The club had a recce to Hartbreak ridge last year, identifying and re marking an old route. Ian has done 2 further trips in and pushed ahead with finding more of the old track and doing some track clearing. The goal for this trip was to push further along trying to find a route through to the Rocks Hut - Totara Saddle track. Ian, Kath and Grant set off from the Hacket car park at 8.30 on a crisp clear autunm day. It is a steep and rough track up this ridge that has 3 distinctive peaks. It was 11.15 before we reached the point where Ian had got to on previous trips. We mostly followed an old track - identified by old ribbon, a few tree blazes and old cut branches. As we identified old marked track we added more ribbon. In one area, Ian had made a new route which we called Ian's deviation, in this area there were tall beech and rimu trees. Beyond Point 596 we reached a flattish open area, that we refered to as "beer bottle flat" because of the presence of some old beer bottles in the tussock. I had done this track in Mar 2001 (club trip, Hartebreak ridge, Totara Saddle, Browning Hut and return via Hacket) and this area was distinctly familiar to me. We followed some cairns across the tussock flat and entered some mature bush. We bush bashed our way through this, stuggling with low vegetation, and tree fall and did not see any sign of markers or cut vegetation. Eventually we came out at a clearing beside a large rocky outcrop and had lunch at 1pm. We decided we did not have time to go further and began our return trip, taking a slightly different route through the bush but still not finding any sign of track markers. From beer bottle flat we followed some cairns in a SW direction but found we then had to swing back to the West to get onto the ridge track. Participants: Ian M, Grant D, and Kath B. (Scribe and Leader)
We had an uneventful trip back - mostly staying on track, and it was a relief to get back to the Whispering Falls Track and a fast stride back to the car park which we reached at 5.15. I don't think we have answered the question - Is it worth making this a more viable track? but I am certainly interested in spending more time to try to push through to the Rocks Hut Totara Saddle track. I am chasing an old NTC newsletters to read the trip report for Mar 2001.