Day 23 – Macetown to Roses Hut

Today I set out on the Motatapu track.  This track has some local notoriety in New Zealand.  It was built recently, as a result of negotiations between the New Zealand government and Shania Twain.  Shania wanted to buy a large tract of land, the Motatapu station.  The government said that in order to buy this land, as a foreigner, they wanted to require her to build a publicly accessible tramping track across it.  This happened to connect an important gap in the nascent Te Araroa Trail.  In 2006 the track was completed, along with three beautiful new huts.  The farmhands down at the station are evidently quite vigilant about keeping trampers on the track – I’ve heard several stories of trampers who wandered off of the tops to take the easy-looking river route down below, only to be intercepted and told to walk right back up to the track.

Before I reached the Motatapu Valley, though, I had to get up to and over Roses Saddle.  A sign at the trailhead indicated I could walk along the Arrow River most of the way, saving time and effort versus the marked route, which sidled up and down a series of hills.  The river route sounded appealing, but I was worried I would miss the turnoff, where the marked route left the river.  So I followed the markers, figuring I would spend a bit of extra effort but couldn’t get lost.  It was a lovely day, and not too long – I rolled in to Roses Hut around three in the afternoon.  There, sure enough, was the group that had camped with me at Macetown the previous night.  I was bracing myself to be sociable, but when I opened the door my first greeting, from an older woman, was “You were still asleep in that hammock when we left this morning!”  As if she was surprised I ever got out of bed and started hiking.  Everyone else in the group was quite nice and considerate, but this introduction quite put me off, so I whiled away most of the evening out on the porch reading my book.

Reading the hut book was fun, because it went all the way back to the opening of the trail in 2006, including an entry from Geoff Chapple as part of the crew leading the pre-opening day hiking to check out the trail for Te Araroa.  There was also an entry a few days later from the Roses family, mentioning that an ancestor had once hiked this area, and the hut was named after them!