Snowcraft Fitness Training - Part 2

Text taken from the club newsletter.

SNOWCRAFT FITNESS TRAINING - PART 2

Jumbo - Holdsworth Circuit by AIMEE PATERSON

This not-as-long walk started in a very similar way to the previous long walk—alarm bleeping at an impossibly early hour. I woke up with an unsettled feeling in my stomach that it was Monday already and my weekend was over. But no—the weekend was still here and I had another adventure to go on!

I rolled out of bed and into an uber to get down to the Railway Station by 6 am. Learning from my mistake last time I had prepared my breakfast in a cup and kept a spoon handy. This meant I could eat at the Railway Station while we were sorting out who would go in which car. I shoved my very smelly, dirty pack into the back of Emily’s nice clean car and we were away.

Apart from driving through a herd of stampeding cows near the road end our journey was pleasant and uneventful. We arrived at the Holdsworth carpark and had boots on ready to go by 8.05 am. Illona asked us who would like to be in the slow group and everyone put up their hand. I note that only two of us (yours truly included) kept their word on this promise by setting a slow pace!

We started along the track with the sun beaming down on us and blue skies overhead. I had walked the track

Atiwhakatu Hut. Photo: Ross between the road end and Atiwhakatu Hut before and it is a very nice track. However at 8.45 am we came across our first obstacle—a broken bridge. We had to slide down into the creek and scramble back up again. Some more toddling along brought us to the slip at 9.15 am. The last time I had been on this track you could still sidle across the slip. It is now so big that there is a diversion down to the stream and back up to the track again. We arrived at Atiwhakatu Hut at 9.45 am, moments after a crowd of little ones and their heavily laden caregivers had left.

After a 20 minute break which included signing the log book and eating some snacks, Illona announced that the only way was up, so off we went again! Her words were uncomfortably prophetic. I had studied the Raingauge Spur Track on NZ Topo Maps the night before. On screen, the orange lines seemed sufficiently far apart for me not to panic. I know now that I must have been using the zoom function, and really there was a reason to panic! It is a slog. A big slog. The speedies in our group soon left us in their dust, while we plodded on resolutely behind. I casually floated the idea of a break at the 40 minute mark and Illona said that we could have one once we had been going for an hour. I cracked before

Holdsworth trig. Photo: Ross Making time to look up. Photo: Yen Fei then, and we had our break among some grasses slightly before the hour. I felt better after a sit down, and we managed to keep going until we popped out of the trees and arrived at Jumbo Hut at 11.40 am.

The view out over the foothills of the Tararuas from Jumbo Hut was pretty special. I have never seen the Tararuas like that—clean, green and bathed in sunshine. I am more accustomed to the underside of the Tararuas— twisty roots and sticky mud!

We had our lunch and then Stuart very wisely pulled out the sunscreen (which I did not bring, because of course there is never any sunshine in the Tararuas). It was pretty thick stuff, and worked a treat, although I may have looked a bit like a mime for the rest of the day. We had some lunch, put on a layer or two, and set off at 12.10 pm. This was my first experience walking on proper tops. It was a bit scary to see both sides of the ridge drop away so steeply next to your feet! But there was lots of rock, tussock, and even some more sticky mud to keep us from falling off the mountain. Something else I had not thought about was that tops are not flat—they go up and down, just like tracks do! So not all of our hills were behind us. There was a few more little ones before we got to Mount Holdsworth. Luckily Illona had some jelly beans which propelled us to the summit of Holdsworth by 2.35 pm. There I managed to take a shaky panorama, as well as get a photo with the rusty trig.

From there down to Powell Hut we encountered some small icy patches, where the sun does not reach on short winter days. I very kindly demonstrated to my fellow trampers the dangers of ice by pretending to fall and very gracefully saving myself at the last minute. After a quick descent we were at Powell Hut by 3.05 pm. We had caught up with the speedies, and had paced ourselves so well that we were able to leave with them!

Just like the tortoise and the hare.

From Powell Hut downwards there were lots of built stairs and the track was easy-going. I got busy complaining about the foibles of office jobs to poor Stuart and before I knew it, we were at the Mountain House Shelter for our last pit stop. Fun fact: the Mountain House Shelter was built by our club! Illona shared some more of her jelly beans and Stuart very gallantly ate all

Last chance snack stop at Mountain House. Photo: Aimee the black ones. By then it was 4 pm and the sun was starting to hide behind the hills.

For the last leg I fell in behind Marie, who set such a quick pace that we were out and back to the car park before head torches became necessary. Emily cracked open a very welcome bag of potato chips while we were changing boots and sweaty clothes. We had been walking for approximately 9½ hours, and I was very pleased to finally be able to sit down!