“A Mish a Day” #97 The Havelock Adventure – Part Three. Havelock Valley. Hakatere Conservation Park.19.5.2020. I’m sure many of us have planned adventures and then seen the weather gods lining up the opposite weather than you require. But it is the times when the weather plays ball that keep you coming back into the mountains again and again. As we have no control over mother nature and her many moods, all we can do is hope for the best and deal with what we get when out on a mish…
During the two nights we had camped in the remote reaches of the Havelock Valley my tent’s fabric had barely made a flutter. The weather was what could only be described as perfect for camping amongst the rock and snow giants of the Havelock..
After one of the best sleeps I had had in months we were up early-ish the next morning, shaking the ice off my frozen tent and packing up. Knowing we had to somehow get back across the maze at Carneys Creek we kept to ourselves for the pack-down part of the day. With the Jimny loaded it was time to turn around and head back to civilization. We got off to a flying start and were able to retrace the ground we had covered the day before. But just like the day before, when things seemed easy you knew it was going to become the opposite sooner rather than later. We got to within 20m of easy ground after taking what we thought was a short cut. We were stopped by a wall of rocks pushed up by Carneys Creek when in flood, and had to turn back and retrace our ‘track’ for a good 45 minutes before picking a completely different place to get through. After negotiating Carneys Creek (easily the most difficult part of the mish), we knew the rest of the way was pretty straight forward and we stopped for a brew at Camp Creek, near our first night’s campsite. We were there just in time to see a couple of Microlight Aircraft take off from the small airstrip at Growler Hut and creep into the bluebird sky. As we made our way out we passed heaps of other trucks in the Rangitata, and each truck we stopped to have a chat with asked the same exact question “Did ya shoot anything”…seriously, the exact same question from each truck! It was awesome to see plenty of other New Zealanders out enjoying their freedom, but I don’t know how many of them would have pushed on as far as the mighty Suzuki Jimny had on it’s very successful first outing. The first mission of many…
