Winter Wading

Text taken from the club newsletter.

WINTER WADING

North Ohau Hut by AIMEE PATERSON photos TONY VAN HORIK

The Ohau River can be accessed from Poads Road end on the western side of the Tararua Forest Park. You reach the road end by turning off SH1 just before Levin, and following SH57, before taking a right turn onto Tararua Road, and then another right turn onto Gladstone Road. Poads Road dips down off the main road on the right hand side and requires driving over a very suspect looking bridge (I recommend folding in your wing mirrors!) Tere are usually some chooks pecking around on the gravel at the carpark to welcome you. When we arrived they tried climbing into the van with us!

Te track begins with a 20 minute wander over farmland, which can be quite muddy in winter time, or afer the farmer’s cows have been over it. Tony S kindly investigated the very large rock in the middle of the field for us, reading out the messages on the two attached plaques. One was dedicated to some hunting buddies and the other was courtesy of the Levin Waiopehu Tramping Club.

Ten it is a muddy entry into the bush. We farewelled Rene’s group at the first junction to Waiopehu Hut, while we carried on along the track beside the Ohau River. While the track “undulates” gently, it is on the whole, flat. A small clearing just before the second bridge offers the only view of the trip. We stopped here to admire the Ohau River (and perhaps to enjoy dry boots for a moment), before heading down to the bridge, crossing over, and hopping down the last bit of track before emerging onto a rocky bank by the river. We had a morning tea stop here.

Te section from entry into the river to the junction between the north and south branches took just over an hour at a reasonable pace. Tere was a bit of walking along stony banks or on grassy verges, some criss-crossing at the lowest point and in the leader’s case, some jumping into deeper, but very calm, pools.

Te junction is created by a ridge known as Deception Spur. Te club last visited it in 2014. Tere was a noticeable gap in the bush where those members must have forced an entry/exit. I made a mental note of it, as bush-bashing up behind North Ohau Hut, and coming down Deception Spur, was my back-up plan should the river rise overnight.

From the junction, our pace slowed immediately. It was much harder going along the North Branch (as it is along the South Branch), as the river was narrower, the banks were steeper, and the boulders bigger. Tony S kindly took over the path finding here, as he was much more proficient at finding reasonable routes over the boulders. At one or two points I had to be heffed up the rock by Tony VH, who was kindly bringing up the rear. Despite looking much shorter on the map than the previous leg, it took us over two hours to reach North Ohau Hut. Te hut is not on the river bank, however there were some very helpful orange triangles pointing the way through the bush and up the last few steps to the hut.

We arrived to an empty hut at about 4:30 pm. As professional trampers we quickly set about making the hut homely. Tony VH gathered firewood, while I set about making our ridiculously sugary dessert. Being next to a river, I thought I would try out the cheeky chocolate mousse recipe, as I could put the billy in the river to set the mousse. However, once I had whisked it up, it already looked chocolate mousse-y, and I decided I couldn’t be bothered clambering all the way down to the river, so I just let it sit on the deck. While the recipe calls for mini marshmallows, Tony VH had brought marshmallow chocolate eggs as a belated celebration of Easter, so we cut those up and put them in, ensuring that we would all have diabetes afer the trip.

Vegetarian Pad Tai was for dinner. On reflection, it was a ridiculous recipe for the time of year – requiring all sorts of out of season garnishes. However, the more ridiculously impractical the recipe, the better I like it. Afer dinner and ingesting the sickly cheeky chocolate mousse, we sat down to play cards. Only none of us could remember the rules of a single game. We started playing what we thought was Presidents and Assholes, however it didn’t seem to be working, so we added a rule here and there, got rid of a rule there, until finally someone won the game, and another got out. Tat lef three of us playing, and much to my amusement, there were some ‘dud’ cards that kept circulating around the group, as the first player played them to get rid of them, the next player played a trump card, and the third had to pick them up. Tis went on for quite some time before Tony S pointed out that we were going around in circles. For some reason I found this highly entertaining, and couldn’t take the card games seriously for the rest of the night. We then moved on to a stunted version of Last Card that suffered equally from lack of rules. Eventually we gave up and snuggled down into our sleeping bags, listening to the rush of the river and for any rain on the roof that might make our return difficult.

As it turned out, there was 1-2 mm of rain overnight, but that had no effect on the river levels whatsoever, and when we retraced our steps the following day, I thought it looked lower! Te return journey was via the same route and equally as wet (at least for the leader who took the opportunity to splash into every deep pool she could). By the time we got back to the junction of North and South Ohau Byron commented that I must have hypothermia as my lips were blue. My lips ofen turn blue but it doesn’t mean I have hypothermia. I was also conscious that Byron had been remarking the previous day how badly he wanted to see someone get hypothermia, so I thought he might have just been bullying me into it! We stopped for lunch at the point where we entered the river the previous day, and it was an uneventful plod out.

Poor Rene’s trip took longer than expected as they battled through the hills and mud up on the Gable End Ridge, so we had a good amount of time in the van to hypothesize about what we would do in a real emergency where the other group did not return. Sensible suggestions of putting boots back on and going to meet them were batted away in favour of more appealing suggestions like staying in the van and moaning about how long it was taking. Eventually Rene’s group did emerge, weary but safe, and we confessed that had they actually got lost we wouldn’t have come looking for them!

Another wet, sugary and successful tramp completed.