By Ben Clendon

 

If for some bizarre reason you woke up one day and decided you desperately needed to have a one on one wrestle with mother nature, and more importantly you were not afraid to lose I've got just the place for you...

 

To start your mad rush at mother nature, you'll first need to locate a few obviously dimwitted students gullible enough to be lead into the wilds of the Raukumara's, in this case the lucky punters included myself, Amelia (who was actually the instigator of this mad escapade), Kieran and Steve.  Next, you'll need to find yourself at the start of the Puketoetoe track with loads of food, a mountain radio a few other bits and bobs and most importantly one very, very, good pack liner...make that two. The track itself starts off climbing through pine forest onto a bush covered ridge, 4w4's obviously still use this road occasionally but eventually the track/road reaches such a state that the 4w4's can't carry on.  Because it takes such a long time to get to the start of the track, we didn't starting walking till after lunch up this road reaching our camp about 4:30pm.  Although this first day is spent walking along an old road, its actually not so bad, the road is just so bizarre you find yourself enjoying the walk and views etc.  The only real issue was a slip on the road that meant a 5-6m scramble over lose dirt, normally it wouldn't be a problem but considering there is a vertical drop below it was a tiny taste of what was to come.  We camped at grid ref, 150453 on top of the ridge.  Me and Amelia went down an old densly overgrown road leading from this spot into the Mangamate stream for about 15 minutes to get water but alas, another slip but much bigger had crashed down onto this road, I tried a couple of approaches to get across but the lose gravelly rock disappeared over a rather big bluff and my vertigo kicked in.  Amelia was pretty keen to give it a shot and I'm sure would have been fine, but instead at my urging we went back to camp and had a rather thirsty night camped on the ridge without water.  Lesson one.  Carry plenty of water with you on this first day.

 

This is probably as good a time as any to tell you what our main route info was.  It came in the form of the Lonely Planet Tramping in New Zealand guide 1998.  If you use this guide book information make sure you don't let any locals know you are, by the sounds of things more than a few parties have got themselves in the metaphorical poo using this guide and this route was removed from the next addition as an option.  Why they thought this route would be a good idea to include in the guide beats me, although their description of parts of the route as "forests of big trees" should give any reader a wary eye.  Regardless though, without having any other resource to use we decided to go with at least the general gist of the guide and see what happened.  It wasn't long before we realised that a lot of the description was actually completely wrong.  For example they describe an old pack track leading from grid reference 150458 angling south into the Mangamate, however, we couldn't find this old road and instead found the one mentioned above angling Northeast down into the Mangamate  from a point about 800 or so metres further south along the ridge.  Go figure.  We'll that's the last time I'll mention that guide, you might get some use from it, but again if used, don't tell anyone!!!

 

After our thirsty night on the ridge we got up and decided to try bashing straight down off the ridge from our camp.  This proved to be a reasonble route and after descending about 100m vertical we found the tributary to the Mangamate stream.  About 1 and a half hours and two sidles around waterfalls later we arrived in the Mangamate stream proper.  From here to the junction with the Mangakirikiri stream the travel took till lunch time and involved the typical bolder hopping, gorge swimming travel that any normal canyon might provide,  The only major obstacle was a log jam in a very tight section of gorge where sidling was not an option.  With the stream having pretty strong flow this log jam could have ended the trip before it began.  Fortunately for us one log jutted out from the main tumble of logs enabling each of us to climb down onto this log, shimmy out from the hazardous and turbulent white water created by the jam and then drop into the pool of water at the base of the jam and swim the last 10-15 metres down the remainder of the gorge.  In the opposite direction this log jam if still present would throw up a whole new set of issues we didn't have to worry about.  Although reasonably slow going travel down the Mangakirikiri stream was much easier and we arrived at the Motu river a few hours later. 

 

The Motu river itself was un-crossible, in fact it was rather daunting to look at, basically this huge mass of water rounds a corner at the junction of the Mangakirikiri and Motu and heads down into this gorge wall to wall with water.  We gave up trying to cross and stayed the night at the hut which is accessed from a track starting from the Mangakirikiri about 150m's back up from the river junction with the Motu.  Looking at the hut book that night which goes back to 1989, very few tramping groups have visited the hut, perhaps no more than a couple of dozen parties, instead most groups arrive by Kayak or raft.  Of those tramping parties it seemed that a large number were not able to cross the Motu and headed back out the same way we came in.  Although one group mentioned they were going to head up into the Rurupori stream where apparently there used to be an old hut instead of heading out via the Mangamate, I'm not sure how they fared.

