Up Rogue Ridge, and down Macintosh Spur in good weather

Lakes Road car park -The Rogue – Mackintosh Spur, Saturday August 13 2011

There were only eight out today; possibly the poor weather forecast earlier in the week put some people off. But we started out in the sunshine! Whatever happened to the bad weather?

The top section of the track down to the Tutaekuri River is now a fully bulldozed logging road. The Tutaekuri was too high to avoid getting wet feet while crossing it. We headed up the track and up The Rogue, with the rearguard pulling contorta on the way up and not much effort in this area from the front markers.
We stopped for smoko at the first knob on The Rogue. There was some discussion about photography. Apparently the new rules are:

No pictures while people are eating or have their mouths full.

No pictures until person ready and posed and agreeing to be photographed.

Then it was onwards to the top of the Rogue with patches of snow around, and past the drop-off to the Kaweka Hut site. Cooks Horn looks a bit worn down. We carried on up to Kaiarahi through reasonably deep drifts of snow. The main range of the Kawekas was obscured by cloud.

We headed down to the turn-off to Mackintosh Spur for lunch. Then we moved down the spur through patches of snowdrift. Great fun going down these. Just dig your heels in a bit and take big steps. Towards bottom of the spur, three trampers went for a skate on the greasy clay. A good full pack helps to take the impact here. We were too busy talking or listening or thinking of something else and not looking where to put our feet.
At the first track junction, a decision was made to not go the Mackintosh Hut but to head around via Kaiarahi Stream and bottom of The Rogue to avoid the climb out of the Tutaekuri and a walk along the road. However, this way proved to have a lot of ups and downs.

At the track junction to the Kaweka Hut site, the old track was blocked off. We walked some way towards the hut site before changing our minds and going back to short direct route down to stream. The old map shows the tracks in this area better than the new one.

A party of one decided he was going to the hut site (it’s not far, he said; except if you look at the old map, the dog-leg to the hut site goes for perhaps 600m each way). At this time, there were a few spits of rain. Onwards to the Tutaekuri with more wet feet and we could see the end of the line of Douglas firs where the van should be.
Walking up the hill onto the forestry track, we spread out a bit as we were getting tired. Glad to be back at the car park and we didn’t have to put parkas on even though the rain was gradually increasing in strength.

To those who thought the weather would be bad, we had a good day in fine weather starting off in sunshine, with it getting more cloudy as day went on. The light rain only started at about 3.30pm, perhaps half an hour before getting back to van.

Thanks to Sue Martin for picking up the van, driving both ways and dropping it off.

Trampers: Sue Martin, Ted Angove, James Burrell, Jude Paton, Sue Marshall, Murray Goss, Marc Marchal and Geoff Donkin

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