Tramping: Te Matawai 8-10/07/2011

Wandering off to the hills with a decent storm warning. We know it means the huts are not full. And if the weather is real bad well then we sit there an get warm by the fire and drink a bit of Bowmore 12yo.

Friday 08/07/2011
It was a slow walk in for the Friday night over running into the Saturday.

1909 Left car at Poads Road end.
1924 At Waiopehu turnoff.
2019 At start of Gable End track.
2257 At gable End track junction
0006 At South Ohau turnoff.
0023 At Otaki River track turnoff.
0036 At Te Matawai hut.

And at the hut we got the fire going and had some beer and food, crashing at 0200'ish.

Saturday 09/07/2011
Another good sleep in, in what is becoming one of my favourite huts. We decided to head off down to the Otaki river for a look see. It is not a bad track down there. This is what it has at the bottom:

So we went down the river for a ways and as it got deeper and colder with the clouds dimming the light we headed back up. Further up past the track up to Te Matawai Carl spotted a cairn so we headed off up a ridge and found an old track not maintained. We saw that this would lead to Dracophyllum track South of Butcher Knob so made a decision and headed off up through some nice forest.

We eventually joined the marked track and got ourselves into thunder and lightening along with very strong winds and hail. An interesting afternoons walk. A nice view along the ridge:

We had a break in the clag and got a bit of a view into the Park river at one time:

And on we went cranking up the pace as the forces where gathering and the darkness was coming. We got back to Te Matawai just on dark and minutes after getting to the hut the storm arrived and hail and rain just pelted down. A great night for a wee dram and a good sleep.