tramping new zealand

I’d had a rest day and two nights in Palmy with two friends who had kindly let me stay while I worked out where to go. They were custodians of a few rat/stoat traplines and were well acquainted with the Ruahines, making what turned out to be excellent suggestions about where to go, what to see.

I left at 7 am to take a passenger to the start of the track. She was heading north to Cape Reinga to avoid some of the standard Te Araroa route. I was somewhat less ambitious.

I managed to make room in the somewhat smelly car by that time, and we were off.

For the second time in a few weeks, I headed up over the Manawatu Gorge. We stopped for a coffee in Dannevirke and still arrived at the bridge carpark before 9 am.

She was well organised and strode off. I was not, despite my rest day yesterday, it took me quite a while to organise my food and washed gear.

Hours went by. I’d taken three steps and managed to cross the bridge when she arrived back. The river we needed to go up was too high.

Man, she’d been gone for over two hours and now intended to hitch around to another entry point that didn’t have a river as the track.

Okay.

Should point out that there’s no track to Happy Daze Hut until the last 10 minutes, when you finally climb out of the river, having done 30-odd crossings on the way up, with the water admittedly moving at a fast clip due to the steepness.

Once a steep river gets over knee height, it can be awkward to cross, and it was certainly that. But I was 300 mm taller than her and had more weight in my pack, so it was a sensible decision on her part.

Happy Daze Hut is slated for demolition and a new Backcountry Trust hut built in the same location, as the current one is 68 years old and certainly needs it. Maybe. It wasn’t as derelict as I’ve been led to believe.

I’d mucked around so long that it was 4 pm by the time I left Happy Daze on my way to Makaretu Hut. The first 15 minutes were on a track, then it was back into half the river. My friend had been going to go up the other northern branch. The valley was now narrower, and many more crossings were needed.

I climbed above a gorge with trees perpendicular to the river, but it offered no easy route down for the second time that day. This time, I didn’t progress and popped back down to the river. One lonely male whio was spotted on the way upstream.

About a kilometre from the hut, my hiking shoe slipped sideways on a rock, and my left foot was bruised. Not good, but nothing seemed broken. I shuffled on with the rain now coming down heavily.

The Makaretu Hut track starts some distance up a tributary due to a washout, which I chanced on, but it didn’t seem to go close to the hut on the Topo map, so I bush bashed my way more directly.

Fairly wet when I arrived, so the shelter was appreciated.

It’s a great hut, a converted New Zealand Forest Service SF 70 from 1960, with two sleeping platforms. Great mattresses, and it didn’t take long before I was sliding into my sleeping bag to eat a steaming dinner.