Mt Ruapehu

Last weekend I went on a Wellington Tramping Club trip to Mt Ruapehu. As with my last tramping trip to Mt Taranaki, the aim was to climb to the top of the volcano, take a few photos, and then head off back to Wellington.

On Friday after work I traveled with my fellow trampers in the club bus up to the ski resort of Whakapapa (1600m), where we stayed the night at the club’s lodge.

The lodge was just great and deserves a special mention as, to someone who primarily stays in bush huts, it contained many wonders, such as flush toilets, electricity, heating and even showers.

The plan was to set off early the next day, in order to give us plenty of time to get up too the summit (2797m).

Unfortunately, Saturday morning dawned misty, wet and miserable, and as the upper half of the route to the summit is not marked it was decided to do a low level walk instead.

This was entirely the correct decision, as with a large group safety must always come first. It was all the same, a bit of a blow, particularly as the weather was forecast to improve later on in the day. It was doubly frustrating as under other circumstances I would have just gone for it anyway; if things looked to dicey further up then I would just have turned back. One of the things I have always disliked about clubs or large groups is that while one has the undoubted benefit of the company and camaraderie of like minded individuals, the shear numbers can constrain what can be achieved (i.e. I cant get my own way!).

It turned out that our day walk to Whakapapaiti Hut was very pleasant indeed, particularly once the rain had stopped, and the sun came out.

The weather on Sunday was warm and sunny making for perfect tramping weather. Unfortunately the group could only do a half-day walk, as we had to rendezvous with some other club members in Wanganui later on in the day. The decision taken was to walk half way up the mountain to a place called the Pinnacle Ridge. I have been to this area before, so in a display of true group spirit and solidarity, decided to do my own thing.

I had had my eye on the very jagged ridge situated opposite the hut, so this is where I headed. This turned out to be a good move, as scrambling up the volcanic rock was great fun and also afforded some splendid views of the surrounding area. The weather up on the mountain was perfect, but looking down onto the lower-lying land revealed that a sea of cloud surrounded the area. After firing off a few photographs I walked back to the Whakapapa ski resort, had a latte, and read my book in the sun until the rest of the group tuned up from their tramp.

From what I was told the walk they did was pretty hard, so I was doubly glad that I didn’t go, as quite frankly I wasn’t really in the mood for it, even though I guess it must have made me look a bit of a miserable bugger.

Anway, hope you enjoy the pics.

Taken on the walk to Whakapapaiti Hut

Whakapapaiti Hut

This was taken towards the end of the walk on the way back to Whakapapa.

So was this one.

The jagged ridge.

Looking down from the ridge.

Looking over towards Mt Ngauruhoe.

The view from the club hut, with Mt Taranaki visible in the distance.

Mt Taranaki

As long as I have been in New Zealand I have wanted to climb the North Islands two highest peaks, Mt Taranaki and Mt Ruapehu. Up until recently it has been all talk and no action, so my New Year’s resolution was to have a crack at both of them.

We are now into autumn and before long the mountains will be covered in snow and out of bounds until next summer, so time was of the essence. The forecast for the coming weekend was good, and I had run out of excuses, so I decided it was time to give Mt Taranaki a try.

After much arm-twisting, and at rather short notice I managed to convince my friend Simon that he really did want to subject himself to the murderous slog needed to climb to the summit. Not wanting to suffer alone, Simon also roped in a couple of his friends, namely Bruce and Kevin.

The plan was to travel to the Dawson Falls (900m) road-end and from there walk up to Fanthams Peak where we planned to spend the night at Syme Hut (1966m), before climbing to the summit (2518m) the next day.

The weather on the 5hr drive up to Dawson Falls was glorious, with hardly a cloud in the sky all the up from Wellington, but was otherwise, uneventful enough.

We arrived at the road-end early afternoon and wasted no time setting off on what we thought was the track to the Syme Hut. Turns out we should have maybe taken a bit more time, as we had somehow got onto the wrong track, despite there being a dirty great sign pointing us in the right direction. We only wasted half an hour or so, but it was a rather inauspicious start.

Mt Taranaki taken from the Dawson Falls roadend

The proper track started off relatively gently, and for the first half hour or so passed through some really lovely bush; real Lord of the Rings stuff. From this point the vegetation started thinning out, and we eventually found ourselves out in the open above the bush line. The bush line in New Zealand is relatively low at around 1200m and I always find it fascinating to watch how rapidly the flora changes, when climbing up onto the tops.

