Hawkes Bay Holiday

 

View from Te Mata Peak

Sunrise Hut

Heading up to Armstrongs Saddle

Looking through the Beech forest

Earlier this month The Scout and I had a weeks holiday in the Hawkes Bay.  Famous for it's art deco architecture, vineyards, and known as the fruit bowl of New Zealand, it was sad to see some of the devastation caused by the 2023 floods from Cyclone Gabriel.

We spent a couple of days wandering around Napier and Hastings, taking in the beautiful art deco buildings that were built after the terrible Napier earthquake of 1931.  We went up Te Mata Peak, but unfortunately fog hindered the stunning views we should have seen.

It was to good an opportunity not to hike somewhere new while visiting the Hawkes Bay, so we decided to go to the Ruahine Ranges and walk the Sunrise Hut track.

It's described as an easy track, and in some ways it is. It's wide, beautifully graded, had hardly any mud or gnarly root areas, but it's uphill all the way. Not gonna lie, it was hard work.

We didn't have a lot of visibility of the surrounding valleys due to low clouds. However about an hour after our arrival at the hut, the cloud lifted and we were able to venture along the ridge to Armstrong Saddle, sight of a plane crash back in 1935.

As usual lots of mosses, lichens and fungi captured my attention.

After a rather rough nights sleep, we were up early to see the sunrise. Not quite as impressive, as we'd hoped, and rather cold but with everyone from the hut up and watching and chatting, it was quite a cheerful start to the day.

A quick wander up to the ridge behind the hut, revealed the valleys we couldn't see yesterday.

It was downhill all the way back (though that's hard work too) and we had a lot more visibility compared to the previous day.

Weekending - Hiking to the Motutapere Hut

 

Back in June, The Scout and I embarked on a wee hiking adventure to Motutapere Hut in the Kaimai Ranges.  

We started at the Hot Springs Road end of the Tuahu track, then went left at the junction on the North/South track to the hut.  The track itself is an 11km return trip, with the Tuahu being relatively flat and not too hard.  This all changes dramatically, once you start on the north/South track.  There were short steep uphill sections, and short steep downhills, always mud,  rough steps, rock cliff faces to clamber up, and ladders/staircases attached to rocks.  There were times when I thought the strong winds were going to blow me over.   It was definitely a challenge and a little outside my comfort zone. When we got to the little unbookable three bunk hut, we found there were 6 people there already.  Thankfully we had our small tent, so while we spent a cold rather sleepless night in it, we were dry.

The return track was just as hard, and I have to admit, sometimes I did it easier to sit down and slide down certain areas, rather than risk falling. .  Definitely worth doing for the great views out to the Bay of Plenty coast.