Day 42: Mangaokewa River Track to Ngaherenga Campsite (923-969)

Tuesday, January 10

This morning I woke to rain pattering on my tent. As much as I like sleeping in when it's raining, we had to hit the trail early today because we planned on hiking over 40 kilometers. It was mostly a light drizzle and by 6:30 we were all packed up.

The trail from the campsite began with a steep uphill and by the time we made it to the top it had nearly stopped raining. It stayed cloudy and humid out and the trail was a bit more precarious than the last few kilometers of our day yesterday. It made me realize that while I was rather miserable in the forest the other day and feeling sorry for myself, that means the trail is manageable.

Today's trail can best be described as a combination of the precarious goat trail in the third forest where a slip would mean falling a few meters into a river, and the overgrown river trail next to the highway in and out of Mercer where you couldn't see quite what you were stepping on under the brush. When you're on a trail like this you're concentrating so hard on every step you don't really have the focus to spend on feeling sorry for yourself. I was glad Julia and Puff Puff were there with me so I didn't have to traverse that section by myself.

We had a little over 9 kilometers of this trail from our campsite to the start of a road walking section. Toward the end of the trail we ran into some bulls. One gave us a little start when Puff Puff tried to shoo it away from a stile we had to climb over. But she shoo-ed it really well and it jumped away from us and left us alone until we were over the fence and stile.

The last kilometer or so was on a nice farm road and then we made it to the real gravel road a little after 10. We were so excited to get off that trail!! Once we were positive we were on the road we did a little dance to celebrate.

I usually don't look too forward to road walking, but we had had a rough morning.

The road walking was pretty good and uneventful. At one point we saw a sea of sheep. I think they may have been herding them into smaller pens to transport or shear them.

We stopped somewhere the TA app said we could get water, but the river was way to far down to get water from. And where it wasn't a steep drop it would have involved navigating gorse (prickly bushes).

After our break and shortly after making it to the highway I saw Julia and Puff Puff stopped before we had planned to take another break (they hike faster than me so I had lost sight of them for a bit). As I got closer I realized there were more than two people with big packs standing there. It was Erinn and Trevor! We all started walking again and Erinn filled me in on what the two of them had been up to since we saw each other in Hamilton. We walk the same pace, so Trevor was walking with Puff Puff and Julia for a bit and I was walking with Erinn.

It was really good to catch up and I learned they had been hiking with Kristen. She had just left earlier in the morning than they had. All five of us were hoping to make it to Ngaherenga Campsite in the Pureora Forest. There weren't really any other options for camping until then, so we were hopeful Kristen would be at the campsite when we arrived.

We took one more break around 5 and then we only had 10 more kilometers to go! We finally made it to the campsite sometime around 7:30. Julia, Puff Puff and I walked up to the campsite calling out Kristen's name because we were really sure she'd be there. As we came up on the campsite she poked her head out of her tent. It was so good to see her and we talked as we put our tents up and ate dinner. Then we were exhausted and ready for bed.

Some of the river trail. I didn't take photos when it was really bad, so this was a nice section without a river to fall into.

Puff Puff got a good action shot of me on the river trail. I was walking on slippery grass, trying not to slip down into the river.

Puff Puff and Julia after getting off the worst part of the river trail.

Julia and Puff Puff rocking the road section

I forgot to take a photo of the campsite with all of us, but it was a nice campsite with a toilet, water spicket, picnic tables and a garbage can.