Herepai again... again

Te Puia Hut in the Kawekas is a pretty neat place: a scenic, easy walk up the Mohaka River; near-by hot springs, beautiful location. In short, well worth the trip up from the Hutt Valley.
Such was the plan, until a transport mishap scuttled those plans and a well overdue to return to Te Puia was shit-canned.

The natural alternative was - of course - none other than Ol' Faithful, Herepai Hut.
As someone quite astutely pointed out "why Herepai? Roaring stag is way nicer." Not wrong, but Herepai is somewhat of a tradition, so Herepai it was.

Unusually for this time of year, there was not even the slightest hint of rain. Of course that made absolutely no difference to the perma-bog at the start of the track, which seemingly goes from strength to strength.

The walk up the valley was as pleasant as ever, the swing bridges still swingy, the scenery scenic and the track, um, tracky?
I never tire of the scenery on this track, and the golden dappled sunlight made it even better (and was also a nice change from the varying degrees of rain we usually encounter). We made fairly good time on the first section of walk, and as custom dictates, stopped at the 2nd swing bridge for a quick break before the hill awaiting us on the other side.

  Being the unfit office chair potato that I am, this part of the track wasn't exactly a walk in the park (despite technically being exactly that), but again we made good time to the Roaring Stage-Herepai track junction. It was around this point that we encountered a few people heading down to Roaring Stag (ol' faithful comes through again).

 And so began the easy final stretch to the hut. Along the way, Cody picked up a small log off tha track and carried it for the next half hour it took to reach the hut. We reached the hut after about 3.5 hours-or-so.
Our initial plan once at the hut was to go up to Herepai peak and back for the views, but the peak was shrouded in a thick fug of cloud by the time we got to hut so this plan was abandoned in favour of an afternoon of cards. Unfortunately, I'd left the cards behind.

Once again there was piss all dry wood around, so we attempted to scrounge up some additional branches and such. Despite our minor success at wood gathering (innuendo? Maybe at a stretch), the fire itself turned out to be a bit of a failure, and never got hot enough to make the hut cosy. Not even the two hunters that turned up later had much luck with it.
On the plus side, the hut was home to a hunting magazine from 2012 which contained an article - and I kid you not - about "boning birds." The article featured such gems as "I will try to teach you the fine art of boning..." "...using your fingers to slide the meat down the bone..." "...flip the bird over onto it's front..." and it gets better: "Don't be put off boning birds as it's not that daunting once you have started" ... "...never be in a hurry and you will achieve a far better job." But perhaps the best part was the sign-off at the end, which simply read "Happy boning!"

After a good nights sleep, we left the hut at about 10am. The weather was once again lovely and the walk out pretty much the same as the walk in. Except, you know, in reverse.
We reached the road-end after 3 hours.

Herepai... again

On the 25th July, Cody and I headed off on what is now an annual mid-winter pilgrimage up to Herepai Hut.

The unseasonably good weather was a nice change from our last visit to the Mangatainoka Valley, and so we ambled slowly along the increasingly familiar track.

 After taking an unnecessarily long amount of time to reach the second of the two swing bridges, we stopped for the ubiquitous snack break before heading up the hill to the Roaring Stag/Herepai junction.

After another quick snackage/hydration break at the track junction we hoofed it over to the hut. The large flat track along this ridge is welcome relief after the uphill that preceded it, despite the numerous soggy patches. There are a few fallen trees but the track is otherwise trouble-free.

We arrived at the hut after a lazy 3.5-4 hours to find the fire already going and the hut toasty warm thanks to a party of three trampers whose footprints we'd been following for a while (and correctly proposed were made by a man and a woman... and evidently a second man we hadn't predicted).
Since the last time we were here, DOC (presumably) have replaced the shitty old windows (which were falling apart last time we visited) with some nice new double glazed windows.

We stewed a tasty stew on top of the fire while enjoying a few games of Fluxx, as the hut approached sweltering levels of warmth. In fact, it got so hot that I spent most of the night outside of my sleeping bag.

We woke (for the final time, having woken at least a previous 4 times) just after 7am to mist hanging over the tops, gusty wind and patches of rain.

We departed just after 9am, into the dreary mist.

A few hundred metres from the hut there's a turn-off down an unofficial track that we'd also seen the previous day, with a sign that says "the bottles." The track itself seemed to be marked with blue flagging tape, although I have no idea where it goes. We plan to investigate someday.

The tracks soggy patches were a bit soggier today but it was an easy walk down to the swing bridge (stopping again for the customary track junction snack break).

After yet another cruisey walk out the valley (which is as scenic as ever), we reached the road-end after 3-3.5 hours after another nice mid-winter tramp up to Herepai.

Map & GPS track recording:

Google earth image:

Vaguely Dangerous Wilderness episode from this trip: