Mt Climie to Cross Creek Run

Ramash wanted to do a good mission this weekend and he suggested that we do the Mt Climie – Climie Creek, Cross Creek mission I’d investigated a while ago.
It was terribly planned – I got up late, forgot to bring a drybag, fogot lunch and almost missed the train. Nevertheless Ramash, Jamie and me headed out.

The first major fork we encountered.
The plan was to head up Mt Climie, then drop down a creek into Climie Creek and then wind out way out toward the Rimutaka Rail Trail. From there, we’d zoom down the hill to Cross Creek, where Ramas’s Angel of a wife, Jo, would pick us up.

Jamie was not sure that this whole plan was a good one, but he came along anyway – There was talk of this run being called “Caspar’s Last Mission” or “Caspar’s Calamity”. However, we took “Ramash’s Route” which prompted Jamie to say that he was leaning towards calling it “Caspar’s Awesome Mission” which was a step up!

Cruising down at speed.
The rivers and creeks were really lovely and untouched – there were a lot of small gorges which kept things interesting (which we like). At one point I managed to get separated from Ramash and Jamie, although I still claim that they got seperated from me.

Emerging from a gorged section

The main river.

Jamie exploring a bluffy bit

A beautiful bit of gorge. It actually looked a lot better than this picture, as it’s overexposed here. We didn’t go this way!

The bush bit all done – just 7km of pounding on the railtrail to go!

Emerging from the summit tunnel.

All in all, it really was a great sunday mission – not too short, not too long. And the coke and pies from joe when we got in the car were just FANTASTIC!!!! Thanks Jo!

Totara Flats – Cone Ridge

Nadine and I decided to head out on a wee tramp to explore the Wiohine river part of the Tararuas.

Caspar and Mud.
The track along the Wiohine river was pretty rough, as it receives a lot of traffic. We took nearly 4 hours to walk a track that DOC said was a 3 hour walk.

Nearing the end of Day 1 – Totara Flats.
We were looking forward to the hut at this point, as we’d started late and were getting a hungry. Nadine was convinced that we’d have to share with 57 other people, as there were some mini busses at the road-end. As it turned out, there were only 6 of us, including the famous Tony Gates, resident Tararua Adventure Nutter and Crazy River Tuber. He spent the night wowing us with tales of craziness and feats of endurance. He then slept outside! A very hard man indeed.

The Hut the next day – and what a day!
Next day was absolutely fantastic. Clear skies and no wind at all. We simply had to do the tops – although we were a little hesitant as Tony said it took him and his mate 7.5 hours to the carpark – Cone ridge – Totara Flats hut. Nevertheless, we headed out.

Halfway up Cone Ridge.
It was a pretty steep climb, but Nadine did well. She’s getting pretty fit from the regular thursday night runs we’ve been doing.

Mt Hector and the Beehives. Hmm, that could be a good name for a band.
The view from the top was fantastic.

East to Masterton

The Cone is ahead!!

The dress-circle from the top
We had a nice lunch and dropped down to the Cone Saddle and then along the ridge back to the Wiohine road end. All in all we did it in 7 hours, which was pretty good I reckon!

Nadine HATED this brige – it was one of the biggest swing bridges we’ve crossed, and was about 60-80 meters up.

Mainginoka – Cow Ridge – Blue Range Tramp

For a really nice write-up, read Jamie’s blog about this one (esp the shenanigans at the start )

Start – note the important package from CourierPost that greg is carrying

Penny got confused and thought the tree was Jamie – that’s easy to do.

After my clever attempt to leap across the stream using a rotten branch as a prop.

The Roaring Stags

One of many huge trees on the way up to Cow ridge hut.This is about halfway up.

A welcome site – Cow ridge hut!

It was getting a bit cold by this stage (esp in my wet jacket – courtesy of the fall into the creek earlier). We had a fantastic dinner and ate a lot of lollies. The wind was ferocious and tried to blow the hut away for the rest of the night.

One of the prettiest shots of dunny I have seen in a while.

Hiding from the crazy wind in a bush at the top of Cow Ridge. We decided to cut our planned route short by heading along Cow Ridge and then getting Greg to run back to the car at Cow Saddle, while we headed of the Blue Range exit.

