What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

Text taken from the club newsletter.

WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOU STRONGER by TIM DUNNING with SARAH FISHER and SHAY BENDALL

It all started out pretty normal; hopping out of a van on the Desert Road at 10 p.m. with gale winds sand- papering our porcelain chops with wind-driven ice particles. The prevailing opinion “you’re sick in the mind”, not ours, but that of our would-be rescuers who stopped to find out what calamity had landed us in such a god- forsaken spot on a road that had opened only nine hours earlier. Hi ho, it’s off to Waihohonu Hut we go.

No such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing, right? How things change – a little over an hour later we were in $750,000 of copiously insulated hut marvelling at the electric lighting and enjoying the warmth thrown out by the previously lit fire – thanks Daniel from Auckland! You could have cracked nuts on my left cheek when we arrived, but it was shorts and t-shirt thereafter. Sarah and I took advantage of the toasty main room, with Shay dismissing us as soft and toughing it out in the bunkroom. It took a bit to chip the ice of him in the morning but he’s almost back to normal now.

Saturday was an absolute cracker, with the only cloud funnelled by the southerly between Mount Ruapehu and the Kaimanawas away from us as we headed off toward the saddle between Mounts Ruapehu and Ngaurahoe. The weather was specially arranged as it was also Sarah’s birthday! You generally don’t ask a lady so I won’t spill the beans; but suffice to say that I only have vague recollec- tions of being that young, dammit.

We popped into the historic 1904 Waihohonu Hut on the way to check out the ground-pumice insulated walls and separate mens/womens quarters. The fact that men’s quarters contained the fire with none in the women’s goes to show that chivalry has been dead for quite some time!

The snow got steadily deeper toward the saddle (at about 1300m in elevation) and the going got tough, with a breakable crust resulting in some amusing moments as we took turns flailing around trying to get out of waist- deep pits of powder snow. We got lucky later on as some folk who we saw way in the distance turned back due to the conditions, gifting us with well packed holes to step in. Just as well, as we had 23 km to travel that day.

Accompanied by what sounded like a re-enactment of the last eruptions on the distant Whakapapa ski-field as the operators managed avalanche risk, we plodded our

Setting off from Waihohonu Hut on a fine Saturday morning

The historic Waihohonu Hut way through in the increasingly hot sun to have lunch on top of Taranaki Falls. By now there was a steady stream of tourists attired in everything from crampons through to sneakers and duffel coats. I’m always torn between enjoy- ing the solitude and the knowledge that if a place is not visited, it’s perceived value can diminish, thus becoming a target for less sympathetic alternate uses.

I was wondering what we had gotten ourselves in for as we carefully avoided the multiple buried Jack Daniels RTD cans and opened the door at Whakapapaiti Hut to 50’s music and dancing. Yes, dancing. A rather well lubricated group had tramped in for the night to re-enact the same scene from previous years. Joy. Apart from a self- diagnosed conspiracy theorist, who proceeded to bend our ears on all “races” who have set up shop in New Zealand prior to the Maori, the other notable character was a pyromaniac who had an incredible ability to turn every

Happy birthday Sarah!

sentence into a discussion on how the fire was perform- ing, punctuated by jamming another log into the over-full glowing box in the middle of the room. Luckily there was a door to the bunkroom which shut out some of the heat, but not enough of the noise. I don’t want you to think it was all bad, one guy graciously shared a photo of him in the nude on top of a mountain, as is his ritual.

We gained altitude rapidly the next morning on our way toward the Turoa side of the mountain and unfor- tunately bumped into more heavy drifts. Heading south, we toughed it out for a couple of hours, creating more post-holes than a Taranaki farmer. No bonus compacted steps this time around. There was little or no ice apart from the breakable crust, but the depth of the snow was our downfall as we realised that our pace would not get us even to our early bail-out option at Horopito from Mang- aturuturu Hut in time for the scheduled pick-up. Thus, we back-tracked to the junction above Whakapapaiti Hut and headed cross-country to intersect the Whakapapa skifield mountain road to hook up with our transport at the lodge.

What goes on tour stays on tour, but I will say that there was not a single one of us who drove back that day who has not learned some kind of lesson, picked up some new nugget of knowledge or extended their ability in some way – and that is exactly what we get out there to do, become stronger in many different ways. Mission accom- plished.