with Aunty Rata Kia Ora and happy new year Wasn’t it nice to get the Club Journal just before Xmas? Felt like an extra special present and if like Aunty Rata you were struggling to squeeze in a few fun trips into the hills between all those heavy rain warnings, you probably had a bit … Read more
I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Year break, WT&MC is back up and running already, our first club trips of the year battled the stormy weather over Wellington Anniversary weekend. Sandra and I were battling the crowds at the Big Day Out, which was a fantastic day, despite the rain. I … Read more
We left Syme Hut at 10.30am and stepped straight into a howling gale and horizontal hail. Visibility suddenly vanished and we were forced to quickly don sunglasses to avoid squinting into a near white-out. I looked back at the hut into the teeth of the storm and was rewarded with a painful pelting of hail, … Read more
The book “Day Walks of Greater Wellington” warns “be prepared for stunning views, this is an astounding viewpoint”. It is fair to say that the less prepared, the better … due to cloud we saw little more than each other, the dirt track and roadside vegetation. However, on the bright side if we had been … Read more
I remembered vividly the sleepless nights I had in Plateau hut at the base of Mt Cook last year, also in November, the wind was shaking the hut so violently the first thing I did next morning was to climb underneath the hut to make sure the cables holding the hut were still in place, … Read more
Flying into Christchurch late Friday we had two days and a dodgy weather forecast to get ourselves over Ball Pass. Three of the group had gone ahead early, which left six of us arriving on the 8:15 pm flight to grab the two remaining cars and drive to Mt Cook. The weather on the way … Read more
Mountain bikers can begin riding Kahurangi National Park’s Flora Saddle to Barron Flat and Kill Devil tracks now but are reminded they cannot begin riding the Heaphy Track until 1 May 2011, says the Department of Conservation. The DOC comments follow the announcement by the New Zealand Conservation Authority (NZCA) that it has approved a revised … Read more
We started out on Labour weekend with a basic plan of staying a couple of nights around Studholme Saddle Hut, and possibly heading further up the main Kaweka Range during that time. Things didn’t work out that way. For the first time in a long time, at least as far as I can remember, we … Read more
What’s the definition of a M/F-tramp? According to some, it doesn’t even exist as it would be either M or F, and anything in between is just smoke and mirrors. This trip was optimistically scheduled to be a M-trip, but over the weekend the idea developed that it actually should be rated a M/F tramp. … Read more
Clubs like ours are only as strong and vibrant as their members, particularly those who team up to run the show. Yep that would be the committee. We are very lucky to have a strong, hard working committee that is lead by our President Darren Hammond. After two years at the helm Darren plans to … Read more