Groundhog Day at Packhorse Hut

GROUNDHOG DAY at Packhorse Hut by HARRY SMITH T here are certain trips that I seem doomed to repeat over and over again forever, caught up in an endless metaphysical timewarp like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, recycling forever through the same events, unable to break free, never able to actually complete the trip.

One such trip is Mount Gloriana in the Spencer Range at Lewis Pass. I have set out to climb this peak three times over the years and the trips have always been the same. We walk in on the first day and camp in an alpine basin above Ada Pass, intending to climb the peak the next day. But then the weather turns bad on us and we spend the next day lying in our tents in a blizzard instead, hoping that the weather will be better the following morning. The following morning the weather is of course still completely miserable, and in the afternoon we give up, put on our storm gear, crawl out of our tents, pack up, and retreat back down to Cannibal Gorge Hut for the night. On the last day we walk out to the Lewis Pass highway and go for a quick consolation soak in the Maruia Springs hotpools before heading for home.

It’s been a few years since our last trip to Gloriana and I am beginning to get a nostalgic yearning for our alpine basin and its blizzards. I swear I can hear the groundhogs howling mournfully in the distance – it must be about time the club scheduled another trip there… View over Lyttleton Harbour 2015 Then there is Mt Snowflake. Mt Snowflake is in the Seaward Kaikoura Range; it is one of the highest peaks in the range south of Mt Manakau and should be a straightforward climb if you get the right weather conditions, but of course this is a Groundhog Day story and we never do. Twice over the years Sharron Came and I have attempted to climb Snowflake via Snowflake Spur from the Kowhai River. Both times we have spent all day staggering exhaustedly uphill, to camp high on the spur in a cosy tussocky hollow just before the tussock runs out and the spur steepens and becomes more rocky and scrambly. Both times we have had excellent views out over the Mt Fyffe Range and the Kaikoura Peninsula to the east. Both times conditions have looked good for an ascent of the peak in the morning. Both times the north-westerly winds have got up overnight. Both times when we have attempted to continue up the ridge the next day we have found ourselves barely able to even stand on our feet, let alone make any upward progress. And both times we have accepted the groundhogs’ verdict and retreated back to our campsite, packed up, and headed out. I still want to climb Snowflake but I know what will happen if I ever try again. The groundhogs are at work - it’s completely predictable and predetermined.

Another trip has recently joined Mt Snowflake and Mt Gloriana in the Groundhog Day stakes and that trip is Mt Adams.

Mt Adams (2208 metres) is down on the West Coast, just south of Harihari. It is a high westerly outlier of the Southern Alps, affording great views in all directions, in- cluding out over the Adams Wilderness Area and the Garden of Eden ice plateau to the east. I distinctly remember seeing Mt Adams in the distance on a Christmas trip to the Garden of Eden many years ago. We came in up the Perth River from the West Coast and as we traversed over the top of the Great Unknown on the way to the western end of the Garden I saw a high snow-capped mountain off to the north-west with a long and very distinctive trenchlike glacier leading gently up to the summit. I remember thinking at the time it would be an interesting place to visit one day.

Many years later my chance appeared to have come. Over the last few years the club has included some more adventurous alpine trips on the schedule, one of which has been to try and climb Mt Adams in a weekend from Wellington. The idea is to fly to Christchurch on Friday night, drive like the clappers over to the West Coast, crash for the night in Arthurs Pass or Hokitika or Harihari, continue on down the Coast past Harihari to the roadend at the Little Man River early on Saturday morning, walk in up the river for several hours, locate a poorly marked and littleused track at the side of the valley, stagger up the nearvertical hillside for several more hours lugging vast quantities of water as none is to be found further up, emerge out onto a dry, tussocky mountain ridge, head up the ridge until it flattens out and it is possible to camp, drop packs and pitch the tents, carry on up the ridge to the top of the mountain, negotiate through the final rock outcrops and snowfields to the summit, look at the view for 5 or 10 minutes (weather permitting), pose for a summit photo, return to the tents, catch a few hours’ sleep, head back down the ridge to the bush-edge, drop back down the near-vertical track to the valley floor, walk out down the river to the roadend, get changed, load up the car, drive like the clappers back up the Coast and back over Arthurs Pass to Christchurch, find somewhere to stay for the night in Christchurch, catch a few more hours’ sleep, get up at some ungodly hour on Monday morning, race out to the airport, catch an early morning flight back to Wellington, and turn up at the office fresh and keen and eager for the start of the working week. Apparently there are some people who wouldn’t find this fun.

