“Punters are but a myth of the imagination, or perhaps the memory of the trampers from a bygone era. An era which has since passed. The era of signing up for a trip meant going on a trip has since passed.
But the show, of course, will always go on.”
– Disillusioned trip leader Craig
It was a trip of contrasts: fresh snow, and a lovely refreshing swim in the Otaki River on the way out; brilliant views of Kapiti and the Tararua Main Range, and hours clagged in in Tararua mizzle; delicious tiramisu for dessert and canned survival muffins for lunch; quick progress up the tracks to Field, over Bridge Peak and on to Vossler, followed by an excruciatingly slow descent down an effectively unmarked spur; very happy punters and very disgruntled punters.
There were originally supposed to be two navigation trips leaving from Otaki Forks on the weekend of the 7th: one over Vossler and the other up to Waitewaewae. The two trips started off with 13 members between them. Nine withdrawals, three late sign-ups, and another two late withdrawals amongst the late signups left us with a total of 5 after merging the two trips together.
We started off with the usual Friday night pickup at the railway station in Wellington. After dinner at Waikanae we arrived at the Otaki Forks car park at about 7:20pm. Due to the chaos involved in sorting out the fickle punters trip leader Craig hadn’t quite figured out the gear designations, so just grabbed everything and we sorted it at pre-departure in Otaki. The rain immediately picked up as we all stood outside the van for 40 minutes faffing about and getting our gear and torches sorted and ready to go. The trip leader made wise suggestions regarding the merits of parallel faffing about vs. serial faffing about. Comments taken on board.
“This is faffing of the worst kind. Serial faffing cannot be tolerated. If you must faff, you must ensure that it is parallelised and concurrent faffing.”
– Disillusioned trip leader Craig
The trip up to Field was uneventful, although we did overtake a couple of other groups, including four girls training for the Duke of Edinburgh award who eventually arrived at the hut at 11:40pm (total time of 4:40!), well after we the rest of the hut were asleep.
The following morning there was a fairly respectable earthquake, with a short sharp jolt followed by 30 seconds or so of slow rocking motion. We were worried that it might have been Christchurch, in which case the earthquake was probably properly big and not much of the town would be left standing, or Wellington, which could also be problematic. Oh well, not much we could do about it except for spend the next two days guessing where and how big.
After more epic faffing we were out the door a shade after 8:30am, and after a stop in the snow for a muesli bar, and a minor navigational challenge in near-zero visibility at Bridge Peak, we arrived at Vossler at 12:00 for a big lunch and an argument about whether we were actually at Vossler. None of the morning’s events bode well for the navigation section that was to follow.
There were no worries finding the top of the spur we were seeking, with a large, strategically-placed cairn guiding the way, and we joked that the track was so well worn that we wouldn’t need to do any navigation at all, and would be at the hut, now only about 2.8km away, by 3:00-ish. This confidence soon vanished after it took us two hours bashing through leatherwood to drop 300m altitude for a mere 1km of progress towards our destination.
“Adopting the brace position while out with a group signals to the others that you are working and should be left to get on with it.”
— Lyle Brotherton, Collins Ultimate Navigation Manual.
Things got worse below the bushline, where we would see a glimmer of hope in an old track marker, only to find 50m of tree fall in all directions. Whilst we had the atmosphere of a track we were in fact bushwacking the entirety of the trip down the spur. We did quite well navigating by compass and never getting more than about 50m or so off target, but progress was excruciatingly slow, and it took us another four hours to drop 500m altitude over 1.5km.
We arrived at a river 400m from the hut with no obvious way to make progress. Another hour of bush wacking up, over, around, and down the spur and through two streams and we were at last on a lovely track glistening with beautiful orange markers for the final 100m to Penn Creek Hut. Total progress for the day was 12.7km in just over 11.5 hours and we were completely shattered.
After cleaning ourselves off trip leader Craig took care of the Tiramisu dessert while the rest of us prepared a late pasta dinner and washed up.
The following morning nobody was feeling particularly refreshed. The hut had old-school wire mattresses, which may have had something to do with it. (Make a mental note to relocate mattresses to the floor in future.) We were again out the door at about 8:30am for the return to Otaki Forks.
Many of the punters got a bit dirty on the trip out, with a very muddy track back up to the junction we had passed through approximately 24 hours earlier. We spent most of the ascent arguing over climb rates, but we ended up clocking just over 1000m altitude in about 2.5 hours of actually walking in the correct direction (more navigation issues), which works at about 400m/hour vertical at a fairly casual stroll. Obviously everything is a few times faster when you have guardian orange triangles to watch over you.
A quick snack at the junction and a debate on the state of the economy and the TPP and we were on our way back down, past Field Hut again, and back to the Otaki river for a practice river crossing, a gaiter clean and a swim.
The group had a craving for ice creams, and after a couple more failed navigation attempts and a bit of raw determination we found what must surely be Kapiti’s best ice cream shop on the corner of the main road at Paraparaumu Beach. A leisurely stroll on the beach, and we were back at the Railway Station drop off just after 6:00pm.
The trip got good reviews from all punters, but in hindsight it perhaps wasn’t really an “M” trip, and after hearing a few horror stories from trip leader Craig’s previous attempts at an “M” trip we decided to classify it with a new club grade: “Craig-M”.