Another adventure with Andrew

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Another adventure with Andrew

They left the Baton Ford, where this adventure began, at 70am. 10am is not a normal sta time for Andrew, but he had been concerned with complex logistical movements. The involved the Medium party and multiple trips to and from Flora Saddle in search of h pack, which the Mediums had surreptitiously removed from the trailer in hope t sabotaging the Fit trip, and a special trip to Motueka for refuelling. Most of th was while Jo, Eric, John T and John R slept; but Andrew did not sleep. On I trips with Andrew, sleep is not a priority, especially for the leade

Jo and Andrew, Baton Saddle (John Rhodes)

o they went up the Baton track in clearing drizzle to Flanagans Hut. John R said, when I was here thirty years ago there was a rumpty old hut, hoping to impress the others. But they were young, with no concept of time-spans of such magnitude.

They went on through fields of fine blue spaniards to Baton Saddle, and down to the Leslie through stinging nettles and wasps, which made the spaniards and stinging nettles seem friendly in comparison. It got dark before they reached the valley, but nobody complained. They said to themselves, this is an Andrew trip, and we are supposed to use every bit of daylight and then some, and when they got to Leslie clearing they said thank you Andrew for letting us walk down among the wasps' nests in the dark.

Easter 2OO1

John Rhodt

Sleep is what you do at work after you get bac

Next morning as the last wisps of valley cloud wer dispersing they walked in sunshine down past Karamea Ben to where Silvermine Creek joins the Karamea. On the ma Silvermine Creek looks twisty and gorgy, and Andrew said, could be a bit tight at first. But Silvermine Creekwas eas not at all what one expects on an Andrew trip.

The weather was now very definitely fine, and Andre said, we should go on the tops straight away. We shoul leave the creek halfi,r,'ay between the words Silvermine an Creek, said Andrew. I have selected the spur starting i that point because it has bush all the way and it will giv us good travel onto the tops. The map shows a flat plac up there where we can camp and a stream where we ca qet water.

Tramping and Mountaineering 2001 /20C

Spuned on by love for Andrew, this leader who offered both a flat place and water all at once, they set off up the spur, which the map said would be easy travel. Everyone knows that all bush in Kahurangi National Park is open beech forest. However, on this particular part of this particular spur were few beech trees. Instead there grew cedars and ratas and celery pine and dracophyllums with thin hard trunks like steel bars, growing very close together. John went in front saying, this is just an anomalous zone at the bottom of the spur before the easy beech forest begins, follow me. Follow John, said Andrew, thinking how good it was to have somebody else in front. Andrew was carrying the tent fly, which was reinforced with fifteen kilograms of robust nylon tape to withstand nuclear attack, asteroid impact and other probable hazards of a Fit Tongue and Meat trip.

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These of his )pe of of this Cn Fit ?ader.

back.

Itwas about half-past-three, which gave them nice time to get to the flat place with the water and have a cup of tea (if they were John R.) before they put up their asteroid impact shelter and cooked dinner and went to bed and looked forward to a stunning day on the tops tomorrow.

However, the cedars and ratas and celery pines and dracophyllums went on and on. Indeed, they saw only two or three mature beech trees and half a dozen seedlings to remind them of what all the other hundreds of snurs in

...Halry would have rated this spur on his ten point scale of Poxy Hell-holes, and given it fifteen.

Kahurangi NationalPark are like. And so they wriggled and swore and crawled and cursed and got hung up and complained and John had a bit ripped off the new pack he had just bought in 1985 because people said his other one was old-fashioned.

If Harry Smith had been there, Harry would have rated this spur on his ten point scale of Poxy Hell-holes, and given it fifteen. John thought, Harry was wise to retire from trampingwhen he did.

As well as the close-growing cedars and ratas and celery pines and dracophyllums, there were bluffu bits to clamber up or crawl around. After a while even Andrew, who was in front again and who everyone thought was entirely used to this sort of thing, was heard to say, this is ridiculous. That made those who heard him feel\etter.

