| Leader | Mentor | Tail Ender | |
| Standards | Peter | Selwyn | Judy S |
| Alternates | Bev | Ailsa | Jan M |
“Sun, glorious sun!” (which I hope you hear to the tune from Oliver of “Food, glorious food”). It really was a glorious sunny day at Bishopdale, Yaldhurst, and Castle Hill for our tramp. After the preceding weeks, 34 trampers were delighted.
Our group easily divided into 17 and 17 with our two visitors Don and John and our guest Marcial joining the Standards. (Dan and John, btw, have completed their three initial tramps, and we hope to see them as full time BTC trampers in the future.) The Standards loped off in their normal fashion, but the Alternates caught up with them at the Lightning Struck tree where morning tea was had by both groups.
The Alternates’ leader had warned them of a mountain bike race on the trail, and we before tea had stepped off the trail for four young dirty men on their bicycles. We later learned they (and others we saw later) were on the 1330 km Tour Te Waipounamu which started at Cape Farewell on Sunday before our tramp. (For more information on the “backpacking race the length of the South Island of New Zealand/Aotearoa,” go to http://tourtewaipunamu.co.nz and bless your good sense you didn’t do it.)
The only “excitement” for the day was the somewhat daunting quite fast flowing Long River at about the 4 km mark where six Alternates exercised what they considered good sense and chose not to go further, being unable to determine how deep it was and where the holes were. Fortunately, the remaining 11 Alternates and all the Standards made it across both ways with only one slip into the river for a Standard. And as she said, the sun was out and she quickly dried.
The Alternates lunched at the top of Picnic Lookout Hill and watched the Standards clamber up another hill in the distance. Both groups were back to the bus by 3:30 with the Standards taking the shorter route they had taken earlier in the day while the Alternates took the longer “easy” route (description on the DOC sign, not a comment by this author). The six renegade Alternates had been back since 2:20 and were comfortably enjoying the sunshine.
One other note. One tramper suggested to the author that “hogs back” was a term to describe certain cloud formations. I could not find any reference to this phenomenon, but did find numerous references to the geologic definition of a “hogback”: “a ridge of land formed by the outcropping edges of tilted strata” or “a ridge with a sharp summit and steeply sloping sides.”
Our driver Alan got us back to Bishopdale a little after 5. Again, another great day out for those who chose to come.
Text by Michele
