Sunrise to Sparrowhawk Bivvy, Ruahine FP
Saturday November 3, 2012
A large group of 20 left EIT at 7:00am in two cars and the minibus and started walking up the Sunrise Hut track at around 8:30am. We all wandered up at various speeds to reach the hut for morning tea.
Julia and Paul Hendy had scouted ahead to check the wind and came back to tell everyone to rug up warm and be prepared for some wind. So, 11 ventured off to do the crossing.
The rest had a more leisurely morning tea and then went back down to the cars and kindly drove them around to the other end for the pick-up. They walked the Swamp Track, to check out the regenerating forest too. The van and car drivers ventured up the river to meet us – but we were too slow, so they went back to the cars before we got down the ridge.
The crossing was OK, a little windy but not too bad and a bit of battling through a denser bit of leatherwood where you had to work a bit to keep on the ridge following a vague track with the odd old tin track marker.
We went up and down a few wee hills and stopped for lunch at 12:30pm, by popular demand with a great view down to the valley in a nice sheltered spot. We reached Maropea (1481) by 1:30pm, and then we quickly reached the wooden marker sign for Sparrowhawk Bivvy, and did the compulsary photo stop with a few tripod cameras doing the honours! Including our lunch stop it had taken us 3hrs and 20 mins from Sunrise Hut to the Sparrowhawk junction.
Then another stop and more food at the bivvy before the more than two hour descent back down. We got rather spread out and Mark decided to do a head-first dive down a steep non tracked bit of bush (he slipped on the scree on the last steep ridge, 50m before dropping into the river). He hit his head and lost his glasses but managed to scramble back up to the ridge unaided and hobble back to the bus with a slight headache.
A nice, windy day out with good company and great views.
Trampers crossing: Julia Mackie, March Marchal, Elly Govers, Viv Bramley, Isabel Holdoway, Paul Hendy, Les O’Shea, Kelvin Shaw, Paul Fletcher, John Dobbs and reporter Ali Hollington.
Sunrise: Ray Slavin, Ted Angove, Sue Martin, Sue Marshall, Sue Titter, Matt Green, Coleen Pereau, Murray Goss, Geoff Donkin.
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