16-17 September 2023

Leader: Tony Quayle

Cattle Creek is always a good option for a getaway when the weather is a bit too unsettled for an adventurous trip. It’s fairly easy travel, but with enough variety to make it interesting - a gentle river, some nice bush, a modest hill climb, some windswept scrub and a small, comfortable hut.

An over-full roadend carpark had us worried about the possibility the comfortable hut might be a bit too small though, especially as we’d elected not to pack tents. A party of 3 trampers, much younger than us, were setting out for Cattle Creek ahead of us and would surely beat us to the best bunks, and what about the occupants of the other cars? A successful hunter on a day mission, encountered well up the Tamaki River, accounted for one of the vehicles, and another three hunters at Stanfield Hut spoke for one or two more, but there was no sign or mention of the youthful trio we’d seen at the carpark.

My memory of where the track over to Cattle Creek began was sound, but erosion had made the first section a bit of a scramble. Although the valley had been quite sheltered, the wind on the ridge top was strong, particularly on the short, semi-open section approaching the turn off down to Cattle Creek. And the small, comfortable - and empty - hut was rattling and banging something shocking.

The youthful trio turned up an hour or more after us, having taken the windy Holmes Ridge track that parallels the Tamaki River and obviously takes a bit longer.

The rattling and banging made it difficult for some to sleep, but the hut and its occupants were still intact come morning.

We simply backtracked our route home, the only exception being the discovery of the re-routed bottom end of the track, which enabled us to avoid the scramble we’d had on the way in. The new start point is conspicuously marked a short distance upstream - a pity I’d only had eyes for the original start point when we were walking in!

Those on the trip were:

Tony Quayle, Julie James, Kate Livingston, Patrick Liss, Mike Carruthers