Pirongia: One Ingredient Per Person

Location: Pirongia

Date: 30th-31st May 2025

Author: Caleb Hall

This was a nice little trip up Pirongia, the biggest pile of dirt and rocks in the otherwise extremely flat Waikato region. The gimmick was simple - our glorious leader, Max, had garnered a reputation on previous trips for only bringing a single type of food along with him (apples, chickpeas, etc). For this trip, there was only one rule: all participants were allowed to bring only a single type of food, with the goal being to be able to trade and barter your single ingredient with everyone else, and hopefully make it through the trip without starving.

In spite of the good weather promised by the forecast, we started out in a light drizzle (thanks Metservice), so everyone was wearing a few layers just in case the rain got heavier. Instead, the weather decided that taunting us would be a much better thing to do, so it cleared up as soon as we started walking. Because of this, everyone warmed up rather quickly, and stopped a couple times in the first hour to take off a layer. Everyone, that is, except Max, who did not take off just a layer. By my count he took off 3 layers, leaving him hiking shirtless for a while. At this point I was starting to get rather worried that we might be showing up to the hut with him wearing just his undies (or less), so I was rather relieved when we got out of the forest and onto a very windy ridgeline, where he was forced to put some layers back on.

As we made our way up the mountain, we stopped often to take in the fantastic view. The reason that the view was so fantastic was that we were in the middle of a cloud, and were unable to see anything much more than 20m away. This was fantastic news, as it meant that we were never reminded of the existence of Hamilton, which is normally visible from Pirongia on a clear day. 

Artist’s interpretation of the view from the summit

At the hut, we were greeted by a few other travellers, but more importantly (and disturbingly), a shrine to the one and only Danny Devito.

After stopping to admire this, we got hungry, and it quickly became clear that part of our plan had failed: Nobody was particularly interested in bartering for food. Instead, most people were perfectly content to share all of our food commune-style, which made it rather entertaining to watch those who were looking to barter figure this out in real time. Ashwin was particularly sold on bartering, as I watched him refuse to accept free food from someone else, only accepting it once he’d traded some of his for it.  

Luckily we all eventually figured out the status quo and got to making our meals from the following assortment of ingredients: Ham, salami, dehydrated chilli, rice, muesli bars, chickpeas, sausages, tuna, and cheese, with chocolate for dessert. In spite of how random the assortment was, the actual meal was very nice.

After that and a few rounds of card games, we slept and headed down the next morning without much fuss (apart from the continued extreme wind and cloud cover).