On our first attempt in April 2014 the weather turned miserable as we drove down the Coast early on Saturday morning. Sitting in a cramped, wet tent on some freezing, windswept mountain somehow didn’t seem very attractive to Sharron and me, so we desperately searched around for a Plan B. Welcome Flat on the Copland Track seemed like a good place to go to instead, and most of the others on the trip were easily persuaded, although I don’t think Mike Phethean, our leader, was very happy.

That evening I lay back in the hotpools at Welcome Flat looking up at the grey clouds overhead and thinking we had made a good call. But then the cloud magically evaporated and the stars came out. I had a great view up to Welcome Pass and the peaks on the Sierra Range and found myself rather guiltily wondering what the weather would be like on Mt Adams, a short distance further up the Coast. I argued to myself that as Mt Adams was further north than the Copland and the weather system had been travelling north it would still probably be pretty miserable up there, but I don’t think I really succeeded in convincing myself with my own logic. Next morning Mike didn’t seem very happy.

At the end of that weekend we drove back to Christchurch and the others all flew home early the next morning and raced back to work, but I had allowed myself a couple of extra days in Christchurch to fulfil a longstanding ambition to visit Packhorse Hut.

Packhorse Hut 2015, Mt Bradley in the background Packhorse Hut is a historic stone hut out on Banks Peninsula. It was built in the early years of the 20th century as part of a visionary scheme by Harry Ell, a prominent Christchurch civic leader, to create a tourist route from Christchurch out along the spine of the peninsula to Akaroa. A series of rest-houses was to be built for tired and weary travellers along the way. The grandest of them, an imposing mansion in the Cashmere Hills behind Christchurch, was christened The Sign of the Takahe. A more modest stone hut was built further out along the route on the far side of Lyttleton Harbour and became known as The Sign of the Packhorse. Unfortunately for Ell’s dream, the proposed roadway never reached that far, but almost a century later the solid stone hut is still there, right in the middle of an isolated saddle looking down upon the surrounding farmland. These days it is controlled by DOC who seem to have quietly dropped the “Sign of the Packhorse” name and just refer to it rather prosaically as Packhorse Hut. Clearly bureaucrats have no romantic souls.

For years I had heard about this hut and had been intrigued by it. Banks Peninsula seemed such an unlikely place to find a tramping hut, and a stone hut seemed even more unusual still. Add to that its unusual history and I knew I had to go there.

“For years I had heard about this hut and had been intrigued by it. Banks Peninsula seemed such an unlikely place to find a tramp- On Monday I got the bus out to Lyttleton and caught the ferry across to Diamond Harbour. My plan was to follow the Mt Herbert Walkway up to the crest of the peninsula and along to the hut. It was 1 o’clock and I was running late – I had just missed an earlier ferry – but I figured I could still make it to the hut before dark. For about the first hour the weather was ok, but then it clagged in. As I ascended the hillside a freezing southerly wind got up and it began raining. I stopped to put on my parka and thermal layers. Three hours after I set off I arrived at the Mt Herbert Shelter, a three-sided open structure perched on the ridgeline just along from Mt Herbert, the highest point on the peninsula. Here I debated whether to go on. A signpost said it was only an hour and a half around to Packhorse Hut, but I had been told the route was rough and overgrown and I only had a sketch-map. The weather was awful and in two hours it would be dark. Could I make it? I thought seriously about stopping at the shelter instead – I decided that if I huddled in my sleeping bag in the far corner I should survive the night ok, though it would clearly be freezing cold and miserable. But I really ing hut, and a stone hut seemed even more unusual still. Add to that its unusual history and I knew I had to go there.”

