Mostly you will know it when you’re just halfway through: this one’s not worth the effort.
Harper Pass Track in Arthur’s Pass to Windy Point on the road to Lewis Pass: a journey I give the fingers to. A few friends do, too. We’ve even been known to give fingers from a plane if we can identify the terrain.
We refer to Harper Pass as Stupid Tramp™. We did it of course… in late 2014, and it was entirely my idea. I rounded up five friends and convinced them it would be a banger. It looked fun enough: up a big wide river valley, over a pass (surely exciting!) and down another river valley. We’d visit natural hot springs near the Hurunui River on the way.
On the first day, we tramped from Aickens to Locke Stream Hut, a relentless seven-hour riverbed walk. Mostly, it was heads down, eyes navigating the rocky terrain. We reached the hut exhausted.
“Oh, a historic hut,” I enthused as the others arrived. “Apparently it’s a relic of the government’s 1939 fitness programme, built with Department of Internal Affairs funding as a way to encourage people to get fit.”
Percy trudged up. He’s really Jeremy but we call him ‘Percy’ because he doesn’t have a middle name, and we felt he needed one.
“What did you think of today, Percy?” I asked.
He stood on the deck, pack still on, looked at me and said, deadpan: “I thought today was stupid.”
And so it became the Stupid Tramp™, and stupid it was, all the way to Windy Point. There were few views, the hot springs were foetid, the cow dung was relentless and not always avoidable, the sandflies even more so. But it was great fun, simply because of the company and the hilarity. I’ll never forget waking up to find that an enterprising mouse had stolen into Percy’s pack and eaten the block of butter, leaving behind a confetti of butter paper. (Mind you, camping near Home Bay where the Hurunui River discharges into Lake Sumner and doing hot laps by getting into the rapids and zooming into the lake, comes second).
Stupid Tramp™ is memorable for all the wrong reasons, but also for all the right ones, too. And so we give it the fingers, but in a loving way.
Nine years later I tramped into Trains Hut in the Waitōtara Conservation Area with Percy and his wife Slasher (named for her prowess at chopping away thick bush). This time the trip wasn’t my idea. Percy and Slasher had suggested it, as it was halfway between our respective home towns.
We were about two hours in, having a snack break on a track strewn with windfall and staring at a muddy brown river, when Percy broke the silence: “This could be another Stupid Tramp™.”
It sort of was a bit stupid. Trains Hut is a four-to-five-hour trudge alongside a river on an undulating track with little to redeem it. It was the wettest tramp I’ve done yet, although it never rained. I think I suffered more because of a lack of pack fitness, for in retrospect some of the scenery is quite striking, reminiscent of landscapes in South East Asia.
During our frequent snack breaks we developed the Percy Scale of Tramping Stupidity™ to help fellow trampers decide if a tramp is stupid, and if so, how stupid?
The scale runs from 0 to 10, but it is possible to surpass 10 by going on an exceedingly stupid tramp – there are no limits. Great Walks are immediately struck out, as is any popular tramp seen on the Tramping in New Zealand Facebook group (such as Mueller Hut). You simply add a point for any of the following: mud (add an extra point if it is native Stewart Island stuff); terrain where you’d need a ladder to get a view; hookgrass; bush lawyer; ongaonga; a Canterbury riverbed; a North Island river if it is brown; any huts that are named unimaginatively (for example, Hurunui No. 3 Hut); gorse; matagouri; cow dung; speargrass; and any tramp where you forgot the toilet paper.
Stupid Tramps™ can be found in the South Island; however, the North Island is rife with opportunities: the Tararua Range, Taranaki hill country or Kaimai Range to begin with.