This one was taken near the start of the walk

At this point the track became much steeper and we ascended up a long staircase before eventually arriving at the base of a steep scoria slope, which led up to Fanthams Peak, and our hut for the night. As well as being steep, the scoria was very loose, which made the going rather difficult. It really was a case of a case of two steps forward and one step back, and that was when I wasn’t actually falling over or dodging the, at times, rather sizeable rocks, that the person above had kindly dislodged. After an hour or so we reached the top of the slope and from here to the hut the going was much easier.

Syme Hut was a welcome sight and we immediately set up home there and got the obligatory brew up going. We shared the hut with just one other person; a young guy, who, like us intended to climb the summit the next day. He however didn’t hold out that much hope as he had heard from another tramper that the snow that had fallen on the summit a few days previously, had frozen and turned to sheet ice. This didn’t bode too well as we had no ice axe’s or crampons, but what the hell, we had come all this way, and were going to give it our best shot.

Syme Hut.

I took some nice pictures of the sunset, but didn’t linger to long as it soon got pretty cold. After that, all that remained was to cook up the evening meal (spaghetti and stew), have another brew up and go to bed.

Sunset at Kyme Hut.

We woke up to a lovely, still, clear day.

We set off relatively late in the morning in the hope that the snow higher up would have had a chance to soften up a bit. From the hut the ground drops away a little, before coming to the base of yet another steep scoria slope which leads right up to the summit. I was really dreading this bit, as it looked even steeper than the previous days scoria slope that I had found so difficult and tiring. It was indeed hard work, but overall was a lot easier going than I expected. As we climbed higher we started encountering patches of icy snow. These were easy to avoid at first, but gradually there was less scoria and more ice, until we reached a point around 100m below the summit, where the ice was pretty well continuous. It was at this point that we unanimously decided to call it quits - we had given it a real good go, but it wasn’t worth risking life and limb for.

The scoria slope leading up to the summit.

As we got closer to the top we encoutered more and more snow and ice.

This was just about as far as I got.

In any case, whilst we had been climbing up, the cloud had started to roll in and had covered the summit, so we wouldn’t have got a view anyway.

The cloud had really reduced the visibility, and as the upper part of the route is not marked, it was time to beat a hasty retreat back down the mountain.

This one was taken on the way back down again as we got down to the bush line.

By the time we got back to the roadend my legs ached like hell, but it was a small price to pay, for what turned out to be a very nice trip. Thanks also to Simon, Bruce and Kevin for being such good company.

Tench Fishing at Forest Lakes

These pictures were taken on my first coarse fishing trip of the summer at Forest Lakes in Otaki.

Forest Lakes are very pretty, and a lovely venue to fish, which is just as well as it involves a 160km round trip from Wellington. While there are plenty of good trout and sea fishing venues in the region there is very little worthwhile coarse fishing to be had.

The weather was warm and overcast, which gave me hope that I would be able to bag a few Tench, which were the main target of this trip. I was particularly keen to try out my new roach pole, which I purchased on my last trip to the UK 18 months ago.

The swim was very weedy, so the pole was the best choice of tool anyway as it would (hopefully) allow me to keep any Tench from diving to far into the weed. I was fishing in about 7” feet of water, used 4.6lb main, 3.2lb bottom and a size 14 barbless hook.

I used sweetcorn as bait and as loose feed, as well as breadcrumb as groundbait, so pretty simple really.

To be honest I would have been happy with one Tench, but in 4hrs fishing caught 11 Tench averaging around 3lb each and a solitary Rudd. I would normally put the fish straight back, but used the keepnet for the first few, so I could take some pictures.

One of the joys of fishing is the unexpected. I had fairly low expectations on this trip and was hoping for one or two fish at best and certainly didn’t expect to “bag up”.

The swim.

A Tench.

Xmas Trip 08

Neena and I went to the Tongariro National Park for our annual Xmas break. This area is home Mt Ruapehu NZ’s largest volcano, along with the smaller Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe volcano’s. Check out the link [http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/national-parks/tongariro/features/] for more details.

The original aim of this trip was to walk the Tongariro Northern circuit, a 4-5 day walk around Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe. After this we planned to visit the Coromandel Peninsula for some fishing and lazing around on the beach.

For a variety of reasons the trip kept being scaled back, so that in the end we didn’t have time to do the whole circuit, with the compromise being to walk the Tongariro Crossing [http://www.tongarirocrossing.org.nz/] day walk, then chill out for a few days before heading back to Wellington.

