Beyond Trotters Gorge

Sunday the 4th September 2016

Five of us met at the car park at 8am and headed down to the Trotters Gorge Reserve. I picked up John and Jane on the way and when we got to the Reserve we were met by the Rickerby family. Karen is the daughter of one of our previous club members Dave Sinclair who passed away about 10 years ago too young. Karen had heard about the track the club had named after her dad, but had never been up it before, so it was a nice thing for them to do on father’s day.

The day was cloudy and cool so it was on with the day packs and we headed off up the valley. Trotter’s creek was running a bit high so it was wet feet all round with the 6 creek crossings up to the start of Dave’s track. The club had spent a day in February cleaning up the track and it looked like it had been well used since then. Everyone enjoyed the ½ hour hike up the marked route and a snack break was taken when we climbed up out of the valley. It was then on to the forest road and up past South Peak.

A cool wind had now picked up from the nor/east, so it was good to find the track back in the forest that goes past North Peak. By now the mist and fog and a bit of drizzle had set in so it was no use in climbing up North Peak for any views. At this point we split into two groups, with Maurice, Phyllis and Ross taking the Rickerby family back. They headed back around South Peak, down Fantail Rd and had Lunch at the University Hut before heading back to the cars.

Our group of four carried on to see if there was still a track out onto the top end of Easons Rd. Last time I was up there the track we had used was covered in gorse, but the track we were on was a good track and we had seen the old track but it looked a bit over grown.

So we stayed on the good track and soon we popped out onto Easons Rd about 3km down from the communication tower.

Our plan was to walk up the road to just before the tower and take another track down to Pigeon Bush. The wind, mist and fog were not going to make it a good walk up the road so we popped back into the bush to have lunch out of the wind where we decided we would go back to South Peak and drop down to Pigeon Bush from there.

On the way back we had great views not but we were soon on the track down to Pigeon Bush which was getting a bit over grown in gorse in places.

We had permission from the farmer to follow Pigeon creek down through the gorge with plenty of creek crossings and wet feet along the way. We soon met up with Trotters creek which we followed back down to the University hut, where we had a break before heading back to the car. The whole day took about 6 and half hours and about 19km.

Thanks to Maurice, Phyllis, Ross F, John, Jane, Debbie who was out on her first Club trip and Karen, Georgia, Riley, Marek and Nigel  for their company for the day

Neville