 

The next day, with nothing better to do but sit and watch the mighty Motu flow past and slowly inch by inch decrease in volume, we decided on the ridiculous idea on building a raft.  Well after a day spent in feverish effort I reckon we would have all scored a big E in raft building 101, perhaps if you visit you may like to find our raft hidden in the bushes besides the Motu and finish the job...

 

Finally about 3:30pm me and Kieran had a crack at crossing the river and succeeded without to much trouble.  We crossed back, picked up Steve and Amelia and started a rather nervous (at least for me) 2 hours of travel down the Motu.  Walking down the first gorge was pretty nerve wracking, with a swift current up to our waists we more or less moonwalked down the middle of the river hoping that our so faithfully accurate Lonely Planet guide hadn't forgotten to mention a particular set of rapids or better yet a mighty waterfall that we would all plunge off.  Fortunately, the travel down this 7km stretch of river is pretty straight forward, although there is no way at the level of flow we travelled down would you be able to force your way upstream, it just isn't going to happen.  We ended up crossing the river 14 times and had our feet firmly planted on the river bed on only two of those crossings.  Nevertheless we did have plenty of room to manoeuvre and never felt unsafe although we were careful to cross well upstream (about a km) of the first major gorge at grid ref 263453 where you would be in very serious trouble indeed if you we're unlucky enough to head down there.  From our safe vantage point at the creek heading due east directly before this gorge the river looked like it was draining into some massive abyss.  

 

That night we found a good campsite at approx 257450 on the true right river bank and slept deeply knowing we had managed to cross the daunting Motu river, unfortunately for us our troubles had only just begun...

 

Wednesday saw us depart our camp besides the Motu and head over a small saddle into the Big Unkown stream.   A very straight forward crossing made easier by the disappointing discovery of a freshly cut DOC track leading from the saddle down into the Big Unkown, presumably they've now completed a track right down to the Motu as well.   We couldn't figure out why they've bothered, its not as if many people tramp through the area and the rivers are far more menacing than a nice wee bush bash over an easy saddle!  

 

The Big Unkown lived up to the first part of its name and was un-crossable.  We had lunch on the river bank and spent the afternoon watching the muddy stream slowly clear.   By about 3:30pm we successfully crossed and carried on for another few hundred meters downstream before the river entered a gorge that still had too much water roaring down it.   We spent the night on a miserable gravel patch and departed the first thing in the morning before the rain started.

 

With the drop in river level overnight travel down the gorge was easy and we reached the junction with the Te Kahika stream about an hour later.   I proceeded to cross the much bigger Te Kahika (perhap's not the smartest move in hindsight) and was joined by the rest of the group soon after.  The gorge up the Te Kahika although short was pumping with muddy water and proved to difficult for us to enter.  After several abortive attempts, only 60m's from our first crossing point, we finally gave up and set up the fly on a small gravel pan.   The well secured (or so we thought) fly promptly blew down and in the pouring rain we had to resort to a camp in the bush on a very narrow ledge with a crumbling rock wall on one side and the river undercutting our bank on the other.

 

The next four days were taken up with card playing, landslides (just across the river from us), visits by cliff climbing wild pigs and boredom.   After heavy rain and a  total of six days spent waiting for rivers to go down we found ourselves on day eight only two days walk into our four day tramp and weren't even able to move from our ledge.   That night we asked via Mt radio for a commercial helicopter to come pick us up and the following morning after the helicopter carried out a pretty stunning landing into our narrow gorge we were plucked from our miserable camp and for a mere $470 each were chauffeured direct to Tolaga Bay ending a rather tough nine days initiation into Raukumara tramping!

 

I don't have the maps in front of me but the rest of the trip was going to involve more rivers, wild bulls, several huts and the Oronui gorge, I suspect we had a bit more work cut out for us...