I had walked the crossing before a few years ago, so knew how nice the scenery was. The trouble was, that at the time I had a real bad dose of food poisoning, and the trip turned out to be something of an ordeal, so I was keen to have another go at the walk under better circumstances. Neena was happy as she had not done the walk before, and to be honest, was rather relieved not to be walking the whole circuit.

We spent a leisurely day driving up to the NP stopping at various cafes (good) and “new age” type shops (not so good) en-route, before reaching our destination of National Park Village where we stayed for the next two nights at the YHA hostel there.

The first thing we did on arrival was to check the mountain weather forecast, which it turned out was for unsettled weather for the next 4 or 5 days. However it wasn’t due to start raining until the following evening, giving us a nice little window of opportunity. The next day as promised, the sun was shining, so we jumped on the 7am bus to the start of the walk at Mangatapopo Hut.

For the first hour or so the track winds its way gently uphill, before commencing steeply up the first of two sizeable climbs. The first climb was a bit of a surprise as it had been substantially rerouted and upgraded since I last walked it, with the track being redirected over an old lava flow rather than zigzagging up a very steep face. This is a big improvement and seems to have got rid of the “traffic jams” I encountered the last time I was there. The Tongariro Crossing is very popular, particularly with tourists, and there can be several hundred people walking the route at any one time, which for me took a bit of getting used to; on most of the tramps I do, you rarely see anyone else, so it is a bit of a culture shock.

I had a nice rest at this point admiring the scenery, but mostly waiting for Neena to catch up (she doesn’t tramp as much as me, so struggles a bit on the steeper sections). If we had a bit more time then a climb to the top of Mt Ngauruhoe would have been on the cards. I am told that getting to the top entails a gut busting grunt up a steep scree slope, but which is worth it for the view from the top and for the apparently exhilarating run/slide back down again.

The next part of the walk across South Crater was nice and easy with some great views of Mt Tongariro. After this there was another climb up to the summit of Red Crater, which marked the highest point of the walk at 1886 metres.

After another wait to admire the scenery, we dropped down steeply to the Emerald Lakes where we stopped for a well-deserved lunch break. Neena was especially comforted that it was all, or mostly all, down hill from here.

In more ways than one as it turned out. There is plenty of interest on the second half of the crossing, but for me the really spectacular stuff was behind us. I was just finishing of a rather nice cheese scone when the clouds, which had steadily been building up, decided enough was enough, and it started to rain. Not too heavily at first, but it steadily got worse accompanied by high winds.

The rain arrived rather earlier than forecast. No surprises there then, as in my experience the NZ weather forecasters are no better than their compatriots in the UK.

At this point I packed the camera out of harms way, gritted my teeth, and got on with the long slog out to the Ketetahi road end. There are therefore no pictures beyond this point, so you will have to use your imagination. Failing that you can either jump on a plane and check it out for yourself, or take the budget option, and click on the link above.

The last 3 hours of the walk were in heavy rain, and involved a long descent down to the bush line and then another long walk through a forest to the roadend and salvation.

Mt Ruapehu taken from the hostel at National Park Village

Mt Ngauruhoe taken on the road up to Whakapapa

This was taken near the start of the walk showing the gentle climb up from Mangatepopo Hut.

At the top of the first climb looking back towards Mangatapopo Hut.


Yours truly at the Red Crater with Mt Tongariro in the background

Near the South Crater

Mt Ngauruhoe

Looking down on the Emerald Lakes

The Emerald Lakes

The next day the weather was also pretty wet so we decided we had had enough of NationalPark Village and hit the road.

The Whanganui National Park [http://www.doc.govt.nz/parks-and-recreation/national-parks/whanganui/] is fairly near by, and as neither of us had been there before, we decided to check it out. The National Park is centred around the Whanganui River, which serves as the main route through the park, as there are relatively few walking tracks. Many people hire canoes to travel along the river, staying overnight at the various campsites along the way. The nearest access point to the river was the settlement of Pipriki, so that was where we headed.

Pipiriki didn’t look that far on the map, but turned out to be 55km away along a narrow, winding and bumpy gravel road, with some fairly serious drops thrown in for good measure. The settlement when we finally arrived was tiny, with nothing really open, so we had to content ourselves with just checking out the river. I must admit that the area looked really nice, though the river, with all the rain that had fallen was looking a bit high, and I don’t think we would have fancied our chances in a canoe, even if there was anywhere open to hire one. Still, I have seen enough to stick a Whanganui canoeing trip on the list of things to do.

