Jen and Scott's Tramping Trial

This last weekend, Jen and I had our first tramping experience at Kaimai Mamaku Forest Park.

This map shows roughly where we went, color coded by day.


View Jen and Scott's Tramping Trial in a larger map

I want to get three things out of the way before describing our weekend:

1. "Tramping" is the Kiwi term for "Backpacking".
2. Yes, we are going tramping again.
   
3. Yes, we are insane.
   

Good, now that we have that taken care of, onto the stories.

Jen did most of the planning, which was good, as the planning had to take place when I was busy working the evenings and weekends before Christmas due to complications at work. She found an outdoor equipment store that both employed people competent in their field and rented out equipment. Those are both important as we did not really know what we needed and could not afford to buy two full sets of tramping gear outright. It turns out that tramping is one of those hobbies on which one can spend a near infinite amount of money (which is deeply odd, to my mind, as the whole point of tramping is to "get away from it all").

Friday morning rolled around and we did some last minute packing, picked up the rental car and the rental gear (from different places, obviously) and got on the road not a whole lot later than planned. We had a lovely drive through some of the rolling fields of the North Island, despite some initial traffic due to a huge concert taking place less than a mile from our house. After a bit of a delay due to a navigational error on my part, we made it to the car park at the trail head.

We tied on our boots, strapped on our bags, locked the car, and headed off into the sheep pasture. It seems a bit odd to me, too, to have huge national parks that do not have public road access, but it is apparently a fairly common arrangement (we found the same thing in the Otaika Valley). So we trudged through several fields, with our packs beginning to weigh heavily on our minds and backs. My pack, while heavy, was not giving me too much trouble, as we had the person who rented it to us help me adjust it so that it was properly sitting with most of the weight on my hips instead of shoulders. Jen, however, had her own pack from her Africa trip, and so did not have any professional help in adjusting things. She was loosing feeling in her legs and her shoulders were being squeezed by the bag.

Now I know some of you are smirking right now, thinking to yourselves "It's just a backpack, how hard could it be to adjust?" Well, the answer is: quite hard, thank you. Jen's bag has approximately 47,291 straps, some of which you can clip into other straps and some of which just have a length adjuster. After futzing with things for a couple of minutes and nearly killing her twice, we got it to the point that she could survive until we reached the hut at which we were planning on staying the night.

Three hours of moderately difficult hiking later (made more difficult by our being unaccustomed to the full packs), we made it to Dalys Clearing Hut, which was actually much nicer than I thought it was going to be. It has bunks for approximately 16 split between two rooms, a small common room/kitchen and a potable water supply. It also had some other guests for the evening: Robby, Jo, and an indeterminate number of children (our best estimate is 5±1.3).

Jen and I shed our packs and boots as quickly as possible, profusely thanking whoever first recommended that we bring sandals or flip-flops to wear around camp instead of our boots. Dinner commenced, then, at a picnic table in the grass in front of the hut. It turned out to be dinner time for some of the local insect life as well, as both of our feet got munched on by bugs (Jen now sports thirteen angry red bites on her feet and I have forty-nine). After a bit of perhaps unwise stubbornness to "not let the bugs win", we finished dinner and our card game and headed to the hut to settle in a bit.

We spent the evening chatting with Robby and Jo. They are locals who apparently go tramping with some or all of their kids just about every weekend. We traded outdoor adventure war stories and they complained about Aucklanders (we were given a pass, since we are also foreigners), who apparently have a reputation throughout the rest of New Zealand as being rude and conceited.

Robby, being an avid hunter of pigs, goats, and possums, had some particularly amusing stories of Aucklanders' reactions to seeing his hunting riffle. Apparently people who do not grow up in a hunting culture get a little freaked out about that sort of thing. Who knew?

After a couple hours of highly entertaining conversation, we headed to bed, as Saturday was going to be our long day.

We got up a little after dawn and were sitting on the porch eating our breakfast of freeze dried muesli and yogurt (which was quite good - lots of dried fruit), when we were surprised to see three dogs trot happily into the clearing and start sniffing around. They were obviously not strays, as they looked quite well cared for and each had a thick leather collar about 5 inches wide protecting their necks. They were followed in short order by their people, who were out for a little Saturday morning pig hunt. They did not stay long, though, and shortly headed down the trail, following their canine companions.

