Hunua Walkies (23-24 of March) – Taking Susie for a walk.

Sasha Crossman Keeping the tradition alive

Trip leader: Will Griffiths

Special recognition: Will Griffiths, Hamish Cossey – caringly lugged Susie the ironing board in.

Nicolas Mir – in hand, cradled the 3kg iron called rusty.

Sasha Crossman – risking his life to bring his suit up against his mother’s wishes.

Introduction:

The best thing about Uni tramping clubs is reading the ‘dumb’ stuff other trips have

tried to pull off in the past. The reason dumb is in quotation marks is, depending on

the reader, the activity can be seen as maybe legendary, totally understandable, or

inspiring (inspiration to go do more dumb stuff). Being uni students, most of us

haven’t got to the stage of mega stiff knees, sore backs, or as my mother would say,

a fully developed frontal lobe (calling us silly). Due to these factor, Uni tramping clubs

have the ability to pull off ‘dumb’ stuff.

Trip:

Since this trip, extreme ironing trips had stagnated in the club for a few years.

Extreme ironing is a delicate sport where an iron and ironing board get taken to

stupid places, and we do a bit of ironing. It popped up on the committee agenda to

look at bring extreme ironing back, and after some investigation, I found out we have

our own club iron and ironing board called Susie and Rusty. Time to do something

‘dumb’.

Sasha was onboard very quickly with my proposition, with the only condition being

that he didn’t have to carry Susie up, which isn’t really helpful. He did agree to bring

a suit up, so I was partially happy with the deal. The next stage of the do ‘dumb’ stuff

was to pack 15 people into a 2 person hut at the top of Hunua. After reinforcing how

unenjoyable and horrible this would be I had over 30 sign ups. Trampers are weird.

The walk into Hunua was about 6 hours long, with a good level of bog. The view was

clouds and Suzie enjoyed the free ride up, often reaching out and grabbing onto

vines and tree branches as we passed. The relationship with Susie had deteriorated

by the end, and seeing Trig K hut was a welcoming sight. We created dinner with a

lot of stress and wizardry, played some cards, then started to set up sleep positions.

We had 4 group members run away to tents, which made life a bit easier. I had a

hammock which made life a bit precious for people sleeping below me, but, it all

worked out: (see photo below).

By the morning the clouds had cleared a little and, on the observation tower, we

were able to catch a awesome sunrise. Followed by some morning ironing to make

sure we all look our best for the decent down, we said our goodbyes and slow made

the trudge back down. Right, this is enough words, so here are some photos: