The long and the short of two ways in a tramp

Tutaekuri River- Mackintosh Hut – Donald River – Lawrence Rd, Saturday 29 March 2025
Banner Photo: The view looking SSE to the Tutaekuri River from Mackintosh Spur plateau

This was a tramp of two parts.

John Dobbs reports on those dropped off at the Mackintosh car park:

There were nine keen trampers and a mild, calm day gave everyone a good start.

Due to logging operations, there were a couple of parking changes since I was last in the area. Six set off to complete the full circuit, while Juliet plus two drove around to the Lawrence Road car park. The plan was for both groups to meet up for lunch beside the Donald River.

In misty conditions and high humidity after recent rain, we descended the track and crossed the Tutaekuri River; then most took off extra layers for the steep zig-zag track. Time and many feet have settled this into proper steps rather than a greasy slope, and it wasn’t long before we were towards ‘the top’ and onto the flatter country. Morning tea at Mackintosh Hut was a pleasant break, the hut and surrounds in great order, but the mist and cloud hung about.

The next section, undulating over the Mackintosh Spur Track, was rather overgrown and the vegetation dripping, with a few pink ribbons aiding our route-finding. This is around 5km and with the bush and scrub close, without views; it’s really a bit of a trudge. A few wilding pines were pulled up along the way.

Things improved when we began the descent to the Donald River; more birds heard among patches of beech and podocarps, lovely mosses and numerous species of fungus and, at last, some distant views down into the Donald Valley.

Everyone made it down the track without too many slips; the weather was lifting and then we saw the arrow Juliet had kindly left for us. Not long after, there was a little clearing and we had a view – plus waving to the other three way below, enjoying their lunch. By about 12.30pm, we had completed the descent and joined them. The Donald was running low and not at all cold.

Juliet continues the story…

Donna, Selena and I drove to the Lawrence Rd end car park and walked down to the river. There were a couple of 4-wheel drive vehicles down there. It is definitely unwise to take the van there, because the road is quite steep.

We could see across the river where the bridge (no longer there) support structure was. Geoff had advised that we should cross the river at that point and look for the track behind the bridge support. That turned out to be the case and we started off.

We reached a point where onga onga was climbing all over the place and blocking our way.  In negotiating around that, we managed to lose the track, in spite of my phone topo map seeming to show that we were on course. Knowing that we needed to get up the steep slope there, we bush-bashed up and, nearing the top, found the actual track. So we were back on target.

After this, the track was much easier and we made good progress. After all the rain the night before, everything was rather wet but we managed to find a nice spot for morning tea. The bush was beautiful – very lush and quite picturesque.

We reached the Donald River about 11am and decided that it was too early for lunch. So we crossed the river and climbed up the other side. The markers weren’t quite as good but we managed to make our way through without too many problems, walking for nearly an hour.

Then we reached a point where – no matter how hard we looked – we couldn’t find the track again. We tried the same trick of following close to where it should be (as shown on our phones) but still couldn’t quite make it to the track before the bush got too dense to push our way through.

Since we were concerned that the others might come through on the correct track and pass without seeing us, we decided to turn back to the river. When we got back to where we had been on track, we looked around in all directions and found that the track had briefly done a 180 reverse after deviating around a fallen log – which was why we’d missed it.

So, a mystery was solved and – after leaving an arrow for the others who might have been still to come through – we continued to the river.

We had beaten the others, and they arrived about 12.30 to join us for lunch. Then we had a lovely walk down the Donald River to where it joins the Tutaekuri River, about five minutes upstream from the road-end. There were amazing fossils in the rocks on that walk, and because none of us had walked out via the river before, this was a lovely way to end the tramp. It was also shorter than going via the bush track and we reached the van at about 2.30pm.

Trampers: from Mackintosh Spur, John Dobbs, Jenny Burns, Sue Gribble, Julian Phillips, Rebecca Thompson and Darran Gillies. From Lawrence Rd end: Juliet Gillick, Donna Weston and Selina Chilton