Totara Flats – 21/7/24
Following the cancellation of the planned trip to Cattle ridge, due to lack of participants, a ]late substitution was added to the schedule, a day trip to Totara flats from Holdsworth road end.
Two members and a dog set out from the road end at 9am, heading up the Gentle Annie track in the cool early part of the day. Not too far up the climb however, layers were removed as we started to warm up. Part way up the climb we met fellow club member Ian Thirsk, who was descending from Rocky lookout, but who had just returned from South Canterbury and had done an afternoon ascent of Mt. Somers. A trip for the future perhaps?
We reached the track junction to Totara flats, stopping for a quick drink, and seeing the last of the Powell hut overnighters descending back to the carpark, before we started our descent to the Flats.
The track was wet underfoot, but in its usual condition, with the drop off of height being significant over quite a short distance to start.
By the time we reached the beginning of the climb up to the plateau and point 575, we decided to do some training in using the GPS, and used this for the route until we started the second descent down to the Totara creek.
We made the bottom of the hill and worked our way past the first bridge, then over the long bridge crossing the Waiohine and onto the Totara flats hut.
We arrived at the hut three and a half hours after starting, and were greeted at the hut by a couple of trampers who were also lunching. They were on their way out to Waiohine gorge, having spent the night at Neil forks hut, along with a fairly voracious sounding rat! One of the trampers recognised the writer from a night at Tutawai a couple of years earlier.
Over lunch we were looking through the intentions book, and noted only 6 people had stayed over the weekend, and that fellow MTC member Dave Lyttle had been at the hut about a month earlier. The wood shed was well filled with good dry wood, and a sack remained next to the helipad, for anyone to empty with a bit of time on their hands.
Another sack of wood had rolled of the helipad bank towards the river, a bit more of an effort to empty!
We started the route back after Thirty five minutes and worked our way to the top of the first climb within an hour, then carried up to the junction on the Gentle Annie in just over two hours.
The trip carried on down the GA track, arriving back at the Campground a little over seven and a half hours after we started, having covered around 22 kms, and 1200m of ascent.
Party; Conrad (leader and Scribe), Gail and Boots.