I were a Bend re map

By now, a night standing up in the scrub with no water had come to seem a very good option.

said, it s easy,

In the last of the daylight they came to leatherwood with open patches where they could walk upright for two or three metres. The open patches got bigger, and then they were clambering over bare granite rocks with a knob ahead and beyond it the place on the map with flat ground and water. Andrew went ahead to find this place, while the others were shung out on the ridge behind in various stages of exhaustion like Shackleton's men after the crossing of South Georgia. Jo got stuck and called out to Andrew, who had not waited. Then she got annoyed with Andrew,

,ndrew ;hould ne and ting at illgive t place ve can

Tramping and Mountaineering 2001 /2002 in the way married people do, and shouted why didn't you wait, but Andrew was far ahead, checking out the flat place, which was no good for camping and had hardly any water. When he came back he told Jo he was using the last of the daylight to find out that the campsite was no good, and she should be grateful. Andrew's retinas have adapted through years of nocturnal tramping so that he can see bad campsites, or even no campsites at all, in total darkness.

Andrew then led them back to a flat place among the granite boulders and they put up the fly and built a rock wall because it was windy from the west with advancing cloud. They used the water they had canied from Silvermine Creek because Andrew said there are puddles we can use in the morning and anyway this is a Fit trip'so we do not really need to drink untilwe get back to Wellington. And Jo made custard and they ate it with fruitcake and snuggled up under the nuclear attack shelter and the wind dropped and they were satisfied with their day.

In the morning cloud surrounded them. A last set of bluffs barred the way to the tops. Going up, John R dislodged averv large boulder, which just missed John T and brushed Jo's leg as she jumped out of the way. Jo said, that was not a good thing to do. After that she went in front of John R when they were going up hills and behind him when they were going down.

At the top of the scrubby gully was blue sky. They climbed up into it, and then below them stretched a sea of cloud filling all the upper Karamea and its tributaries and making them feelthey should be in the Alpine Calendar or at least on the cover of the FMC Bulletin. And they had easy walking in sunshine over a tussock tableland which rose gently to Garibaldi Ridge, whence they looked down on another sea of cloud over the lower Karamea.

They liked itvery much. The next bit of Garibaldi Ridge was a spiky mountain, but Andrew said it will probably be all right; and to show how confident he was he went behind, taking photos of his trampers silhouetted against the sun as they climbed. Then they walked along the rest of the ridge, looking over the cliff on the south side and down to the sea of white cloud and across to Mounts Arthur and Kendall and Patriarch and Owen and talking aboutwhy they came to places like this. Andrew said he came because of the challenge, and because of walking in the darkwhen itwas dark, and seeing the scenery when it wasn't dark, and (in a moment of weakness) because of the company. The others appreciated this last bit, and they said they came to follow Andrew, and everyone was happy.

Eric had beenhere before and knew the way down to Karamea Bend; so it was now beginning to seem as if they might get out alive, possibly even before John R's gingernuts ran out. John had left a kilogram of lunch food and scroggin

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John Thomson, morning on Garibaldi Ridge (John Rhodes)

on his kitchen bench in Greytown. This made his pack lighter so he could keep up nicely, especially when Jo and Andrew and Eric and John T gave him their pita bread and sprouts and tomato and cheese and biscuits and Easter eggs. John R thought, I am developing my skills in lighhveight tramping.

They got to Sandy Peak and took more photographs and then had lunch at the edge of the bush. Eric led them down to Karamea Bend on a spur with open beech forest, using John T to call out the height from his altimeter because John R's one had come off his wrist in the scrub the night before. I shall tell Harry he can have my altimeter if he likes, said John R. I shall even tell him the exact grid square in which he can find it. Harry will be grateful to me for that.

They camped again at Leslie Clearing, and put the tent fly up before dark. Andrew cooked the dinner on John's stove. This stove was unofficial. Andrew had sent John an email saying I have a good working relationship with my MSR, there is no need for you to bring a stove. However, John knew that without his own stove he would have to depend on Andrew for brews and John did not like this idea. So John had brought his stove and had used it surreptitiously at lunch times, hoping Andrew would not notice. But now, Andrew's MSR would not work properly, and Andrew had to use John's stove. John took quiet satisfaction from this. However, he did not say, wasn't it a good thing I brought my stove. One does not say things of that kind to a leader like Andrew.

