Regular contributor Kevin Isemonger attended the New Zealand 4WD Association’s annual general meeting and was lucky enough to drive all five trips organised as part of the weekend. This is part one of his account.
For the 50th Anniversary of the NZFWDA it was decided to take it all back to where it started and host the event at Wairakei Resort just north of Taupō – with the help of the Taupō 4WD Club.
Last year my wife and I attended the NZFWDA AGM in Methven which was preceded by five days of trips rightly entitled the ‘Bolder Bash’. Unfortunately for the Taupō Club – this set the bar quite high. The Taupō Club is small, so the task at hand required quite a commitment from the entire club to succeed – and I am very pleased to say that I pity the next club, because they smashed it.
Methven saw a total of 53 vehicles attend the five trips – so were broken up into two groups hitting the same tracks on different days. With fewer members, the Taupō Club could only run single trips with fewer vehicles, so unfortunately many association members missed out with a maximum of 18 vehicles on the largest run.
My wife and I decided to stay at the Wairakei Resort for the full duration – leaving Auckland on Sunday afternoon – with the hope of less-than-a-panic to get to the meeting point the next morning. The basic logistics basing ourselves at a hotel was the inevitable issue of no kitchen to prepare an early Breakfast and lunches for the day – as the documentation clearly stated there would be no fuel or food stops along the way.
Monday 20 May, we all met our guide Cam Raupi at the car park at Wairakei Resort and headed southwest around the lake to ‘Go-Bush’ near the top of the Waituhi Saddle between Kuratau and Taumarunui. I was surprised to see only eight vehicles on the run for the first day, but the lower number proved to be beneficial due to the track conditions.
‘Go-Bush’ is a privately owned 3,000-acre 4WD paradise extending from SH41 to as far south as the Whanganui River – consisting of old and regenerating native forest. The area now occupied by the camping facilities was the site of a sawmill in the early part of the 20th century and a tramway extended from this site all the way to Taumarunui for the timber to be loaded onto the Railway.
We aired down and started our climb up an old timber track on deep dark soft soil through dense native bush – to pop out on a ridge track with stunning views south over Tongariro National Park. With a suitable application of rain over night, the tracks were very greasy – which brings us to the way down. I can’t remember if this one was called the ‘Bob-Sledge’ or ‘The Luge’ but suffice to say, it was appropriately named. Radio communications were essential to ensure each vehicle had reached a safe location after each section of the descent. We dropped 250m in just over 1km on soft topsoil tracks, so it was more of a semi-controlled slide down to the camp for lunch.
The afternoon was another loop south of the camp back up another densely covered ridge which required generous proportions of horsepower and winching to attain the top ridge. One short section started out with the use of a ‘launch-pad’ which soon turned to a slick surface resulting in a couple of vehicles sitting across the track with their bum down a bank. I decided to let the tyres do the work and made a quiet take-off to build momentum once in a straight line. It worked until a tight left-hand corner with a step up and a large tree on the right to bounce off necessitated an abrupt halt – but an easy recovery. The next section was a lot wetter – with a swampy section leading nicely to a steep greasy section before hitting the ridge line. Deep railway track ruts leading straight to an exceptionally large kahikatea stalled us, requiring a slow winch sideways out of the ruts.
It was dark by the time we got back on the road – and due to the tacky viscosity of the soil, my wheel balancing was way out resulting in a bumpy ride back to Taupō.
Tuesday 21 May. We woke to heavy rain and met John Wilton for our trip into Pureora Forest. We again headed out west from Taupō to air down on the side of the road before heading up a clay track that would have been drivable if it weren’t for the rain but required some winching for the first vehicle to ascend – and then subsequent vehicles to pull the next vehicle up. What awaited us on the other side caused some consternation. A positive cambered cliff face was our way down the other side. It was not possible to see what laid ahead due to the steepness of the decent but suffice to say, the rock sliders lost a bit of paint.
Trip leader John Wilton wisely stood back to allow the bigger vehicles to knock the tops off before he came through, but at the top of the cliff his vehicle slid sideways dropping the left-front wheel into the right-hand rut and standing the vehicle on its nose with the right rear precariously up in the air. A winch was attached to pull the ute down, forcing it to pop the wheels into the correct slots – but Johns rapid decent down the rock face came to an abrupt halt halfway down, cast on a large tree root. Some vigorous rocking by Darren and I displaced the ute to career on down the hill, leaving us grappling to find traction as the next vehicle hurtled down the slope. The vehicle behind that popped a bead, so was changing the tyre on the greasy track – using a winch rope high in a tree to stabilise the vehicle – and still the rain came down.
We then ascended a low ridge with several vehicles struggling to gain traction – with one sliding sideways. A winch to a handy tree stump arrested the movement, while we attempted to move another vehicle up the next greasy hill climb. An exit strategy was executed, and we made our way back to a formed road to a large intersection where lunch was a steamy affair in our vehicles followed by a visit to the geographical centre of the North Island using an excellent flooded road.
