Friday Night
With daylight savings in place, we were most of the way to Atiwhakatu Hut before we needed to turn on our headlamps. With all of us having been over this section of track plenty of times, the fact we couldn't see much wasn't of any concern.
Saturday
We were away by 7am, with Laurayne the trip leader promising a huge day. We wandered up the valley and then up the grunt to Baldy and over to South King where another day of brilliant weather in the Tararuas was before us. The recent not so good weather over the past few days was apparent by all the white powdery snow under our feet. So much for summer? We headed across to the Broken Axe Pinnacles where half of the party chose to go straight over them and the half to sidle around them. The consensus afterwards was that it was only the first few vertical metres that presented a challenge and it is definitely easier just to go straight over them!
By lunch time we had reached the snow sprinked, tussock covered summit of McGregor, offering views across to our destination for the day - Dorset Ridge Hut.
The task for the afternoon was to drop down the McGregor spur and pick up the ground trail from an old track toward Park Forks, from there we could bash our onto Dorset Ridge and onto Dorset Hut. Once we reached the bush the ground trail from the old track was a little patchy but finding our way to the Dorset Creek above the Park Forks was not difficult. It was a pretty little creek, it was late afternoon and there was no time for swimming - Laurayne had promised a huge day and she was right.
We bush-bashed our way up a steep slope to join the spur that lead to Dorset Ridge. Eventually we managed to find our way out of the bushline and up to pt1355 before dropping down from the ridge for a some well earned tucker and sleep at Dorset Ridge Hut.
At 15 hours it sure was a "huge day".
Sunday
The route for Sunday seemed a little more sane, but it was a race for the bus that thankfully was still waiting for us Holdsworth on our way out. Another early start saw us back to Dorset Ridge and up to the trig at the top of Girdlestone (1546m) by 8:40am. We continued the peak bagging as we as ascended and descended Adkin (1460), North King (1535), Middle King (1521) and South King (1531) in time for some earned lunch. From there it was a descent down to Baldy and then back along the Atiwhakatu to Holdsworth.
Not such a huge day this time, afterall it was a mere 12 hours!