When they got to Baton Saddle next day they were above the cloud again and they could look right across to the Garibaldi Ridge where they had been yesterday, an< looked ever so far away unless you got in a cloud boat a rowed there. Itwas only morningteatime, because Andre' alarm had gone off at 5.30am. Andrew and the two Joh climbed to the ridge, which goes out to the east, way abo the slow winding Baton Valley with its tedious track. Jo T strode in front like a man determined. The ridge h rocks and pinnacles and gendarmes and towers, and they scrambled to the top of any of these they would s six more ahead, and always John T was out in fro clambering and striding and swinging his Leki pole. This what Fits are supposed to do, thought John R; they a supposed to run along the sky in the sunshine like this wh ordinary trampers hip over logs down in shady valleys. I good to be a Fit with Andrew and John T.

All they needed now was a soundtrack of stirring mu by Beethoven or Mozart, or Tennyson poetry about intret feats, to make them feel truly invincible, like real Fits.

Then John R noticed that on the uphill bits his le would not work as well as before, and he hailed John who was far ahead, saying, what about lunch; and Johr scarcely paused to look back because he was enjoying hims so, and shouted, it's only eleven thirty. But John R calle we've been going since a quarter to seven, and John replied, OK, we'll stop on this next pinnacle, and John thought yes, he could probably get that far.

Andrew finished eating before John R's billy boiled, b Andrew had discovered in himself a vein of patience ar kindness, so he waited while John R ate and drank. Thr Andrew looked at his watch and said we'll have to get in overdrive. This worried John R because he thouqht thev

Tramping and Mountaineering 2001 /20

Garibaldi Ridge (John Rhodes)

been going quite fast anyway, and he wasn't sure he had any more reserves of speed. So he opened his honey jar and stirred a big spoon of honey into his tea. That's how John R kept up with Andrew and John T for the rest of that magnificent day.

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While they were eating they had looked ahead at the biggest pinnacle of all which was coming up soon. John R said, I hope we sidle that on the south, because it's clearly too fierce to climb, and the slope on the north side which we can see from here is near vertical. When they got there they found the other side was even steeper. Andrew found a way past the base of the pinnacle on the north side, and they followed him hanging onto tussocks and spaniards, which can seem quite friendly when there's nothing else.

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Then they climbed another rocky bump which was clearly the last, until they got on top and saw still more rocky bumps, but nothing worse than what they had already done, and the feeling of invincibility started to come again. Andrew was in overdrive, and John R was glad that Andrew had the tent fly (which was built to withstand nuclear attack and asteroid impact) because John was having enough trouble keeping up as it was.

Atlastthey reached the very lastcraggy pinnaclybitwhere a smooth ridge hrrned off to take them down to the Baton. John wanted another rest, so they stopped and John had his second to last gingernut and pointed his camera back in the general direction they had come from in the hope of recording the blur of scenery they'd been through.

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| /2002

Tramping and Mountaineering 2001 /2002

The ridge was broad and open and you could walk along it in a Tararua-ish sort of way without falling off, so John went in front allthe way to the trees. Then they hunied down on a track through open beech forest saying wouldn't it be nice if our spur up to Garibaldi Ridge had been like this, but knowing in their hearts that if it had been, they wouldn't have nearly such good scratches to impress the Mediums with. Andrew looked at his watch and John T looked at his altimeter, and John R thought about his altimeter which he didn't have any more, and they did little mental calculations while they rushed along and figured that if they were where they thought they were, then they might just possibly be at the Baton ford by the 4.30pm deadline.

The track turned left off the ridge and plunged down, and before you could say Harry Smith they were on the valley floor with twenty-five minutes to go, even with time to wash off some sweat in the stream.

When they got to the ford Jo and Eric were waiting and the van and the car were still there and the Mediums were sitting in the last of the sun. Andrew and John T and John R were mightily pleased with themselves, but they walked past the Mediums without showing any emotion, and changed into their clean clothes. Then one or two Mediums came up and asked if they had had a good time.

They said, well yes Andrew kept us reasonably occupied.

Andrew McLellan (leader), Jo McKenzie, John Thomson, Eric Blumhardt. John Rhodes.