HUT HOPPING ALONG THE TARAMAKAU TOPS
Wild Westland on a fine day, or two or three, is just too hard to pass up. It was just such fine weather that tempted three of us over the divide one fine weekend to sample an array of the treats that only the west can offer to keen trampers. Treats like magnificent valley scenery, lush bush, high huts, and open trackless tops where the mind and body can wander at will, seeking routes between the ridges.
The Taramakau River was our entry point, at Aickens just north of Otira. The river offers a broad easy avenue of bouldery riverbed, interspersed with grassy river terraces and tongues of forest descending in an unbroken green wave from high steep ridge tops.
As the weather had been dry for a week or more prior to our