We were not far behind, as we were planning on hiking approximately 7-8 hours that day. There were going to be a couple of river crossings that we would have to do, a waterfall to see, and some old kauri trees (old as in centuries-old old) to ogle. We were on the trail by 7:30 and made pretty good progress for the first hour or so, until we got to the first river crossing.

Here, we ran into several problems. The first of which was that, due to a partially fallen and obscured trail marker, we had trouble figuring out where the trail went on the other side of the river. I walked up the rocky river bank for a while, to see if I could find the trail on the other side.

That is where we ran into the second problem: the first of many emergency altitude adjustments. You see, even though I am normally fairly spry when it comes to hopping across rocks, the 35 lbs I had on my back had a substantial effect on my center of gravity and I was not quite used to the additional weight. One unexpectedly loose stone later and I was ponderously falling down.

I now have a fair idea what a tree might feel like as it falls to the forest floor: the toppling of me was not particularly fast, but it had a certain air if inevitability to it. Fortunately, I was spared the trauma of landing on the rocks, as I fell into a bush with very sharp, thorn-like leaves (pictured), which left my forearms a mess of irritated spots. I also received a nice abrasion on the inside my right forearm from one of the rocks. Additionally, I learned a very important tramping survival skill: after one falls, it is best to just unbuckle ones pack rather than try to stand up wearing it. I felt rather like a large, confused turtle, trapped on my back like that. Fortunately, I and my gear were relatively unharmed, my epidermis notwithstanding, and dry, as I was several meters away from the water when I lost my balance.

We finally found the trail on the other side of the river and we started the actual river crossing. As first attempts at river crossings go, I think ours went fairly well. I stayed mostly dry and Jen only got wet up to her knees after slipping on a slimy rock. However, we lost a good deal of time: what should have taken five to ten minutes at most took us the better part of 45 minutes. However, we were not too concerned about the time, and pressed on, up a very steep slope to the kauri grove, where we ate a quick lunch after marveling at the size of the kauri specimens. The pictures we took sadly do not give them justice, since we could not get one of us next to a tree for size comparison. Each was easily 20 feet in diameter.

While we were eating, Robby, Jo, and company arrived, on a day hike just up to see the trees. They asked us if we were still planning to do the circuit that we had described to them yesterday and gave us somewhat skeptical looks when we replied in the affirmative. However, being good Kiwis they did not try to dissuade us.

After lunch we strapped our packs back on and headed down the trail, thinking we were still fairly on schedule when we got to the sign. There were not many signs in the park. Mainly there were small signs at each trail junction indicating what was in which direction and about how long it would take to get there. The sign that we came across indicated that Aninui Falls (where we were headed first that day) was 3.5 hours distant.

This came as a bit of surprise to us, as that entire leg of the days hike was only supposed to take about 4 hours and we were already 3 hours into the journey.

After a few moments of alternating blind panic (there was no other shelter closer than the one we planned to get to that evening) and blind rage (at the ones responsible for the poor information available to us about how long various parts of the trail took to traverse), we struck out again, with a renewed urgency and a deep desire to not spend the night in the bush.

What followed was four hours of hard travel. We each experienced several more emergency altitude adjustments, as fatigue set in and we tried to keep up the pace. Neither of us were seriously injured, but Jen got a pretty good 2-inch gash on her shin from a log and I got a matching bump on my shin from a rock (Jen says the technical term for "bump" is "hematoma"). Fortunately for Jen, we had a first aid kit and we were able to patch her up without much drama. Additionally, there were four or five places where the trail was completely occluded by dead falls. Each of these cost us 10-15 minutes as we had to try to climb through the dense bush around the dead fall and find the trail again on the other side.

We finally made it to the turn off to see the falls, and after a quick bite and drink, ditched our bags and headed down the trail, determined to see what we came to see. After a quick and not too dramatic hike, we came to a sign with dire warnings about slippery rocks, sudden gusts of wind, and the 106 meter drop from the top of the falls to the rocky valley floor. After some careful climbing around, we were slightly frustrated at our inability to see much of the falls. Jen decided go out onto a rock that jutted out over the cliff edge right next to the water to see if that provided a better view.