Mt Herbert Shelter , 2014 Packhorse Hut 2014 did want to visit the hut and it would be disappointing to give up now. The timing would be tight but I decided to go for it.

Leaving the shelter behind, the track sidled steeply around the hillside on the southern side of Mt Bradley through overgrown gorse, slippery grass, and slimy bush. Then it emerged out into the open, turned a corner, and began descending. I knew the hut was somewhere in a deep saddle far below me but I couldn’t see a thing – I could just sense a vast openness up ahead. The wind was blowing and the rain was falling and I was worrying about how long it was taking and how much daylight I had left. Then to make matters worse I lost the track. I suddenly realised I was no longer on the proper track but was just following the rough tracks of other people who must have gone wrong before me. I carried on a bit further around the steep hillside in the direction I thought I should be going and found myself floundering around in a steep gully in thick bracken fern. I was wet and miserable and beginning to shiver, the daylight was rapidly fading, and I remember thinking to myself that this would be a stupid and embarrassing place to die, here on Banks Peninsula, 10 or 15 kilometres from downtown Christchurch, in what was essentially rough farmland. I tried to think where the track could have gone. If it wasn’t here to the right it must have gone out to the left instead, even though that seemed like the completely wrong direction. I sidled out that way and was relieved to pick it up again at the end of a long zigzag across the hillside. I followed it through a tongue of bush and a long, muddy, right-hand sidle that seemed to go on forever. When I finally saw the hut looming out of the clag up ahead of me I was completely relieved. It was nearly 6 o’clock and I had maybe 15 minutes of twilight to spare.

I stepped inside and found I had the hut to myself. Clearly nobody else was stupid enough to go there on a Monday night in such miserable conditions. Even though the top of the saddle was only four or five hundred metres above sea level the southerly was howling up the valley to the south and it was freezing cold. Thankfully with a bit of effort I managed to get the fire going in the pot-belly stove and heat the place up a bit. I spent most of the evening lying reading in front of the open fire.

Next morning the wind and rain had died away but it was still cloudy and drizzly. I sat around the hut all morning hoping it would magically clear up but it never really did. I did get one or two brief clearances in which I managed to get a view of the hillside I had come down the day before, but then it clagged in again. After lunch I decided it was time to go. I set off along another rough track back around the northern side of Mt Bradley, but then the groundhogs must have decided it was timewarp time again and in a repetition of the previous day I lost the marker poles in an area of steep, open farmland. I sidled around, picked up another track, and dropped down into a scrubby valley which I followed out downstream. Suddenly I came across a bizarre and mysterious doorframe standing all alone in the valley floor, painted red and purple and looking quite incongruous in the middle of a grassy clearing, a bit like Dr Who’s Tardis or the Monolith from 2001 A Space Oddysey. Maybe it was a portal into another world where it would be nice and fine and sunny? After all, anything was possible in a Groundhog Day story! I stepped hopefully through the doorframe but alas, I found it was just as cold and wet on the other side!

The valley emerged out into a large reserve known as Orton Bradley Park which I followed down to the southern side of Lyttleton Harbour. Here I had a long and tedious roadwalk back around to Diamond Harbour, where I got the ferry back over View from Mt Bradley, 2015. Packhorse hut is visible in the saddle centre right Mysterious portal in the valley at Orton Bradley Park 2014 to Lyttleton and the bus back into town. I had achieved my goal of visiting Packhorse Hut but the trip had been a bit of a disappointment and I hadn’t had the stunning views I had hoped for.

