Wellington Tramping and Mountaineering Club
Enjoying the great outdoors since 1947
There were 3 in our happy band. After many days of beautiful, calm, sunny weather, there were howling gales and lashing rain forecasted for the weekend. Driving from Wellington on the Friday night, the worst of it did not arrive until we actually parked the van at Otaki Forks about 9pm. We opened the van … Read more
There’s no point in roughing it until you have to, so Saturday morning breakfast was not cold muesli with reconstituted milk, but salmon on sourdough and espresso from the French patisserie in Greytown. I couldn’t resist slipping a tuna mayo roll from there into my pocket too. Mangatarere Roadend is a place less travelled. It’s … Read more
The long range forecast for rain morphed into a promise of a beautiful warm sunny weekend and with a nice hut at the end of an easy walk, a great weekend out was on hand. Ella and I had a rough start to our morning as we received a call from home advising us that … Read more
The original plan for this trip was to go to Howletts Hut in the Ruahines via a Friday night stay at Longview. This would be a great plan for a dry and moonlit Friday night, but that wasn’t the way the weather was shaping up. Instead, the forecast was for strong winds and heavy rain … Read more
We made a 7:30 am Saturday departure from the Railway station, with a couple of guest punters, Gareth and Steve coming along to do the van driving and their own gourmet tramp. After passing through the Wairarapa towns without kebab or coffee stops, we were at the road end and ready to tramp at 9:15am. … Read more
We met up at Platform 9 for the usual last minute tramping requirements, and introductions to members of our party and the MF group. We had a comfortable trip out to Masterton along with an exciting, extended adventure in Chinatown. Chinatown is found in Greytown, where it takes 40 minutes on a Friday night to … Read more
After a slightly bleary-eyed 7.30am meet on the Saturday morning, a club minibus jam-packed with sleepy trampers left for the Tararuas in hot pursuit after Illona’s car. As a tramping-virgin, I had been warned about the mysteriously misty, murky and muddy Tararuas and had sat through various club presentations picturing drizzly-looking forest and decidedly damp-looking … Read more
When Gareth asked me for the sixth time “have you committed to the Jumbo-Holdsworth?” I weighed up the pros and cons for the sixth time. Pros – no time left to do any training, have run the route before and enjoyed it, unlikely to be snow this time. Cons – have not done any training, … Read more
As we were doing a crossing we had a few transport logistics issues. We left Wellington Station on the 5:30pm train bound for Masterton, a lovely scenic ride, with the goal getting a pickup from the MF Blackwater-Makaretu group on the Sunday afternoon. We arrived in Masterton a bit hungry and in no real hurry, … Read more