Damaged paths, gas leaks and early starts were challenges, not obstacles, for the 9 Adventure class to overcome on their recent tramp. Student Elliot Johnston tells us about the trip.

The overnight tramp contained a considerable amount of obstacles and inconveniences, including damaged paths, more damaged paths, even more damaged paths, and long waits at swing bridges.

The tramp was intended to be in the Orongorongo Valley but there was a gas leak at the hut so Mr Weakley, our teacher, changed the location to Mt Holdsworth area and the Atiwhakatu Hut.

A few weeks before the tramp, we learnt how to use gas cookers. Afterwards we went inside and made groups for cooking food. I grouped with two other people and we chose our meals, but it turned out that one of them wasn’t coming on the tramp so that meant a bit of last minute reorganisation.

On the day of the tramp I got up at 6am and got all my gear together. I arrived at school at 8.30am and immediately started heading towards the Sports Centre. 

I got there and met up with my food partner before going into the River Gym to sort some things out with our bags. We sat down and got told to remove all the clothing items from our bags and show them to the teachers, and then we were told to put all the clothes back in our bags. 

We were struggling to stuff the clothes into the bags. We also had to show the teachers our food. I showed my hotdog ingredients, muesli bars, tim-tams, burger ingredients and pancake ingredients to the teachers (that was a lot of ingredients). 

I got approval from them and then stuffed everything back into the bag. That took at least 10 minutes. 

One of the teachers then walked around the gym writing numbers on everyone's hands. I was assigned the number 8. We used these numbers to do a "count off". At various times on the trip we would stop and were required to call out our numbers in order. This meant that teachers knew if we were all there if all the numbers were called.

The teacher started moving us into the vans, and then we went off on an hour and a half drive to Mount Holdsworth. Once we got there, the teachers started explaining some things about keeping together, who would lead, the requirements for toilet stops and when breaks would be. 

We walked another 60 metres and then stopped, regrouped and said a karakia for the journey. We walked a long distance, (around about 560 metres - just a guess). We stopped at an intersection. One of the teachers would take a group down one route, while the others would take the other group. 

I went with the latter group. The teachers had walkie talkies and were able to keep in touch, which was a good thing because the other group found their track was being repaired after storm damage and had to come back our way. We all joined up again and continued on.

It took us four hours to get to the hut. We had stopped for lunch along the way and had some pretty lengthy waits while we got across swing bridges, sometimes one at a time. The teachers in charge of each group got us to read the terrain and work out where we were on the map, tell them the coordinates and then tell them how long it would take us to get to another point on the map using a string and the rate of one kilometre every 12 minutes with an extra 2 minutes for every 20 metres climbed. We all got pretty good at this.

When we got to Atiwhakatu hut we were taught about hut etiquette and then found the rooms we were to be in. Boys in one, girls in another and staff all together in another (some of the staff decided to sleep in the dining room by the fire that night - maybe the others snored too much LOL).

We spent the evening talking, playing cards, cooking, eating and gathering firewood. It was quite a challenge to keep the fire going but we all helped out.

The hut is situated in a pretty nice spot which is cool. The river is quite close to the hut and some of us played around down there, jumping rocks to get to the islands in the middle.

By the time we needed to go to bed people were pretty tired so they did not talk for too long. We were soon asleep.

The next morning most of us got up at 7am. Some people had got up early and were making breakfast. Lots of people had pancakes. Getting the pans the right temperature with the cookers was a wee problem. Some of the pancakes looked a wee bit munted. 

We tidied up the hut. The goal was to have it tidier than when we arrived and by the time we left it looked really good. We had got more fire wood sorted, all the benches were super clean and all the rooms were swept and tidy.

We divided up into two groups to head off home. One group left early while the other did a final collection of rubbish around the outside of the hut. We powered along the track pretty quickly. We must have got fitter overnight. 

On top of that it was all slightly downhill all the way back. That helped. We were back to the vans in three hours. Each of us took turns at leading our particular group. We had to use the walkie talkie to tell the other group who was leading and give the coordinates of where we were. The other group used their maps to work out where we were and rushed to try and catch us.

The Atiwhakatu valley is really nice. The track is not too hard and the river is awesome. It gets steeper and faster-flowing the higher you get. The bush is pretty dense and there are many birds around. It is a great place to start tramping. 

Hopefully I will be able to get on some more tramps.