Flash forward to October 2015 and I was signed up for another trip to Mt Adams. This time Sharron was the leader and Brendon said he was not interested in a “Plan B”. But I hadn’t realised when I signed up that the groundhogs had clearly got their teeth into this trip and would not let go. They were toying with us, waiting to pounce. On the Thursday before we were due to depart Sharron sent around an email cancelling the trip. Heavy rain and nor-west gales were forecast on the West Coast. All the others had booked refundable flights to Christchurch and were able to cancel them and get a refund, but I had taken a risk and gone for the cheap option and bought nonrefundable tickets. It seemed a pity to let the tickets go to waste. What should I do? I listened to the groundhogs calling in the distance and decided to do another trip to Packhorse Hut.

On Friday evening after flying to Christchurch I got the late-night ferry across to Diamond Harbour, where I bivvied out in the domain under a pine tree. The next morning I walked down the road to the start of the Mt Herbert Walkway. My plan was nearly thwarted when I came across a large and prominent notice saying the track was closed for lambing, but after flying all the way from Wellington I wasn’t going to let that stop me. According to the notice the walkway was due to reopen in a week’s time, so lambing was clearly nearly over and I figured I could stretch the date a bit and no harm would be done. I followed the track up the hillside, keeping an anxious eye out for any irate farmers with shotguns. I had glorious sunny weather, and three hours later, on the dot of midday, I reached the summit of Mt Herbert and stopped for lunch. I had stunning views back down to Lyttleton Harbour and the Port Hills behind. Out to the south I could see Lake Ellesmere and the edge of the Canterbury Plains stretching away into the distance, while beyond the Port Hills I could see the snow-capped mountains of Canterbury out to the west. As far as I could tell, it looked fine and sunny all the way across to the West Coast and Mt Adams...

From Mt Herbert, I followed the track westwards along past the Mt Herbert Shelter and around the flank of Mt Bradley, and when I turned the far corner of Mt Bradley I got the view I had missed out on the year before. Far below me was the saddle and sitting snuggly right in the Departing Packhorse Hut 2015 middle of it was Packhorse Hut. With good visibility I could see where I had gone wrong the previous year – the track zigzags down a steep, grassy hillside, and in the clagged-in conditions I must have overshot one of the corners. I dropped my pack and scrambled up through the scrubby rock outcrops to bag the summit of Mt Bradley before continuing on down to the hut.

The next morning it was still fine and sunny, but the forecast nor-westerly gale had arrived and was howling across the saddle. I had originally been thinking of taking the track down to Gebbie’s Pass and following the crest of the Port Hills all the way back into Christchurch, but the strong winds would have made that very unpleasant, so I decided to leave it for another occasion and head out the same way as the year before, around the north side of Mt Bradley, down through Orton Bradley Park, and back to Diamond Harbour.

This time I took a different route down through Orton Bradley Park, heading down through farmland on the Ferry departing from Diamond Harbour 2015 ridge to the west rather than dropping down into the valley and following it out. I wasn’t looking forward to the long road walk back around to Diamond Harbour, but just as I reached the road somebody stopped and offered me a lift. He turned out to be a tramper and we discussed trips we had done into the Olivines and the Pyke. I spent another night bivvied out under my pine tree in the Diamond Harbour domain but the nor-westerly gales were so strong that at one point I thought the tree was in danger of being blown over on top of me. Next day I caught the early morning ferry which bounced and crashed its way through the waves back into Lyttleton, and a couple of hours later I was out at the airport to catch my flight back home.

And so a cancelled trip to Mt Adams had turned into an excellent trip to Packhorse Hut. It turns out there is a surprisingly large network of public tracks and walkways on this part of Banks Peninsula, and Packhorse Hut provides a natural target for an overnight trip. It is a quite different experience from our usual bush tramping – in Wellington terms it would be roughly equivalent to finding a tramping hut in the hills of Belmont Regional Park. Apparently another public tramping hut has just been opened a few kilometres further along the spine of the peninsula to the east of Mt Herbert, allowing even more options for multi-day tramps in this area. The groundhogs are already calling me back and I look forward to my next trip there next year – when I sign up to go to Mt Adams yet again…