Club Night November 2019
Herbert forest tracks are now open and in good condition apart from a few trees down, near the bottom of Hoods Creek track. Last trap check along the tracks saw 5 rats, 2 hedgehogs and 4 mice caught.
A gecko survey is being carried out in the forest.
Trip Reports
A lot of wildlife were seen on a coastal trip from Andersons Lagoon to the Shag River mouth. Shags were nesting and sealions basking on the beach. One even followed the group, swimming along in the surf.
The Wednesday Walkers had day walks to Trig L from Switchback Road, a Hampden historic tour using a map available at Vanessa’s café and a slippery trip to Tabletop via Mile Flat Road. A day was also spent helping Doc plant and release native trees at a reserve near Otekaike.
Coming Tramping Club trips are to Trotters Gorge and Dave’s track, a weekend trip to Brewster Hut at Haast Pass, a bike ride along the Mt. Ida water race and a Dalgety Range traverse from the Haka Pass to the McKenzie Pass. December Club night is the Clubs Christmas Party.
Trips for the January to March 2020 period were arranged.
The nights speaker was Bronwyn McCone who told us about her and a friend’s trip to Nue Island in September.
Nue Island is 260 square kilometers, has one supermarket, one garage and no beaches or rivers. They
hired a car to get around but were told to leave the keys in the car in case it needed to be shifted. They went to two Church services which they couldn’t understand but with fantastic singing and where they had to wear frocks. Covered foot-ware was essential on the coral covered island and snorkeling was enjoyed at low tide in the many inlets. On a fishing trip they caught several tuna and wahu
A lot of taro is grown using a new plot each year and vanilla pods are made into essence.
Supplies either come via the twice a week flights from Auckland or by freighter, which are unloaded by barges and supplies of certain items can run out because of irregular schedules.
Anderson’s Lagoon-Shag River
Sunday, 3rd November
A perfect day for a walk by the seaside: fine, sunny, blue skies, warm with a light north-easterly breeze. Six trampers drove to the end of Anderson Road, off the Goodwood Road east of Palmerston. At about 9.15 we set off walking along the track through a replanted area beside Andersons Lagoon. The lagoon itself was unusually high so the main track was in places under water requiring detours. After about half a km the track reached Stony Creek beach and we turned north, past the closed mouth of the lagoon to the steel ladder which climbed up the cliff. It was not long after high tide, which meant that the beach route would be impassable, so we climbed the ladder and the following zig-zag steps to reach the esplanade walking track which undulated along the clifftops for some two kms, crossing several small streams on the way.
Eventually the track turned down a bank on to the beach. However, waves were still reaching the rocky cliff bottom which marked the entry to the next stretch of beach, so we settled down for a leisurely morning tea while the tide continued to go out. After half an hour or so, we packed up again and clambered over the rocks to reach the sandy beach which would take us to our end point at the mouth of the Shag River. On the way we were entertained by wildlife: rows of shags nesting on rocky ledges like tenements in an old European city. Most nests occupied by one or two adults and a chick – some almost fully fledged and ready to leave home, others still covered in down. Further along, a couple of basking sea lions threatened to bar progress, rearing up and forcing us to walk higher up the beach to get by. A third sea lion was enjoying the surf. A number of tracks across the sand suggested that several more had been in occupation earlier.
A bit after noon, we reached the end of the beach and settled down on the Shag Estuary side of the sand dunes for lunch in the sunshine and sheltered from the light easterly. Just on one o’clock we started heading back south along the now much wider beach, the damp sand providing firm footing. We passed a sea lion heading seawards and then the two we had avoided in the morning, now much more relaxed. When we reached the cove where we had come down from the esplanade track in the morning, we decided to take advantage of the lower tide and tackle the next headland. We managed with a scramble over rocks, made more difficult than expected by a fairly fresh slip which had deposited some room-sized boulders in the way. This brought us out on to the next sandy beach which terminated in a headland which dropped directly into the sea with no rock pile to offer a way round. So it was a climb back up to the track, over the hill, and down to the next beach to the south. This provided good going and the now almost low tide meant that we could negotiate the last headland with relative ease, back to the Stony Creek beach, through the sand hills and along the lagoon-side track to reach the cars just on 3pm. The combination of seascape, cliffs, beach and wildlife had made for an interesting day which was enjoyed by Phyllis, Maurice, Bronwyn, Jane, Bill and John.
