Wellington Tramping and Mountaineering Club
Enjoying the great outdoors since 1947
Our trip started badly which was luckily not a sign of things to come in terms of fun and mood, if not weather. Traffic out of Wellington was slow and the sun was blazing into the van turning it into sauna. It took us about an hour to realise we hadn’t actually turned the A/C … Read more
We headed into Cone Hut from the Waiohine roadend on Friday night (after getting Chinese takeaways in Greytown – recommended!), and got to Cone at 9.45 that night. Cone is a great little hut and is renowned in arachnologist circles for having some of the hugest spiders in the Tararuas. We crashed almost as soon … Read more
After leaving the ferry at Picton on Friday evening, we drove to Rai Valley hoping to camp in one of two spots for free camping. Alas, by 10 pm both sites were chokka with vehicles. Available spaces were small and sloping, and puddles plentiful. So we backtracked to the DOC campsite at Pelorus Bridge where … Read more
After a slightly unsettled sailing from wellington (Southerly) we arrived at Picton on Friday night. Waiting for us at the Ferry terminal was Nat from Sea Kayak Adventures and we climbed into the parked vehicles which took us to their base in Anikiwa, where we would stay the night. Waking early Saturday morning we … Read more
After arriving in Murchison late Friday night and staying the night in cabins at Riverview holiday Park, we set off in the morning to the Jamieson’s Ridge road end, near Tutaki. A relatively gentle incline up Jamieson’s ridge through typical South Island beech forest and into subalpine scrub, found us at the edge of the … Read more
Having tried out several of the club’s activities – tramps, navigation, snowcraft, even the club’s annual Bum Sliding Competition – it was time to check out what else WTMC had on offer. There’s trapping, climbing, mountain biking, rock climbing, canyoning, skiing/ski touring and kayaking. I decided a club kayak trip would be the next cab … Read more
On the Wednesday before our Wellington Anniversary long weekend trip up to the Kawekas, Megan gave a talk about a trip she did with Tony, Fons and Rohan at Labour Weekend last year, where they were able to visit seven huts over the three days. Not that we were into anything like competitive hut-bagging but … Read more
It was hot hot hot in the Kawekas on Wellington Anniversary Weekend! The Medium group commenced their trip into the Kawekas from Makahu Saddle. Ahead of us was the climb up Kaweka J. Minutes into the trip I was sweaty enough to pick up a fine dry coat of Kaweka dust all over my legs. … Read more
Taking an extra day off work for this adventure was bittersweet – 6 interested punters were whittled down to just 3 as we were the only ones who could get the time off before the closing date for the trip. However in the end we were glad we did it as we ended up with … Read more
Journey prep at the station after work on Friday involved us fitting five bikes, eight people and eight packs into and onto the van. The jigsaw came together well with people generally strapped in seats and bikes generally strapped to the bike rack so we had a comfortable if slow journey up to the lodge … Read more