4-5 May 2019

Leader: Elisabeth Hynes

Four of us left Paraparaumu around 7.30am on a beautiful Saturday morning.

On the way to our first stop the Forge Café in Dannevirke we picked up John S in Palmerston North. After coffee and snacks the five of us eventually got to the Kashmir road end around 11am. Walking up to Longview Hut was the biggest uphill part of the weekend. Despite a member not feeling too well after having eaten a bread and butter pudding with cream in Dannevirke, we managed to get to Longview hut in about 2 hours. As it was quite windy on the ridge we dropped down to the hut for lunch.

Lucky for us the fog we experienced on our way up cleared and we had stunning views over the Ngamoko range and the plains down below on the walk along the ridge. After quite a few ups and downs we came to the Makaretu turn off about 4pm. It was quite a steep track down through bush to Makaretu hut, and finally we could spot the lovely orange hut through the trees. We got there around 5pm to discover that the hut was empty, and we had enough daylight left to get settled in and gather firewood. It didn’t take long and we had a cosy fire going. After dinner everyone helped with a trying to solve a tough crossword.

Sunday morning started off with a beautiful blue sky. We headed down the river for just over an hour before getting to the trail leading to Happy Daze hut. We heard some voices coming from the hut and were very surprised to see some cars parked outside the hut. Kate and I didn’t take long to find the only geocache of our trip!

The walk up the river from the Happy Daze turn off was very easy going and quite scenic. We all had a quick look at the very derelict Black Stag hut before having lunch at the river next to the cute well visited Awatere hut. We then left the river and steeply climb the ridge that lead us back to the car. Overall a very pleasant weekend!

Those on the trip were:

Elisabeth Hynes, Neville Grubner, Kate Livingston, June Shelton, John Sturgess