Paua Hut, Remutaka Forest Park
After a reschedule due to rain, Daniel was lining up his forth attempt to get to Paua Hut. A group aiming to climb Mt Matthews led by Nicole and Ellis had gone in on Friday, hauling a BBQ no less. At 6.34am on Saturday I got the following message from Daniel:
Hi all, we are likely having a slight change in plans. The group that went in last night could not get the padlock into Paua Hut to unlock. I’m waiting to hear an update if they had any better luck this morning.
We will likely tramp directly into the Hut via the easier Orongorongo track and attempt to get into the Hut (for example cooking oil may help loosen the padlock etc). Once/if we’re in the hut, we can do an afternoon river walk. All going well today we’ll do everything except McKerrow.
I’m planning to bring my 2-person tent just in case we can’t get into the hut. Sam you might want to bring your tent too.
Absolute worse case scenario is we can’t get into the hut and have an afternoon cook up and some people walk back to the road tonight.
Apologies for the bizarre turn of events! See you at 9.30 at the Railway Station.
This set us up for what turned out to be a rather memorable turn of events. In what might be a WTMC first we stopped at Bunnings on the way to the Orongorongo carpark to purchase a pair of bolt cutters. Niamh had already packed some CRC. We had the fool’s confidence of a group of people who had never broken into anything before.
At the carpark we ran into the easy group. They piled out of the club van and were busy getting themselves ready for the big walk into Paua. We left them to it and our merry band of four departed for the valley. It had rained the day before but the valley track was in excellent condition, a highway for these would-be robbers.
Continue reading for free on Sam’s blog: https://medium.com/engage/lawful-breaking-and-entering-4fd707cea836?sk=4a25b4309c6c07d4c114856dae306ac2
