This article was first published in the Tararua Tramper Volume 90, no 8, September 2018
A short winter trip – Tauherenikau mystery spur
25 July 2018
Anticipating the worst in weather, I scheduled a shortened trip for a Wednesday in the heart of winter up a spur that seems rarely travelled nowadays.
It turned out to be a very pleasant day of no rain or wind, and even a touch of sunlight, although there was plenty of damp foliage to push through at times. The hint of ‘mystery’ seemed to attract the child in us all, and 17 turned up in anticipation. The selected spur is not far up the Tauherenikau Valley, which is why it is probably little travelled, as the average medium party has no trouble in completing the loop in 6 hours, although a different route up to Dobsons, down the track to the valley, along, and then up the spur to finish coming down the Puffer would take the time up to more than 7 hours.
The spur is at times open and other times requires some acro (and aero) batics to negotiate many windfalls, which often obscure an old foot pad. There are no old ribbons, but the final one-third that is quite dense re-growth has several old cuts, which create just enough space to slip through and are handy for navigation as the spur divides randomly closer to the top.
Shortly before we reached the Marchant Track at around 540m, we located the triple yellow bottle top/orange-sprayed marker that may or may not be of Peter Jagger origin.
Having some time in hand, we did a side trip to just below Dobsons and enjoyed lunch in a bit of sun.
We were back at the cars by 3 p.m.
- Party members
- Linda Beckett, Jim Gibbons, Fiona Girdwood, Brian Hasell, Justin Kerr, Howard Larsen, Cathy Milne, Jan Nye, Jane Nye, Marg Pearce (leader and scribe), Trish Gardiner-Smith, David Ogilvie, Peter Smith, Bob Stephens, John Thomson, Glynn Woodbury, Bill Wheeler.