Plenty of people walk into there via Te Iringa.
It’s a bit of a grind up to the old hut site but sweet after that. Bush is nicer over the other side, and deer are quieter.
I’ve never actually been to Oamaru but it looks like it’d be a nice winter landscape. Just arse bitingly cold.
Te Iringa amd Oamaru are on a mountain bike circuit. I doubt the Lycra lads will be in there this time of year though.
Should be a very good trip if you take good gear and food.
Over Te Iringa was the way before paper road through Poronui was legally sorted out.
Used to be 7 hrs in 6hrs out when I was in my 20s.
The walk over the te iringa is quite pleasant. Shot deer off the track on the way over before
Just got back from a few days there. Each morning I'd make a cup of coffee and stare outside the window in wonder. My cup is full. The only negative from the trip was tagging with black sharpie pen throughout the hut. Some young bucks (I can say gender as they'd engraved their names and "23" throughout the hut) really need to do some voluntary community work. I'm hoping to go back in later in the year with my son, and will take some isopropol alcohol clean "the work" off. If anyone is going in before hand, could you please think about doing this. There was a particularly disgusting sexually explicit scribing on one wall. I've not seen "work" like this in most of the huts I travel to, as they are hard to get to, but come on, grow up
"Death - our community's number one killer"
No, we did not. Kai and I got to within 10 yards of three in the, unsurprisingly... pepperwood on the sunny north faces, tucked out of the wind. Watched one drift away through the tight (I was parallel to him in the open as I couldn't face another 20 minutes of branches in the face) as Kai "snooped in". Not long enough for a shot, but cool to watch. They just "drift away". Standing still for five minutes, we knew a deer was a few metres below, waited, waited, then waited some more scanning.... only to see one sneak into the crown fern from a pepper wood stand. Heard it "frummm" downhill a few minutes later after sneaking in. Standing on a mossy open section outside the tight, just resting and "being still". I was staring ahead 10 steps away at a log. "Gee, that stump looks just like.... a... de..e...r??!!!... no...no.... rifle ...." oh, stink. Did an accidental "superdive" off a wet log, fell off backwards sliding over it. The lever action was slow to catch up and landed hard on my quad above the knee. Took the necessary 10 seconds to register "is anything broken". No, but it munted me. Ending up limping back to the hut, then limping home, wounded, but thankful as it could have been worse, much worse.
"Death - our community's number one killer"
Cool photo there
Reminds me of Charlie Janes' series of books on his escapades of building airstrips and flying in and around there. The winter frosts he described were always brutal.
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