Three or four days to the Garibaldi Plateau (5th – 13th January 2008)
Richard Davies, Quentin Duthie, Rob Holmes, Benj Ainsworth, Hannah McGregor, Hutt Valley Tramping Club
Friday
We drove from Nelson and arrived very late in Little Wanganui. The big delay was the hour in Richmond Pak n’ Slave where we accidentally bought between us 5 identical dinners, equalling a weeks’ worth of pasta and dried peas. Mama mia!
Saturday
We camped overnight in some gravely grass at the Wangapeka road end and got greeted by the landowner in the morning. His pony-tail matched those of his skinny horses. When we told him we were going in for seven or eight days he scoffed and told us that it took most people three or four days.
The Wangapeka track is an old mining/logging/speculating track. It is now thick with grass and damp, but you can clearly see the wide bench that was laid down. We stepped off the track directly behind the first Wangapeka hut (Bell-Town Mananui). Fortunately, Quentin has some civic-minded friends, who, on their own tramp the same way, had snipped and marked a track over the low saddle to Bellbird stream.
Bellbird stream was where the helpful pink tape stopped and after lunch we started into thicker thickets. Still, it wasn’t too hard going until, dropping down an old slip on the other side of the second saddle, we began blundering into wasps nests. It is very hard, after coming out of a clutch of ferns with wasps crawling up your gaiters, to make yourself walk into more clutches. Also, the forest got older and more mossy. We were mostly feeling a bit thrashed by the time we arrived at Kakapo Hut, 12 hours after kick-off.
Sunday
Early the next morning we trudged a small way down river to a spur that looked promising on the map. It started okay, for about the first 300 metres, but the forest on the spur then turned into pick ‘n mix. Among the beech grew slippery, tangly things, like neinei, and a type of tree that grows in spindly clumps.
Higher up we started coming up against old boulder fields that were smothered in the tree that grows in spindly clumps. This was slow work. It paid to walk behind Benj, whose oversized pack was breaking large holes in the spindly clumps. It was good to finally emerge at a place called 24 Tarn Pass, which is a large granite bowl speckled with alpine lakes (around 24 of them in fact).
Unfortunately, as we were lunching the mists came in from the North so we did not get many views on our afternoon across the tops. We ran out of enthusiasm for walking along the Herbert Range about 4pm and set up camp in a little copse of trees. There were only old brown deer-watering-holes for camping and drinking water, but we didn’t worry about that too much because of the forecast…
Monday
Next morning, from the comforts of my sleeping bag I managed to eat my breakfast, pack my pack, brush my teeth, and put on my boots. At the very very very last minute I stuck my head out into the downpour. It was like a children’s drawing of rain with lots of big slashing lines.
We squelched along for three hours or so to a spot that we could see (from the map) was directly opposite Garibaldi plateau. To our excitement the cloud drifted a smidgen to show waterfalls flooding down the Southern faces of the plateau.
According to the trip plan, our next move was to go down into Coppermine Creek and up onto the plateau, but “this looks like a nice campsite right here,” said Quentin. At which point, lots of polite hinting at preferences and foot shuffling ensued. In the end we decided we should camp where we were. This took about an hour of foot shuffling.
In fact, because there was no decisiveness anywhere to be found, an interesting type of theatre unfolded over the following 36 hours. Taking turns, an emissary from the Green Tent (Richard and I), the Orange Tent (Benj and Rob), or the Microlight (Quentin), would go out into the rain, mostly in one layer of polypro - as smell deflects rain, and ask the other tents if they wanted to restart the trip. When the reply was “a couple more minutes” a new time for putting the question would be set. We did this about every three hours except at night.
Tuesday
The torrential rain came in bursts but the gaps between the bursts gradually got longer until the clearing on Tuesday night. We all went a bit stale in the tents. There may or may not have been 20 verses of a revised “Morning has broken”. That night on the mountain radio, along with a promising forecast, we also got the sombre news that someone had tried to swim the Karamea river (just across the map from us) and drowned. Miraculously, the other person who tried to swim it survived. The Hutt Valley Tramping Club comes into the story about here, as they had been having the same tent-time as us, across valley, pinioned to the plateau. We asked them for some hints on the best route up. We got some hints. Serves us right, really.
