This article was first published in the Tararua Tramper Volume 91, no 1, February 2019
Mt Dick Lookout to Waiohine 818 MF
Wednesday 7 November 2018
From Mount Dick Lookout, the route to Waiohine 818m follows a series of watershed ridges. To the east - Kaipaitangata Stream. To the west - successively, Beef Creek, Devil Creek, Rocky Stream and Deep Creek.¹ Although commencing at 520m altitude and rising only to 818m there are sufficient saddles and bumps along the way for the 15.4 km return trip to require more than 1000 metres of climbing. Our initial plan had included dropping into Kaipaitangata Stream but this was too ambitious. The straight go and return alone took about eight hours.
The drive from Dalefield Road extension, Kaipaitangata Road, up to the lookout is best suited to 4WD vehicles. From the lookout car park a logging road leads north and west to a saddle between Beef Creek and Kaipaitangata Stream. From there a lightly marked tramping track leads all the way to Waiohine 818m. Care is needed with navigation - a sharp west turn near .582 is followed by something akin to a zig-zag up to .632 which sits at the middle of a system of ridges forming an ‘H’ shape - .632 could be called an ‘H-bump’.
Further north there is a notorious point, more so for south-bound travellers, where (travelling south) the watershed ridge swings south east down a face while what appears to be the main ridge - but isn’t - continues blithely on, to dump duped trampers at Rocky Stream Forks.
However this spot is now well marked with two cairns and some orange tape. North of this point the ridge is smothered in dracophyllum and scrub and best avoided by keeping slightly east of the ridge line. After a while bigger trees make ridgeline travel feasible. Above Deep Creek the route becomes a trapping line, an attempt to protect a native shorttailed bat colony.²
¹All these streams and creeks are tributary to the Waiohine River, Beef Creek and Kaipaitangata Stream via the Mangaterere River. ²DoC Masterton report that the bats’ roost trees collapsed and the present whereabouts of the colony is unknown.
- Party members
- Joan Basher, Robin Chesterfield, Colin Cook (leader and scribe), John Dement, Tricia French, Fiona Girdwood, David McNabb, Peggy Munn, Janette Roberts, Bob Stephens, Marg Pearce, Wayne Perkins, Sieny Pollard, Lynne White, Glynn Woodbury