Carkeek Hut, in the middle of the Tararuas, had long been on the minds of Mon and I. Surrounded by other Tararua landmarks (as noted below), we took the opportunity to craft a more ambitious long weekend plan when only the two of us signed up for the trip – we swapped out two nights at Te Matawai Hut on a Poads Road return trip for a lot more off-track ridge and river travel, to make it an adventurous Crossing.
Day 1 – Friday 17 January – Poads Road to Te Matawai Hut
Mon’s sister very kindly dropped us off at Poads Road and, after walking with her for a short while, we started up the Ohau River. It was a sunny day, but the heat was yet to rise in the valley – that would come as we got close to South Ohau Hut. We had done this section of river travel (in the opposite direction) the previous year, so we knew there were a couple of deep pools to wade through (slow moving and up to about thigh-height) and bigger boulders in the final kilometre to South Ohau Hut.
As it was the first part of day 1, we took care to not slip or rush. We arrived at South Ohau Hut for a break at about 1pm, after about 3.5 hours of walking.
Our main reason for coming this way was to visit Dowling Falls, and to investigate the dotted “track” (on the map) which runs up to Girdlestone Saddle.
After a short break we continued up the river (there are no obvious tracks, even though the dotted line on the map is parallel to the river). After about 45 minutes of walking there is a large orange triangle directing you to go up a spur. Fortunately, Mon suggested we drop our packs and continue up river for about 15 minutes to the base of the Falls. Her hunch, that there was no view of the waterfall from the spur track, proved to be correct.
The climb up the spur is initially steep, with a lot of treefall. The heat of the day by now was in full force and the humidity level was high. The track undulates, dropping down to the river at the top of the Falls on two occasions. There was also a neat section where you effectively walk up rock steps in the middle of the river, and water cascades around your feet. Mon spotted a pool with a large family of Kōura (freshwater crayfish. See: https://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/native-animals/invertebrates/crayfish-koura/).
We did a small amount of bush-bashing on the final stretch to get onto the main track on Girdlestone Saddle. Heading south, there were nice views into Mangahao Valley as we climbed up to the Dora Track junction. Te Matawai Hut is only about 10 minutes beyond the junction. We spent an enjoyable evening there chatting with three SoBo TA walkers.
Day 2 – Saturday 18 January – Te Matawai Hut to Carkeek Hut
We left Te Matawai Hut shortly after 8am and enjoyed the clear views as we steadily made our way to the Main Range. We left our TA companions from the previous night – they made their way towards Dracophyllum Hut while we climbed up into the cloud over Arete.
From the summit of Arete, we picked a line down to Arete Hut through tussock and Spaniard plants. This route was deceptively time consuming – we had missed a more fully formed track slightly north of the summit.
We had a short break at Arete Hut (which apparently four people had squeezed into the previous night) before continuing on.
I was enjoying the new terrain and the views – you could see down into rivers, across to Bannister (a highpoint on the Tararua Range in the distance) and ahead to the Waiohine Pinnacles and Tarn Ridge. As we climbed to Lancaster, we got a nice side profile of the latter two. We could also see Mitre and Girdlestone off to the east, and Crawford, Mitre and Kapakapanui (we think) to the far south. (NB these are all highpoints on the Tararua Range).
As we approached the summit of Lancaster, we were momentarily concerned that there was no clear way forward. However, leaning over the precipice, we could see an obvious and relatively safe route which we decided to follow.
We knew Carkeek Ridge went on for a deceptively long time, so we enjoyed the good weather on the tops. There was only a breath of wind and occasional cloud cover. The terrain was also varied – the track ascended to high points and then dropped and there were interesting features such as erosion shutes and slips to navigate.
We arrived at Carkeek Hut shortly after 4pm. Three other people were already there – former members of the club including Tararua legend, Andrew, who had bagged every spot height in Tararua Forest Park (and wrote about it here: https://tararualite.blogspot.com/). We spent an enjoyable evening chatting to them and taking in the character of the hut (complete with road sign and discarded helicopter rotor blades just outside the front door) before crawling into bed early. We knew the next day would be the biggest (and most remote and riskiest) day of the trip.
Day 3 – Sunday 19 January – Carkeek Hut to Jumbo Hut
We set off at 7.15am. Heading down to Park Forks involves some careful navigating to ensure you go down the correct spur to arrive at Park Forks as the bearings change about four times. There are permolat markings along the way, but we lost these a couple of times and had to turn around on one occasion. At any rate, we made it to Park Forks at about 9am – taking slightly longer than the 90 minutes we had estimated.
It was our first time visiting Park Forks – a place I view as the centre of the Tararua Ranges. We took some time to enjoy the isolation before starting to make our way down river to the intersection with Dorset Creek. This is marked as a gorge on the map, but for the most part we were able to travel alongside the stream by carefully climbing over boulders and being very conscious of our footwork.