The bridges spans the Whanganui River at Pipiriki and pretty much marks the end of the road.

The Whanganui River

After this we headed back to civilisation an then onto the town of Ohakune, where we stayed for a couple of nights.

Ohakune is very quite indeed at this time of the year, and only comes alive in the winter when it serves as a base for people skiing the Turoa ski resort. It is a nice little town though, especially as there were so few people staying there, which actually gave it a chilled out relaxed feel. Most kiwi’s head to the coast over Xmas with the more popular spots being horribly overcrowded, which is hardly my kind of thing these days.

We were originally going to camp at Ohakune, but the weather was still pretty grim. and our gear still hadn’t dried from doing the crossing, consequently we decided to stay at the Matai Hostel. The hostel was clean, tidy and dry, so served its purpose, though was utterly devoid of character.

One pleasant surprise was that the town had a cinema, and happened to be showing Children of the Silk Road, a film that Neena particularly wanted to see. Not a bad movie as turned out. The theatre was pretty decrepit, and certainly wins a price for the most smelly cinema I have ever been in, the projector also broke down several times, though to be honest, the above probably added to the overall experience.

To my amazement, the next day dawned, hot and sunny, so we jumped into the car and headed up to the nearby ski resort of Whakapapa.

Though the ski season had long finished, the resort operates a couple of chair lifts throughout the summer for walkers and tourists. After much cajoling I managed to convince Neena (who not been on a chair lift before) that she wanted to go up on the chair lifts. This turned out to be the nicest day of the holiday, as the scenery up on the mountain was just splendid, and we had a great time mucking around on the large patches of snow up there. We could have hired a toboggan, but found that a piece of plastic makes a pretty effective alternative, and is a damned sight cheaper.

A rather nice waterfall taken from the top of the first chairlift.

This was taken at the top of the second chairlift.

We stayed another day in Ohakune before heading back to Wellington. It was a shorter Xmas break than I would have liked, but was great fun.

I have quite a number of tramping trips planned this summer, so watch this space…

Cone Hut Tramp

My friend Simon and I went tramping this weekend up into the local Tararua mountain range.

We started at the Waiohine Gorge road end with the idea being to climb up and over the hill into the Tauherenikau river valley and then to spend the night at either Cone Hut or Tutuwai Hut, before retracing our steps the next day.

The track started of in spectacular fashion as we had to cross a large swingbridge which spans the Waiohine Gorge. This particular bridge was constructed last year and is around 100m long and is situated 90m above the river. It is a testament to the bridges design and construction that it hardly swayed at all when we crossed, even though we had very high winds on the first day of the tramp. Crossing many swing bridges in high winds can be unnerving as they can tilt alarmingly, with the seeming intention of throwing you out and into the abyss.

Immediately after the bridge the track climbed steeply, before eventually levelling out at around the 700m mark. I don't get out and about as much as I used to, so my calf muscles in particular took a real pounding on this section. For the next hour or so the track the track levelled out and made for some very pleasant walking. It was around this time that the rain that had been falling lightly right from the start of the walk, started to get much heavier.

After a couple of hours we came to a junction in the track with one way climbing up to Cone (1080m) and the other way dropping down to Cone hut. On another day we would most likely have climbed up to Cone, but with the rain getting heavier and the prospect of winds well in excess of 100km/hr on the tops we decided it would be prudent to descend down to Cone hut.

After an hour or so we reached Cone Hut and decided to spend the night here rather than travel further down the valley to Tutuwai Hut. There were a number of reasons for this; two women we met at the roadend had said that a big party were staying at Tutuwai and as it was also getting late, we would have spent the last hour or so tramping in the dark. All in all it was a good decision, as Cone hut had a lot of character and we had the place to ourselves.

The stay at the hut was uneventful enough, although I didn't sleep that well, what with the noise of the rain (which fell all night) and the constant roar from the Tauherenikau river.

The next day was also wet, so it was a case of gritting ones teeth and getting on with it. By the time we got back to the roadend the rain had eased off. This a function of the mountains, in that the rainfall increases dramatically the further you go into them; we had around 150mm rain on this trip, yet just a few km's away it was completely dry

It would have been nice to have had a less "soggy" trip, but it was fun all the same.

At the start of the walk on the swingbridge.

Cone Hut.

Simon and I.

The Waiohine River.