Jamie’s look after penny said that the wind was just a gentle breeze

More wind!!

And…. takeoff!!!

After coming down off the ridge, we finished the blue range ridge at about 3 and then worried for about half an hour, as Greg hadn’t turned up yet. As we were discussing how we were going to deal with this, he turned up. Apparently the track along the river going back was non-existant, so there was a lot of bashing involved, which slowed him up a lot – a great effort considering!

Karipoti Pain Fest

Jamie rang up in the morning and said “Lets go and ride the Karipoti”, so we did. The Karipoti consists of three big hills, two of which are quite nasty.
They are even nastier when you are trying to keep up with Jamie. Jamie was feeling pretty good – and he’d just finished a research gig that involved
him having to cycle for hours and hours each week – so he was on fire. The the only thing about me on fire was my legs.

Just about the only view we had all day. A nice one though!

The Karapoti is a great hard ride though – it really tests your balance, endurance and ability to ingest mud. My balance was not so hot, as I endo’d in the boulder garden. Jamie said it looked quite funny.

Is he going to do it?

That’s it, Jamie has had enough. The bike is going over the bank!
Once Jamie had retrieved his bike (jk) we hoofed it out of there – it got dark on us and we had to do the last few kms as fast as we could in near darkness. If it had got totally dark, we would have taken a lot longer!

Belmont Rogaine

Greg asked me to partner him on this wee 6 hour rogaine in the Belmont Hills. It’s a beautiful area of regenerating bush, scrub and open farmland.
After umming and aaring, I managed to make it along – I’m glad I did – it was a great event, despite me getting cramps and greg stuffing his ankle,
we managed to limp home into first place!

Preparation for the big event.

Yay! Another control!

Greg enhancing the view of Lower Hutt

Planting and Rubbish Collection Day

Jamie invited me on this planting expedition. I misheard him when he said “Island Bay” and heard instead “Kapiti Island”, hence was keen as mustard to get out there and do some planting.
Nevertheless, it was very rewarding. We got a lot of plants into the ground.

Planter dudes!

Then me and Jamie headed out to Evans bay to do a mini-beach cleanup. It was even worse than I expected. The rubbish was pretty hard to get out too, as it was jammed between the rocks.
Ramash came to give us a hand too, so that made 3 of us.

Jamie’s first handful of rubbish from between the rocks

Welcome to Wellington, jewel in the crown of New Zealand…
Jamie’s next organised clean-up had about 10 people, and the next had 50, which was a big improvement!

Akatarawa Saddle to Otaki Forks

Jo dropped us off at the Akatarawa Saddle and then cruised round to Otaki forks where she would meet us after our run along the track.

Limbering up for the Ordeal Ahead
Much of the talk of the day was about whether Ramash’s 4WD van could negotiate the terrain. He made some big claims which have not been tested yet .

View out near the Maymorn Junction

The famous Dress Circle
It was a pretty relentless climb up to the Maymorn junction, and then a super fast descent to the valley. Weeeeee!!!

Me testing out my new (hopefully) waterproof camera.
We met Jo halfway along the valley and had a relaxing jog out.

Part of an old sawmill used to denude the forests of this area. (Otaki forks)

Otaki Beach Visit

Crazy dog adds a touch of movement.

I loved the colors of the day.

Lone horserider.

Petone Beach Festival

Another moody start to the day on wellington harbour

This one was called “Stairway to Success” – I’m not so sure I want to achieve that kind of success.

Explosion of flames

Mt Climie Climb

Me Jamie and Ramash decided that we had better go out and conquer Mt Climie – it had been taunting us for months. Little did we know of the horrendous run-out steep sections that were to come! To think that Jamie wanted to do reps!

Mt Climie Peak 2, looking from Peak 1

At the top (sorry no pictures of going up – I’ve blocked out those traumatic memories). Jamie can be seen in the distance. Ramash can’t, cos he’s not dressed in orange!

Looking east towards Featherston and Masterton

Looking over to Featherston

We then turned our bikes around and had an awesome descent valleywards.