Brother number one has suggested picking up a Mountain film festival event in Masterton followed by some local fine dining - being a Saturday night this fits in perfectly with a gentle day trip or two to ease back in. Also a chance to test my new scrub pants.
The area in mind is a little peninsula of Tararua forest park in the east surrounded on three sides by farmland. There seems to be little to draw anyone there, but there are a number of random spot-heights - these promise to be navigationly challenging with the possibility of some hidden gems.
What: Spot-heighting daytrip
Where: North East of kaipororo (near Mt Bruce)
When: 18 August 2018
Who: Solo
Map:
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| Mt Bruce Wildlife Centre is off screen to the bottom right somewhere |
The Kaipororo road end is easy to get to, but there's little to indicate you're there. First left after the Mt Bruce Wildlife Centre then head to the end of the road. There's a small turn-around area just before the road either dives into the river or heads up through a single bar gate.
It has changed though. A large road has been cut through the river and the other side is churned up with piles of smashed logs and branches. The usual route to the trig (and the plane crash site) heads left - about 8.10am I head right, to climb rapidly (and muddily) up a logging trail cut in to massive ruts by log haulers.
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| It starts ... |
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| Logging carnage |
Although vegetation will quickly recolonize, the area is a typical forestry mess- it doesn't take much imagination to see how much sediment and tree debris will get into the waterways.
Towards the top of the spur the loggers have left piles of untrimmed logs across the trail. These are a bit tricky to climb through but soon I'm in uncut pines on the ridge; a little before 9am. The going gets easy again.
It's cool and trying to drizzle so the undergrowth is wet once I get out of the pines. There are signs of trails though and some old 4WD tracks in places, so progress is straightforward. At one point as I climb towards 724 I find a head torch on the ground - it still goes but looks like it has been there for a while. I pocket it as rubbish.
It looks like trails have come up many of the major spurs at some time, and from time to time there are venetian markers. In general, any trail tends to hang off to the east of the ridge with more scrub in the west.
When there are views, there's not much to see as it's cloudy with patches of rain. However, it's sufficient to keep a good idea of the local lie of the land. This area is bordered on three sides by farmland so any glimpse out gives a good positional fix.
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| From near 763 |
From 763 the ridge drops away and an area of scrub gives a view north down the stream I intend to cross a little later. The first business though is spot height 660. The map shows it hovering right on the edge of the forest park boundary and is probably outside, depending on your screen resolution. I've decided to count it in just in case, but it adds a big loop to the day.
660 turns out to be one of two knobs on the farm side of the boundary fence - wasted effort! However, there's a cute wee hut perched on the farmland at the edge of the park. It's tucked behind a knob and is pretty much invisible from all angles except from my ridge. There's no stock about so I follow the fence down for a nosy.
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Someone's hunting hideaway by the looks of it. At 11.30am I'm less than half way through the plan so I stick to the farmland to get down to the stream. Part way down the steepish spur a medium size black pig charges across my path and shows a surprising turn of speed across the open ground as it disappears towards the distant scrub.
Across the stream a farm track gives access onto my spur up. Cattle have trampled a trail well up into the bush so the going is again easy. A deer trots up the trail ahead before deciding I'm too close and melting off the side of the spur.
At the top there is again signs of an old trail - I follow north to pick up 695 then return towards 763. Before reaching the top and the trail from this morning, I take a bearing across the face of the 'peak' for a wee knob and a spur down into the headwaters of the Makotukutuku Stream. This is entertaining navigation with plenty of chance for error.
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| View to main range from wee knob WNW of 763 |
At the bottom (2.45pm) I'm not 100% sure which stream junction I've hit, but a bit of casting about and I'm comfortable to make the call when I think I've reached the bottom of the spur to 540.
This is not the only Makotukutuku stream in the Wairarapa. The other is on the south coast and is where the original for the replica wharepuni (sleeping house) at Te Papa Tongarewa was located (proper spelling: Mākōtukutuku). My best guess for the meaning of the name is white (or pale) tree fuchisia (kotukutuku). I can't say as I noticed much in the way of fuchsia, pale or otherwise.
The stream is well shaded in the bush so has that grey mossy look that signals the need for care (and sporadic log jams). Running shoes are not the best suited so I leave the stream bed as soon as possible. At 540 I angle north around the slope and drop towards the stream again.
The downside of this sort of navigation is that I don't know where I hit the stream, and it's really hard to judge progress. Stream travel is slow and it's difficult to judge the average bearing, and which side streams are big enough to be marked on the map. The map suggests some terraces near the bottom of the spur to 645 but these aren't really apparent - the side stream however is obvious and the line of the main stream indicative so, again, I'm pretty confident to head up for the final climb of the day.
About now the lack of fitness starts to show. There's animal trails and easy going under the canopy but around 645 there are some clearings with wind-thrown trees. These type of clearings are a little too common in this neck of the woods. Piles of beech trees form a deep tangle covered in scrub and bushlawyer with pitfalls and rotten branches. In this country it pays to avoid heading towards the light when you're under the canopy as it probably signals another painful scramble.
The slope becomes flatter so I start drifting left to take advantage of the more open travel under the canopy and avoid hitting the clearing on the ridge too early. From previous experience parts of it are scrubby with deep tussock and can be swampy.
Eventually (5.25pm) I emerge into the light to see snow on the main range and the long gradual uphill. It's one of those interminable trudges with the trig stubbornly always just beyond the horizon. The snow is definitely apparent in the air temperature.
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| A bit chilly on the main range |
As scrub goes, it's not so bad really. If you pick your line you can avoid the worst - it's just that it takes a bit of energy to keep pushing through the high tussock.
Around 6pm at the trig it's getting dim and it's well dark in the bush. Some thoughtful soul has put reflective spots on the track markers so it's easy to follow down with the headtorch picking out three markers ahead. After a wee knob the track emerges onto an overgrown logging track. This takes me down through a tunnel of trees before hitting the open skies where the loggers have been. The track is carved up but drops quickly and easily to the morass at the bottom.
The one downside of this trip is that you start and finish with wet legs - the river is just above knee height as I wade across to the car to quickly stash wet gear and head out. Just under an hour late for dinner.
Post script
It's not a spectacular part of the range but a good spot to practice navigation. The scrub wasn't as bad as expected and there was plenty of relatively easy travel under regen forest. Old markers indicate that people have wandered all over the place, and with the surrounding farm land I suspect there is quite a bit of hunting (two deer, one pig and one goat noted for the day).My Moa scrub trousers performed well - a shell with a microfiber lining, they stayed warm when wet and weren't to restrictive. I ended up with way less holes in my legs than usual. They weren't sold as scrub pants and at $100 (sale) are slightly expensive as they will get wrecked fairly quickly. The upside was that being black nobody noticed them in the restaurant despite still shedding water from the last river crossing.
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