We had put all our gear in dry bags to ensure we had the option of swimming / pack floating if required. A couple of the crossings were quite deep. The first crossing sticks in my mind because the water level was waist deep and there were slippery rocks underfoot. You could either try to shimmy forwards further (and probably submerge deeper) or take a small leap onto a big, slippery and slightly submerged rock and try to clamber over it. The water was unsurprisingly fresh, but I was a tad surprised that the river water level wasn’t a bit lower given that there hadn’t been any substantive rain for over a week.
At times this section of the area felt prehistoric – it was so untouched. It took us about 40 minutes to get to the Dorset Creek intersection (better than the one hour we had estimated). There was a key decision to be made here: Plan A – walk about 4km further down river to Jacs Biv and climb over the tops to Mc Gregor Biv, or Plan B – exit the river earlier and go directly up a relatively well-marked spur to Mc Gregor Biv for lunch.
We opted for Plan B, knowing that the wind was forecast to pick up on the tops that afternoon and that we didn’t want to navigate the tops in windy, dark conditions.
[Note from Mon: I don’t think Daniel has put quite enough emphasis on how jolly slippery the rocks in this section of the river are. One of my first steps resulted in a pratfall and a ¾ body emersion in the water. It also required more effort than usually involved in keeping upright in a river. The thought of another 3 hours of this special torture was a big factor in me deciding not to continue to Jacs via this route.]
We had been told it would be a steep scramble to get out of the creek. It was, but fortunately a big orange marker indicates the way. The track up the spur looked reasonably well travelled, but we took it slow as the heat of the day was picking up. Permolat markers are frequent enough to keep you going in the right direction.
At times we could see across to Dorset Ridge, and saw Dorset Ridge Hut clearly. The bush became quite thick as we climbed, especially at the bushline. Once we were out of the bush we found that we had overshot the side track down to McGregor Biv and needed to back track 100 m or so. We had a long stop at Mc Gregor Biv after arriving there at about 2pm.
By this point more cloud was rolling in, and when we left Mc Gregor Biv at about 3pm, Mc Gregor Peak was fully covered in cloud. While I was tempted to summit Mc Gregor Peak, we opted to give it a miss and come back on a nicer day.
We made our biggest navigation error at the top of Angle Knob (in the clouds) – unable to see a track in the right direction, we figured we would need to drop down (ironically in the direction of Jacs Biv) and then find a track to sidle around a spur. Cue about 30 minutes of very slow travel across terrible scrub (bush lawyer and Spaniard plants) and many discussions of “hmm, that looks like a bit of a track through there”.
Eventually we concluded there must be a much better route we could find, even in the clag, so we returned to the summit. Mon went off to have a look around while I took advantage of a couple of bars of reception on my cell phone to catch up with the world and let people know where we were. Turns out there had been a Cabinet reshuffle which impacted my work and I needed to make a couple of calls – people were quite surprised when I told them where I was calling from!
Fortunately, Mon found the right track, slightly hidden behind some tussock, and we were back on our way. We were relieved to finally be moving faster than a glacial pace. After one more (2-minute) detour (we didn’t take the right bearing from Point 1397), we made it onto the Jumbo Holdsworth Track. While Plan B.2 had been to stay the night at Powell Hut, we opted for the closer Jumbo Hut to get out of the wind and clag. We didn’t see anyone else on the track and thought the forecast might have put people off. But to our surprise, Jumbo Hut was still reasonably full – about 15 people.
Day 4 – Monday 20 January – Jumbo Hut to Mountain House Shelter
Once we were down in the valley the following morning, the lure of a snack stop overrode the joy of climbing ~400m up River Ridge Track to visit Pig Flat Hut. Instead, it was nice to take our boots off sooner, and relax at the road end until our lift arrived.
All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our adventure through the heart of the Tararuas, visiting some very remote and rarely visited locations, which made the walk a more interesting crossing than a return trip to Poads Road. It was also a good experience in estimating progress in different types of terrain and weather, and making sensible decisions when there were several routes available.
| Distance (km) | Moving time | Elapsed time | Ascent (metres) | Descent (metres) | |
| Day 1 – Poads Road to Te Matawai Hut | 18.95 | 6:49 | 8:07 | 849 | 235 |
| Day 2 – Te Matawai Hut to Carkeek Hut | 12.51 | 5:44 | 7:59 | 1,056 | 1,053 |
| Day 3 – Carkeek Hut to Jumbo Hut | 15.69 | 7:51 | 10:51 | 891 | 1,071 |
| Day 4 – Jumbo Hut to Holdsworth car park | 9.91 | 2:46 | 2:58 | 102 | 1,006 |
| Totals | 57.06 km | 23.10 m | 29.55 m | 2,898 m | 3,365 m |