Do the Roar... ing Stag Hut

Through some convenient rostering shenanigans, I ended up with a free Saturday. So, instead of catching up on chores or other such productive pursuits, it was time for a tramp.
In our usual fashion, the destination was one that caused the least trouble for my licence-less companion - in this case Roaring Stag Hut.

I was a bit surprised to arrive at the end of Putara Rd in the early afternoon to find an abundance of cars parked up.After adding my own car to the collection, we headed of down the track.
Part way up the track, Cody and I were discussing how it looked different, settling on the conclusion that we had become so used to seeing the area during or shortly after rain, that seeing it sunny and dry was quite unusual to us. The track was littered with bright yellow-brown leaves and golden sunlight filtered down through the forest canopy.

As it always is, the climb up the ridge from the swingbridge was a slog that pretty much never lets up until the track begins to level out among the spindly beech forest and sparse undergrowth at the top of the ridge. A couple of hours, and much sweat later, we had arrived the track junction, which was partially blocked by a fallen tree.

Taking the left-hand track, we then headed south toward the hut. Coming down off the ridge, the track meets a picturesque stream that it then follows for a distance before crossing it shortly before the hut.

The track contains fairly frequent patches of boot-top deep mud, but is mercifully flat, aside from brief steep up-and-down bits to cross the two streams before the hut.

As an interesting aside, the track sticks very close to the true right of the stream, veering away slightly before crossing that same stream. The Topo50 maps, however, show the track being some distance from the streams true left bank. Memory-Map shows a track (allegedly from DOC data) to the true right of stream so I had assumed this was correct and LINZ were wrong. My GPS data instead show that the LINZ track is correct - the maps actually have the stream in the wrong place.

Second stream crossing

Shortly after crossing the first stream, a second stream, shallower than the first, is crossed. It's perfectly possible to cross both streams without getting wet, although you could fill your boots if you really wanted to.

We arrived at the hut to find a large family group sitting around a fire. Lucky for us, as children go, they were fairly tolerable.
With plenty of daylight we were able to hang out around the river, eat cheese and crackers, cook and eat dinner, all before sunset.

Late evening Ruamahanga River

After a very restless night I was woken from the one patch of decent sleep I had by the sound of rustling sleeping bags and flatulence. Assuming it was still the middle of the night, I was surprised to roll over and see daylight through the window.
The weather had regressed to the mean, and a familiar misty rain was drifting down the valley.

According to the hut book, some NZDA volunteers had given the hut a though cleaning about a year back, so the hut was in particularly good nick. The same can't be said for the longdrop, which, although surprisingly clean and free of spiders, did not have a particularly long drop. Disturbingly, daylight was seeping in below the toilet, courtesy of bizarre opening to the shit pit next to the crap shack.

Longdrop quirks aside, Roaring Stag is in a fantastic location, situated in a clearing above the Ruamahunga river. In fact, many of the comments in the hut books were something along the lines of "Great spot!" and "nice place!" which are simultaneously both accurate and cromulent yet woefully inadequate descriptions of this fine place. But hey, I couldn't describe it any better and I'm not limited to a small box in a DOC hut book.
Also in the book was an entry from a party that included tramping luminary and writer Shaun Barnett and Wilderness Magazine editor Alastair Hall.

Eventually we plodded out into the rain, the track now looking comfortably familiar glistening in the rain, the golden hues of the first day long gone.

The trees seemed a particularly bright shade of green and the bird life was particularly active. The song of grey warblers and squeaks of fantails and possibly riflemen followed us all the way from hut to roadend. The rain had pretty much given up by the time we got to the swingbridge, and the remainder of the walk was a pleasant amble alongside the Mangatainoka River to the carpark.