Tag: williapike

Callaghans Ridge (Goldsborough) Tramp: William Pike

It was raining. Not enough to cancel the trip but enough to make everyone freezing cold and miserable. What could this terrible trip be? A school trip of course. 

Okay, I should probably back up. Afterall it wasn’t too bad at the beginning. The car ride was nice too. On the 28th of September 2022, Room 8 went on the Callaghans Ridge walk. It was a grey drizzly day but we were excited. I think. I’m not sure if that horrible feeling in my stomach was excitement or dread. Moving on! Once we’d done a check to make sure everyone had the right gear (they didn’t) we loaded into our cars. We drove out to Kumara with little and awkward conversation in the car. Upon arrival everyone got confused and lost and drove away and we were ditched in the rain and we didn’t start the walk for half an hour. Fun times. Ms Kemp handed out a treasure hunt for us to do. I was with Hayley and Danica. 

We hadn’t walked for very long (it felt like it though) when my knee started to play up. I’d hurt a week or so prior and I was hoping it would be fine. Alas it would not be. Anyways I ended up getting one of Shannan’s walking stick things that he’d gotten off Ms Kemp. It helped a bit but I was still quite slow so I ended up at the back. We walked for ages in the cold rain feeling really, really uncomfortable. 

After walking what felt like 1000000000000000 km Ms Kemp randomly announced to us that we needed to walk off the track – which she had been telling us not to do the whole time because of the mine shafts- and build a bivvy. I was with Danica and Jessica for bivvy building and we got a tarpaulin and some rope to build it with. Danica was really good at making the bivvy. I think our bivvy was finished first, it was good at keeping the rain out too. So we huddled under it to eat our lunch. It was probably the best part of the day. But good things never last. Back into the rain for us.

I could describe the next hour or so but it was pretty much same. Just being cold, at the back, spending all of my time walking and jumping across and around the big mud puddles and wet clay unlike some of my classmates who went from white shoes to brown. Reaching the end was amazing. It felt incredible to know that ‘Hey Harper, you did great! You didn’t die! Thats awesome! Plus you never have to do that horrible hell-forsaken walk again! Great job!’. We waited under a shelter for around half an hour waiting for the cars. Charlotte handed out chocolate. Charlotte is awesome. 

The car ride back was wet but there was a lot more talking. Angus treated us to some of his amazing singing, Molly yelled at him, Jessica and I cheered him on. Plus, seat warmers! That was good. When I got home the first thing I did was have a bath BECAUSE DO YOU KNOW HOW COLD I WAS IT WAS LIKE I’D GONE FOR A THREE WEEK TRIP IN ANTARCTICA AND FALLEN IN THE ICY WATER MULTIPLE TIMES! Never again.