Herbert Forest Tracks
IMG_0221The trip scheduled for Sunday 20/10 was replaced with a walk through the Herbert Forest Tracks with the option of rebating the traps.
Only 3 members availed themselves for this event and we did decide to do the traps. The day was very good but due to previous periods of rain the tracks were about as wet as they can be and both the Glenburnie and Hoods Creeks were running high enough to reach to knees when fording some crossings. It was however spectacular to see the creeks like this and any waterfalls were big and noisy. We leapfrogged our way from one trap to another, stopping for lunch at the new seating on the Hoods Creek Track. It was almost too hot to stay there too long. We completed our walk by walking along Couches Rd back to the Swallows Carpark. It was very interesting seeing all the new views right out to the coast following all the logging that has taken place there over the winter. We were all done by 3 pm and considered ourselves lucky at having had a good day out. Thanks to John and Neville for coming out.
Robbie
Herbert Forest Working Bee
A small group of 6 gathered at Goblin Woods and after sorting the jobs to be done the group split into 3 lots of 2. Each if these set off to work in Hoods, Podocarp and Swallows. A variety of jobs were done mostly in returning signage to original order and track maintenance. Two seats were installed in the Hoods. Rebating of DoC 200 was done a few days earlier and traps are now fitted with mousetraps.
Thanks to the team!
Silverpeaks
Sunday 29 September 2019
A good crew of 9 of us met on the Sunday morning all looking for a good day out in the Silver Peaks. We all piled into two vehicles and headed south to the Silver Peaks tracks car park, inland from Waitati.
It was about 9.30am when we started up the Green Ridge track, weather was cool and foggy about the tops, but we were hoping it would clear so we could get some views, yeh right. It took us about an hour on a well maintained track to get to the old green hut site where we took a break before tackling the uphill bit of the track.
After the green hut site the track climbs up out of the bush and on to a exposed ridge that leads up to Pulpit Rock, which was all fogged in. Just before the top, an unmarked track doubles back past a DOC sign that was lying on the ground that reads, ”This is not a maintained track past this point”. This is Rosella Ridge, a roughly cut track that runs the length of the ridge.
The start of the ridge is a bit up and down where we would have got some good views on a good day, but most of the track is through regenerating Manuka which restricted the views anyway.
At point 633m we stopped for lunch in the bush just below a rocky outcrop. After lunch it was another ¾ of an hour till we met up with the Hunters Track which would take us off the ridge and down to the Waikouaiti River.
The Hunters Track descends down through broadleaf forest, quite steeply near the bottom and someone had been up this track lately and had had a big cut back and clean up. So thanks to the people involved with that, you do a good job.
A good cut track led us upstream till we crossed a stream and there was another track leading back into the bush, but with the plan to follow the main stream up to the Eucalypt track we stayed on the good track we were on. This was a bit of a mistake because after crossing the stream couples of times this track leads us into the pine trees. It was decided to miss the Eucalypt track and follow this track, which climbed steeply to start with through the pine trees, past where the Possum track comes up and out on to Mountain Rd.
It was about 1 km back down the road to the vehicles, arriving back about 3.30pm, 6 hours after we had left them. All in all it was a good day out in the Silver Peaks with some good tracks followed in some lovely bush.
Thanks to the 8 other trampers for you great company for the day.
Mike, Vicky, John, Phyllis, Maurice, Julian, Lynette and Bill F
Neville
