Kevin and Illona ready to go,
Sunday morning.
Normally I wouldn’t worry about getting muddy when sliding through a 30 centimetre entrance of a flapping tent fly at 1400 metres, but a moment of realisation hit when I began to piece together a continuum of past and likely future events which might prove a problem during the 5 overnight hours I’d have to get my gear clean and dry before checking into an international flight. Back to the beginning, though.
Dates: 21st – 24th October, 2011 (Labour weekend)
Location: Ruahine Forest Park, Masters Shelter off Mangleton Road.
People: Illona, Kevin, Amanda, Richard and me.
Huts visited: Aranga Hut (0 nights), Ruahine Corner Hut (0 nights), Ikawetea Forks Hut (1 night) (aka Ikawatea Forks Hut).
Route: From Mangleton Shelter up Golden Crown Ridge, around past Aranga Hut and 1406, 1407 and over Piopio to camp just below (next to tarns) on Saturday night. Then to 1503, north-west along ridge around 1370 to Ruahine Corner Hut. Across to 1234 trig over bluffs, north to 1206, then following taped trapping line north-east past 953 to Ikawetea Forks Hut for Sunday night. Straight up to Tauwharepokoru (1403) via marked track, then approximately following poled route past the road leading to No Mans Hut and south-west over Ohawai (1368) back to the top of Golden Crown Ridge. Then down to Masters Shelter.
[Photos]
[map:https://93a12629bf06.ngrok-free.app/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/20111025-ruahine-corner-ikawetea-forks.gpx%5D
What better way to spend the long weekend of the Rugby World Cup Final than isolated in the second best mountain range for tramping in the world? I certainly couldn’t think of a better way, and it was easy to wing my way back to New Zealand for a few days and head into the Ruahines! I stapled myself to a trampey club trip being organised by Illona, with some personal goals being to bag more DoC asset numbers, and to keep my tramping gear sparkly clean for getting back into Australia.
Over three days we’d loop around through the high point of Piopio (1437m), Ruahine Corner Hut, and Ikawetea Forks Hut, and back to where we began. The route follows around the circumference of some private Maori settlement land at the northern end of the range. It’s mostly conservation land, despite some being outside the official Ruahine Forest Park boundary. Although we saw no signs to indicate as such, we discovered later that we weren’t certain if the entire route remains on public land, although the Walking Access Mapping System suggests there’s a marked DoC route across the sliver of private land at the northern end. Best to check with DoC to be certain in future, though.
Ready to leave from Masters Shelter.
Richard and Amanda near the lower
part of the 800 metre climb up
Golden Crown Ridge.
We arrived at Masters Shelter, roughly west of Hastings, from about 11pm. There’s no drinkable water available at the shelter, only a stream that flows through the neighbouring farm, so we’d each obtained several litres of flavoured tap water from Carterton. A light drizzle arrived in the night, and when we left at 8am for the 800 metre climb up Golden Crown Ridge, the morning was providing a general greyness. It wasn’t too murky, though, to obscure the dampened scenes of the surrounding landscape with its reds and browns and greens of the dracophyllums and tussocks into which we were entering. I was relieved to discover that 10 months in the generally flat Melbourne hadn’t crippled me too much to reach the top. Until now I’d been mildly concerned that the only accessible up-hill I could find for preparation was an inconvenient fire escape stairwell. Not long after leaving, I realised I’d forgotten to search for my first asset number at Masters Shelter, a slightly demoralising beginning but at least I could nab that one on the way back.
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