Coldkiwi Rally 2008

My friend Neil and I traveled on our motorbikes to the Coldkiwi Rally.

This event has been held every year for the last 34 years near Waiuru in the central North Island. At this time of the year this is one of colder places one might wish to stay, particularly if you are camping; as we and another 2000 other masochistic bikers were.

The trip up goes through some great scenery, so was pleasant enough, even if it did rain for most of the way, though at least it was of the drizzly kind, rather than the torrential stuff we have had for most of the winter.

The rally site we stayed at wasn’t quite were we expected it to be. Somehow I had envisaged it being close to the main road. It turned out to be 5km down a gravel/mud track, which made for some interesting moments on my sportsbike, which is not really designed for this kind of terrain. If was worth it when we got there though as the site was in a lovely rural setting with views over to Mt Ruhapehu.

Events were in full swing when we got there, so we quickly pitched the tent and headed of to the fun. The fun included wheelie, burn out and hill climbing competitions. Needless to say we watched, rather than took part. The burnouts in particular were pretty spectacular, assuming you fancy blowing up (literally) a couple of hundred dollars worth of rear tire. Good to watch, but to take part you need to be very drunk, deranged or both.

In the evening a large bonfire was set alight, with a moped placed on top instead of a guy. Best place for a moped if you ask me. Later on there were some fireworks, followed by a rather good covers band and lots of beer.

We woke up in the morning to find the tent covered in a solid layer of ice, so in that respect the Coldkiwi certainly lived up to its reputation.

After a fry up it was back home to Wellington on the bikes.

All in all, a top weekend.

I took a few photo’s, which are posted below. My camera is not working properly at the moment, so my apologies for the standard of the pictures. I can heartily not recommend a Canon Digital Rebel.

We pitched the tent then headed off to check things out. Note the rather lovely SV1000S,

Me with the hill climb competition in the background.

The burn out competition.

A rather cold Neil. Note the frost and ice.

Mt Ruhapehu.

Lake Dive

These photos were taken on a tramp to Lake Dive Hut in the Taranaki National Park.

Mt Taranaki is a 2518m high dormant volcano situated near New Plymouth on the North Island. Other than the volcano this is one of the flatter areas in NZ. Consequently, Mt Taranaki is a very imposing and impressive sight and is visible from a long way away.

I had seen the mountain in the distance many times on my travels but never tramped in this area before, so when the Wellington Tramping Club arranged a trip up to Lake Dive I was first in the queue.

I was picked up from Wellington Station on Friday after work and joined eight other trampers for the five-hour drive to the road-end at Dawson Falls. The trip up itself was uneventful, with just a quick stop for some pretty dire Fish and Chips at Bulls. If only I had gone to the Kebab shop next door!

We stayed the night at a Lodge in Dawson Falls. It was raining lightly when we got there, but turned much colder overnight, the result being a very picturesque covering of snow in the morning.

We took the “low level” track to Lake Dive, which starts right near the lodge and basically sidles around the base of Mt Taranaki at around the 1000m mark. The time posted to Lake Dive was 3hrs, but it took the group 5hrs to get there. The snow while looking lovely also made things rather slippery, which certainly slowed us up, it was also very cold. Though the track overall stayed at roughly the same altitude, we were constantly either ascending or descending, often on ladders, into deep gullies; the track was rarely ever flat.

When we finally arrived at the hut, it was a real pleasure to find that it had it was equipped with a stove and a plentiful supply of coal. This was a real godsend as the temperature outside dropped well below freezing at night, and the hut would have otherwise have been unheated. To put this in perspective, the majority of DOC huts have no heating at all.

A very pleasant evening ensued at the hut, with some great food followed by 20 questions and charades. Games are not really my thing, but it was nice watching the other guys and girls enjoying themselves.

The next day we basically took the same route out back to Dawson Falls. There was some talk of taking the alternative “high level” track. In the end we decided against it as there was a lot more snow and ice further up, and though I’m sure we would have been OK, it could potentially have been hazardous without crampons.

All in all this was a very enjoyable trip and has certainly inspired me to walk up to the summit itself this summer.



There were a fair number of ladders and stairs on route.


This is Mt Taranaki with the sun setting behind it. Not the best picture I am afraid. This applies to most of the pictures I took on this trip as my camera was playing up. Nothing to do with an incompetent photographer - honest!

Yours truly outside Lake Dive Hut.

Lake Dive Hut.

Some of my fellow trampers on the top of Hasties Hill.