By Stijn Servaas, 21 December 2024
As bad as the title makes it sound, because of great planning (and maybe a tiny bit of luck) we ended up having a great trip. We started early on Saturday morning, and accompanied by Chris's dubstep, made our way north from Wellington towards the Ruahines. On our way we passed a sign to a town called Ongaonga, and I joked, "haha Ongaonga, who would want to go there"(Foreshadowing). Our plan for the first day was to drive to the road end and make our way up to Poutaki hut to stay the night. About 30 minutes from the road end, we reached our first obstacle, the road was closed and we had to backtrack to the main road and try another way in. At this point, it also started raining quite heavily.
Our new plan (you'll hear this a lot more) was to use the forestry roads to connect to the track further south. However, after another hour of driving we discovered this road was also closed. With the rain still pouring down, and it starting to get a bit late, our morals were starting to dwindle. This is when we decided to change up the plans completely, and make our way to dead dog hut instead. Once we reached the start of our track, it miraculously stopped raining and even cleared up. From there we had a great tramp to dead dog hut, the first half on tramping tracks and second part following the river upstream. We reached the hut with very wet shoes, and it starting to rain again once we arrived.
The next day, Sunday the 22nd, our plan was to make our way back to the car and drive to the track going to Poutaki hut. The tramping went smoothly, apart from Justin touching some Ongaonga, and we had pretty good weather. With a bit of rain during the drive, we reached our next obstacle. The alternative road we were taking to Poutaki had a big fence across it with keep out signs. From here, you guessed it, we completely changed our plans again and decided to go to a road end hut a couple hundred meters from there and stayed at Sentry box hut. Here we had a nice evening tramp up to the Rocky Knoll, which we found a lot less rocky and impressive than the knoll right before it.
On the last day we were finally going to Poutaki hut, which was supposed to be our first hut. We drove to the start of the forestry area and walked a few kilometres over forestry roads before ascending to Poutaki which turned out to be a great hut (highly recommend staying a night there!).
Getting back to the car in the afternoon(right before it started raining again), we though our adventure was over, but an oversight in fuel levels proved us wrong. We had one bar of fuel left which had to get us out of the forestry area and to the nearest town. With the AC off, windows closed for aerodynamics, and as little braking as possible we started our journey. According to Google maps, the town of Ongaonga had a general store which was so general it even had a gas station. Surprisingly, Google maps was right, but we were greeted by signes telling us fuel was sold out.
With probably drops of fuel left to spare, we made it to the next big town with a gas station. Against all odds we all made it home that evening, having had a great trip without getting rained on, not being stranded without fuel, and having a great walk every day. Thanks Justin for organising!