17-18 June 2021

Leader: Kate Livingston

This weekend’s trip was intended as the classic Holdsworth circuit.

The forecast looked as though there might be a break in the wintery weather on Sunday so we decided to go up to Jumbo Hut on Saturday and across to Holdsworth and Powell Hut on Sunday.

From the booking system it looked like Jumbo Hut was going to be busy.

Four of us set off at 8am, with a coffee break at Clareville – as you do. By 10.30am we were on the track and heading to Atiwhakatu Hut for lunch. It was, and had been, raining steadily and the river was a fast flowing and somewhat awesome torrent. If there had not been bridges on the side creeks which were all running very high we would have turned around and headed home.

The route up the Rain Gauge Spur track was a plod in increasingly wet weather; we reached Jumbo Hut around 3.30pm. The tracks on the last section and around the hut were under water. We were pleased to get to the hut and find in empty. In fact, everyone else who had booked obviously abandoned the idea of tramping, so we had it to ourselves. There was a good supply of firewood and we settled in for the evening.

High winds and rain continued throughout the night. Wading outside during the night was not much fun. The door to one of the toilets had blown partly off and was damaged.

The break in the weather did not eventuate so it was an easy decision not to go across the tops but rather head back down the way we came, setting off around 8.30am. By the time we reached the car park the rain had eased off and it was almost pleasant.

We stopped for lunch in Greytown at The Garage Cafe, then got home around 4pm.

We learned that storms during the weekend had caused flooding and damage in various parts of the country, and that was no surprise given the weather we had had.

So, we didn’t achieve our goal but it still was good to get out into the hills.

Those on the trip were:

Kate Livingston, Rob Dey, Owen Cox, Jeff Franks

Currently there is no photo album for this trip.