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.