the nearby forks which we realised wasn't actually the 'island forks' which is a bit confusing and lead to a long conversation of what the forks near the hut should be called, and we thought 'island forks hut forks', although this gets confusing if the hut burnt down then the new hut would have to be called 'island forks hut forks hut'. We then headed up the west Waitewaewae stream to find the spur that goes up to point 828. This was actually a bit tricky as there were many forks which confused us a bit. We went through one awesome gorge and then we found the spur. We were surprised to find that there was actually a reasonably well worn track up the spur, at least to begin with. I should also point out that it has been raining all morning, and I'll remind you that Tommy's raincoat is at Carkeek. Tommy made a makeshift raincoat out of a rubbish bag but as we went up the spur Tommy noticed he was getting concerningly cold. There wasn't really anything we could do except go fast and then change into dry clothes once we found shelter in civilization. Luckily once we got to Thompson (a hill) the rain stopped and so Tommy was able to change into dry clothes early. On top of that we got a great view of the Kapiti coast / Levin and Tommy suggested we bring out the cooker and fry up rice from last night and the remaining corn beef and herbs and that turned out to be the best meal of the trip by far! Now in good spirits we boosted down a vehicle track to Corbett's road passing the odd structure which made us think we might be crossing private land. But we passed a woman who gave us a smile and a wave so it seemed to be fine (we checked after and there is a paper road through there). Then we just had a small road walk to SH1.
So now on this side of the range we assumed the hitchhike wouldn't be so easy because it is 80kph at this spot on SH1 so it's much harder for people to stop. But we were surprised again when we only held our thumbs out for a couple minutes when a couple of women coming out of Corbett's road rolled down the window to ask where we were headed. Initially we told them Waikanae as we just needed the train, but as it turns out they were going to Naenae, which is conveniently where I was living! And it would also be next to the train station for Tommy. And that was that, I felt quite accomplished having executed the plan well, and the hitchhiking went smoothly. We crossed the Tararuas bagging a bunch of huts I wanted to bag. And we went from SH1 to SH2, highway to highway which is something not many people do since people usually park down forest park access roads.
