2004-11-10 < Weekly activities > 2004-11-24
Wednesday November 17, 2004 - Tuesday November 24
Longer Trips
There were four weekend trips, both the tramping ones to the Ruahine Ranges. Vicki Wogan had 7 on her Easy trip up to Sunrise Hut. She rightly judged it was going to be crowded up there, so they did this as a day trip; returned to spend another night at Triplex hut; and visited Mt Bruce on the way back on Sunday.
Malcolm Cunningham's party of 3 got a good start by going in to Craig's Hut on Friday night, but the higher up Colenso Spur they got on Saturday, the windier it became and once they left the bush not only could they not go forward, they couldn't stand up. So they went down the spur again - all 3,000 feet plus - to spend Saturday night in Barlow Hut and came out down the Makaroro River the next day.
Four TTC members took part in a SAR exercise on the Maymorn ridge: one member helped at base and the other three were attached to different teams and went up different streams. All of them, to quote the Chief Guide, "got to mess around in rough country".
The Family trip of 36 under Nick Crang's guidance enjoyed themselves in a milder way, camping at Kaitoke Regional Park.
Day Trips
There were 13 on Bruce Popplewell's Wednesday trip to an impressive waterfall up a branch of the Akatarawa River West, two women plus what one of these unkindly described as a "clutch of old codgers". The leader didn't endear himself by taking off on wheels for the lengthy Karapoti road walk section, and has promised to supply a job lot of bikes another time. For the second month running this turned out to be a longer-than-usual E/M Wednesday trip, thanks partly to the leader choosing a ridge decorated with a generous supply of kiekie to reach the Pram road on the way back.
On Saturday Mike Arnold and one other went exploring up the Mikimiki. They went up the Mikimiki stream along the tramway to the first large bridge, then up a stream coming down from Blake, and then up on to 632 before reaching Blake. They had intended to go on to 975, but it was very windy so they found a route back down to a stream and out along another tramway.
Also on Saturday, Lindsay Cameron's party of 4 had a successful trip to Dobson's and down Marchant Stream spur; Lindsay says the bird life was "wonderful" - a pigeon flew out right at his feet on the track going back up the Puffer.
Then on Sunday Stuart Hudson led an international expedition - 2 Argentinians, 2 Canadians, and 7 Kiwis - up the south ridge of Kotumu in perfect weather. And Chris Horne and Barbara Mitcalfe had 5 on their refresher course visiting all five areas of native forest in the Botanical Gardens. Over seven hours, they found 90 of the 173 species on the list Chris provided. The real highlight of the trip was seeing a morepork sitting motionless on a fern frond - they were alerted to its presence by the racket some anxious blackbirds were making.
Cycling
Tim Kelly had six out cycling round Lake Wairarapa on Saturday. He says the wind wasn't too bad once you got away from the hills. And there were two on a tandem on Jenny Gates' Ohariu Valley - Makara circuit on a rather less windy Sunday.
Total
There were 78 members and 17 others out on Club trips during this week.