It turns out that it did:

This picture is pointed straight down. The bit of green stuff you see in the lower left corner are full-sized trees.

After snapping some pictures, we headed back to the main trail to collect our packs and begin what we had been told would be the hardest part of the trail: we would be descending into a gorge. This is where we learned that reading a topographical map that says "The vertical interval between the contours is 20 metres" is quite different than actually descending 160 meters over about 800 meters (that is about 525 feet, or about 50 stories, over a half mile) while wearing full packs after already hiking for 8 hours.

The next 4 hours were a little rough. Jen and I were both in a fair amount of pain from various acute injuries and the general wear-and-tear of the day's labors. We were also trying to hurry, as we were losing daylight and had not a lot of confidence in how long the journey would actually take.

Now, had we not made it to Waitawheta (pronounced wah-TA-feh-tuh) hut before dusk (which we did), we would have had a cold, wet night, but we would have been fine. Each of us had a good sleeping bag rated for far colder temperatures than would occur, we had the means for making fire and hot food, a water filter to refill our exhausted water bottles, extra clothes for warmth, and an emergency blanket and rope with which to make a shelter (hence the 35 lbs. packs).

That being said, however, does not mean that we were not elated to see the Waitawheta hut, with smoke coming out of its chimney and other trampers' muddy gear sitting on the porch. We were welcomed by an extremely friendly and talkative 7 year old, who wanted to know everything-that-we-had-done-and-everything-that-we-were-going-to-do-and-were-we-staying-for-the-night-and-he-went-swimming-today-with-his-uncles-and-did-you-know-that-there-are-deer-here-sometimes. Despite our exhaustion, pain, and frustration, we could not help but smile at the pure joy of a child enjoying himself out in nature, whose only care in the world was making sure that everyone else was having as great a time as he was.

After a quick rinse off outside (we had accumulated some mud during our 12 hour ordeal), I started dinner: freeze dried beef stew with noodles. I am proud to say that not only did I manage to complete the complex instructions of: 1) boil water, 2) pour water into pouch, 3) let sit for 10 minutes, without burning myself, but I also did not set the hut on fire. Again, we were quite surprised at how good the food was. Of course, at that point a handful of mud and leaves probably would have tasted good if it was hot and we got to eat it sitting down without our packs.

Jen was felling a little worse for the wear, so she went to bed straight after dinner, but I stayed up a bit. The rest of the trampers were playing cards by candlelight. I chatted for a while with the ranger who was staying at the hut for a couple of weeks to oversee some trail maintenance. He has been working at Kaimai Mamaku for 33 years and personally cut many of the trails that in the park (including the ones that we had been on that day). His response when I told him where we had gone was fairly typical of all the Kiwis we talked to: "Well, that's a bit of a walk".

When we got up Sunday morning, we discovered yet another rookie mistake that we made when planning the trip: no bacon. We had a camp stove with which to cook our hot meal for Saturday night, but we neglected to take into account how astonishingly good bacon smells in the morning when one is exhausted, beaten up, and looking forward to another hard day on the trails.

After our very sad muesli and yogurt breakfast, we packed up and helped clean the hut before gearing up to head out. That was when we discovered another rookie mistake (this one more serious than our choice of breakfast food): instead of bringing our boots inside to dry next to the wood stove, we left them outside (they were quite muddy and we did not want to track the mud inside). That meant that, not only were my amazing-water-proof-to-the-ankle boots still wet, but they had standing water in them. Ugh. Nothing ruins the simple pleasure of warm, dry, clean socks like having to put on presoaked boots.

Sunday's hike only only took us about 4 hours, all together. It mainly kept to an abandoned tramline that used to be used for logging, so there were no ridiculously steep grades, as there had been on Saturday. There were several river crossings, but by this point we pretty much had the hang of them and managed to navigate them much more quickly than our first. We made it back to the car without much further incident.

Oh, but we did see this neat bug with stick-like camouflage while we were eating lunch:


All in all, it was a great trip and an excellent learning experience for us. We are already planning our next outing.

Happy Trails!