Bags, yes!
Mina and Jason Holder were determined to tick off all 58 huts in the Tararua Range in only 12 months. The ambitious mission could have ended after injury, or during New Zealand’s sevenweek lockdown. By Nikki Macdonald.
Ticking off the Tararua Range’s 58 huts and 15 gnarly peaks in 12 months was already ambitious but Mina and James Holder failed to anticipate the seven-week, Covid-shaped hole in their plan.
When Mina started cranking out Meat Loaf, James knew things were bad. The relentless rain had made a joke of their waterproofs, the pink trap-line tapes serving as route markers had disappeared, and what was supposed to be a steep but short 1-kilometre descent to South Ohau Hut was stretching towards darkness.
It was Christmas Eve and the Holders had less than a month left to complete their mission of visiting all 58 huts in the Tararua Range, north of Wellington, within 12 months. They needed that hut.
‘‘I suddenly realised I was freezing cold,’’ Mina recalls.
‘‘We could not find the tape and we knew there was a creek at the bottom. We started to think that creek might be impassable. I was dithering – I don’t know what to do and I don’t feel great.’’
As she does when her spirits need lifting, Mina sang. Sometimes it is Madonna, sometimes The Bangles. Usually, the rule is she can only sing when running. Crawling and sliding through the Tararuas’ punishingly impenetrable bush, concessions were made.
‘‘When I am at my worst, James knows I will crank out Meat Loaf,’’ Mina says.
‘‘That is her low point and that becomes, obviously, my low point,’’ James laughs.
He made the call – damn the hut, they were going back up.
More trail runners than trampers, the Holders were new to this hutbagging lark. In 2014, Mina – an educator with Project Jonah – ran a marathon a day to become the first woman to run the Te Araroa trail.
James, 37, does triathlons, in between running the heart/lung machine during cardiac surgery.
Mina, now 40, was running Wellington’s notoriously limbcrunching Tip Track Marathon when another competitor mentioned he was trying to tick off all the Tararua huts and the 15 peaks taller than 1500m within a year. It sounded like a fun goal for 2020.
On the wall of their home on Wellington’s south coast they pinned a topographic map of the range’s parallel spines which run for 100km, from Manawatu¯ Gorge to the Remutaka Range.
But it started with disaster. Four hours into their first trip, on January 6, 2020, Mina fell with a full pack, smashing her leg into a
tree stump. The bruise swelled to an egg and her leg blackened to the ankle. She still has an impact dent below her knee.
They were just getting back into the swing of things, when the country was plunged into tramping-forbidden Covid lockdown. They tried to keep fit as the mission seemingly slipped away. But as they trudged through winter, humping 6-15kg packs across frosted ridges, the map on the wall steadily accumulated highlighted huts. Maybe it was still possible. If they redid the two huts they bagged on that first trip, that would buy them another two weeks. Then spring hit with gales and unrelenting downpours, making river travel impossible.
But the Holders are not quitters. On Christmas Day, after their miserable failed attempt at South Ohau Hut, the sun shone on Te Matawai Hut, where they spent
the night. They dried their clothes, Mina had a cup of tea and they got back to it.
For the next month, they were ‘‘more in than out’’, walking and running 10-17 hours per day, bagging huts, returning home just to wash and change.
About 10pm on January 14, 2021, the couple completed their mission, with three days to spare.
The last trip included bagging one of the range’s most remote huts, Carkeek, which an annual Victoria University expedition describes as ‘‘the equivalent of going to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up . . .TWICE. Over much more difficult and challenging terrain’’.
It had taken 37 days and 401 hours. James forgot the hip flask, so they celebrated with a packet of chips.
The low points were many, when the Tararuas lived up to their reputation. Mountaineer John Pascoe put it best, in his 1952 book Land Uplifted High: ‘‘For sheer miserable monotony of contour, rigour of weather, and bleakness of outlook, it is hard to beat the Tararuas.’’
After crossing the Broken Axe Pinnacles, which Mina describes as ‘‘pretty exposed and pretty sketchy’’, the couple again had to abort a hut diversion, after a ‘‘beautiful little spur’’ on the map morphed into a jungle of leatherwood.
‘‘Doom,’’ says Mina simply. On another trip, bush-bashing 1.8km from Punga Hut to the northernmost shelter, North Mangahao Bivvy, took three hours
of sliding, crawling and scrambling. Normal walking pace is about 4km an hour.
But despite the low points, James declares: ‘‘We were quite into it. We were always on that edge, not knowing whether we were going to make it. That was exciting, kept driving us on.’’
Looking back, the year taught them so much about navigating and being comfortable in the bush.
They challenged themselves, climbing the Main Range’s infamous ladder and negotiating craggy peaks.
Mina learnt that bush-bashing does not bring her joy. They discovered huts so bad you would rather sleep outside, like the manky Thornhills Hut. And cute orange kennel-like hideaways in glorious spots, like McGregor Biv.
And when the mountains popped out from the gloom, they remembered why they were there. ‘‘On a good day in the Tararuas, you just can’t beat it,’’ Mina says. ‘‘One day coming up from Dundas Hut, we could see Mt Ruapehu, Mt Taranaki, the South Island and both coasts.
‘‘That morning, we got up at sunrise and got up on to the tops.
‘‘That was magic. It was worth all the suffering.’’
The couple had planned to bike the length of New Zealand in April but at some stage on that sodden Christmas Eve trudge, James announced: ‘‘I actually don’t want to do that bike ride’’.
Instead, they are planning a relaxed holiday, with books and tourist stops. ‘‘We decided we would do what normal people do.’’