North Island Adventures Days 1 and 2 (finally)

Hi. Rachel and I had trouble getting our photos on facebook the last week so that can account for maybe a day of lateness with this post. I haven't gone for a massive tramp as the last post stated because of the weather. I've mostly been in Christchurch turning 21, and otherwise I spent yesterday climbing up Avalanche Peak (a post to come), and the day before that I did that bike ride over the port hills I wrote about ages ago.

Anyways, let me tell you about my adventures on the North Island.

Day 1

Rachel and I got a lift to the airport quite early on Friday October 2nd from Harry which was a great luxury. The flight took about 50 minutes and was totally painless. When we got to Wellington we called the car rental company and they told us they'd send a driver to pick us up. We had an hour long setback because of miscommunication... I was calling the main Apex desk, not the Wellington one, and they'd sent a car to Auckland Airport. Further details aren't worth describing but we met up with a driver who took us to the rental office an hour late. We got the car witha discount of 4 bucks a day (totalling 40 dollars discount) for our unfortunate waiting experience.

We cruised out of Wellington in the rental car.


There was a bit of rain but we were not too discouraged and we headed up to Ruahine Forest Park to a hut I'd read of. We stopped at a beach for a break.


After the beach we drove through Bulls and then up Northeast to the Ruahines through some fantastic scenery.


We got to the start of the tramp to the hut and read that there had been a slip on the track which would increase the time to the hut to 3 hours which was not too great for us as it was 7:30 after we'd had a bite of dinner and organized our packs. We debated camping by the car but decided ultimately to check out the track.

The tramp was flat for about 20 minutes until we reached the detour where the path cut steeply uphill around what we assumed was a slip (too dark to see). We went up, over the slip, and down into a valley before going up the rest of the original path to the hut. Rach thought she'd seen someone coming up behind us with a light and was worried that we'd meet our doom.

Day 2

Tramping in the dark is awesome because the next day you get to see what you tramped and it means the tramp down is nothing like the tramp up.

The hut had gas heating and a gas stove, neither of which I could be bothered to use.


View of the hut on the hill. Fantastic.


We each took an "oh my god the sun is so bright" picture.



Big bridge we'd crossed the night before. When we looked down at night we couldn't see the bottom. This worried Rachel.


A picture of the slip that caused the detour from afar:


The start of the detour going the other way:



The other side of the detour only twenty minutes from the car park:


We hopped in the car and drove out the way we'd come in. We drove through Bulls again but this time took the other route out of town going this time to Wanganui. We passed through Wanganui inquiring about the gorge in which some of LOTR was filmed. We decided to do that drive after the Tongariro Crossing later in our trip and continued on towards Egmont National Park. We followed the road along the coast which claimed to be a surf highway but we did not have any of the exceptional beachside driving we were expecting. Before cutting inland to Egmont mountain we stopped at a black sand beach.


Egmont from a distance:


And much closer (Dawson Falls visitor center):


We checked out how long we thought it would take us to reach the hut (2 hours?) and decided to use a bit of our time walking to Dawson Falls before heading in.


The tramp was not particularly intense. It was a very nice walk though. It had quite a few stairs which Rachel lamented as we climbed up. We discussed why we thought the US didn't have huts and trail maintenance like those in NZ.

Here's the hut.


There were a couple of 30ish kiwis staying here. They tried to snare a possum while cranking drum and base. They set up a slipknot raised by a few pieces of firewood on that porch thing and put some bread out. Nearly caught one. Twice. Those things are dumb.

Oh yeah before nightfall we left our packs at the hut and went for a bit of a walk as we didn't feel we'd earned our rest. We found this swinging bridge not too far back along the trail. We found out the kiwi guys had come from this direction.


And that's the end of day 2. I hope to get up the rest of these pretty rapidly.