Wednesday
Next morning was misty, although the kind of misty that suggests bright sun not far above. Across valley all we could see was impassable ramparts, but to get there we had to do the smashiest crashiest bush-bashing we did all trip. It took four hours to decend 600 metres to the creek.
Coppermine Creek was true copper-coloured with gritty granity rocks - and in normal flow - as if no rain had ever happened. In beating sun, the rain delay seemed a strange smelling dream. Half an hour downstream we had to decide which spur to take, and so we took a bit of gamble based on what looked right on the map.
For some reason, the bush was much less bashy on this side. It took us a couple or hours to ascend 600 metres, at which point we broke out onto a gentle spur-top that had beautiful granite boulders scattered about. Is there any greater irony in tramping than twice as long to go down as up? We clambered along smooth boulders, which was all wonderful fun in the sunshine, and then came to the inevitable cliff. And then there was a nice easy way up through some trees that split the middle of the cliff, and it all seemed too easy, which it was.
Soon enough, we came over the top of the last crest and there was the plateau. There were clear lines of tomos running across it, so that it looked just like a hairy golden glacier. In trying to avoid camping too close to the Hutt Valleys we found a spot that turned out to be within flying distance of a deer-gut. Fortunately the flies went to bed promptly at nightfall, being 10pm.
Thursday
The next day began with a Mexican stand-off with the Hutt Valleys. We took our time taking down our tents and making breakfast. So did the Hutt Valleys. We went for prolonged water-collecting and toileting missions. So did the Hutt Valleys. We stood around and shuffled our feet. So did the Hutt Valleys.
Our foot-shuffling prowess eventually paid off, however, as the Hutt Valley’s set off first. We gave them a polite couple of minutes and then followed in their footsteps and breathed down their necks.
After a straightforward sidle along the side of the mud-stone mountain, which is like a flaky full-stop at the end of the plateau, there was a short vertical slope to climb. As the Hutt Valleys were ahead, they had already started to climb it when we arrived. We picked our way cautiously underneath them, but it was hard not to stop and stare at their curious route choice, for which we were rewarded with a couple of big bouncy rocks that were only dodged at the very last minute.
Then came the heroic sight of a man much-advanced in years, climbing like a polypropolene spider up a very steep piece of snowgrass. He said later that he had “used the daisies for hand holds”. The Hutt Valleys offered moral encouragement by stacking up below him like bowling pins. We went for the options involving dracophyllum and leatherwood. More painful, but it cures vertigo to stick some scrub into your ribs.
The rest of the spur was an absolute gem. Fantastic little deer trails wended along through the worst scrub, occasionally coming out onto spiny dragons’ backs of rock, with good vantages of Karamea Bend down below. Then we got into the first proper beech we had been in for ages. We had three hours where we did not have to thrash through one thicket. Even though there were wasps, they seemed kinder and gentler and only stung Richard.
At the foot of the spur we popped out directly at the Bend. The Karamea was doing a good impression of a big green river, but it was only knee deep at the ford, if a little pushy. Directly we crossed we jumped in for a swim, and then sprinted to the hut pursued by a strange and persistent black biting insect with which we were not familiar.
The Hutt Valleys arrived not long after, and even though they had surely earned the whole lot, shared some of the enormous block of cheese that they had stashed at the hut on the way in. Mmmmmm, yellow.
Friday and Saturday
The original trip plan involved going back off-track at this point, but we had scrapped that plan during the lost day camped in the rain, so the final day and a half were spent on track. We climbed the long wending way to the Tablelands, and camped with a long view over the Tasman Wilderness Area back towards the coast. Then on Saturday we bimbled to Flora carpark, along a gentle benched track that goes past the interesting rock bivvies. And the bus driver was early and waiting impatiently for us (as he also knew very well that it only takes most people three or four days). The end.