The Tararua walk was only a couple hours drive north of Wellington so the two other trampers and I were going to leave home at early Saturday morning. John and I were both awakened at 4:35am by a jolt – John thought it a heavy truck outside, but it felt to me to be from the ground…an earthquake. Was this it? Was this the beginning of something more?? Turns out that we were feeling from 430km away, the Christchurch earthquake that registered 7.1 on the Richter scale.
Despite this troubling start, we had a great hike, starting from the Ohau Road carpark north of Otaki. It was a beautifully clear day. Even so, much of the track was ankle and higher deep in mud. Not a cloud in the sky when we went to sleep in the red roofed hut below. But by morning it was raining buckets, so we decided to take the shorter route back. It was still magnificent, many ferns and gorgeous old trees, resplendent in their mossy sheaths.
The final time I joined the club on a walk was for the Nydia Track in the Marlborough Sounds. We left Wellington by ferry Friday after work for the 3 hour passage from the North Island to the South, drove an hour to the Pelorus Bridge campground. The following morning half the group got a ride with their bikes to one end of the Nydia Track and then the rest of us got picked up at the trail's other end. The cyclists did the whole 27km track in one long day (walking almost 50% of it). We trampers broke it into two days, staying the night at Nydia Bay. Very nice easy tramp for anyone of moderate fitness. Mostly in the bush, but lovely bush.
The last of this trilogy, the Tongariro Crossing, was independent of the club, with our friends Robert, Christine and their older daughter, Caitlyn. John and Ruthie stayed home with Claire, Eleanor and Grace. We drove up Friday afternoon, did the crossing on Saturday and headed back to Wellington on Sunday, in time to watch Claire in Wellington’s Annual Christmas parade. Claire is front and center. Note the short sleeves and sun hats in the crowd.
The walk was pretty strenuous for the first third, lots of climbing, but well graded or with stairs for the most part. Spectacular and wondrously odd scenery – you spend much of the time in craters or climbing over volcano sides. One can climb Ngauruhoe, the most active of all the volcanoes and from its top see, at the same time, the shores of both sides of the North Island. Ngauruhoe is also famous as the Mountain of Doom from the Lord of the Rings. It was too cloudy they day we did the walk so I didn’t attempt to climb it’s summit. I LOVED the walk, but found that being part of a continuous stream of people took something away from it. John did the tramp a few weeks later in clearer weather, so I've included some of his pictures.
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| Mt Ngauruhoe/Mountain of Doom |
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| Robert Tromop, Christine Van Dalen, Caitly Tromop-Van Dalen and me |
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