Sunday 16 February 2025

Leader: Rob Dey

All 5 of us travelled in one car from Paraparaumu at 7.30am to the Kaitoke carpark and started walking around 8.30am. The first 25 minutes we climbed up 470m to Puffer Saddle. We were welcomed by loud cicada’s music as our background (our trip leader, Rob, told us this was the horrible bit) and down to Smith Creek (the nice bit, with bush and red beech forest).

We reached the Smith Creek Shelter too early for our lunchbreak, so we decided to have a quick stop to take our hut challenge photos and carry on. Not far from there we crossed the Tauwharenikau River and walked along the tree-rooted track. The track is pretty easy, mostly flat with a few slips - one of them had a rope to help us through the rough bit.

We walked past the sign post (Joe Gibbs cricket wicket) by the campsite. After that we climbed up to find the Joe Gibbs Memorial Hut.

The hut is in the Tauherenikau Valley. It is about 30 minutes down-stream from Tutuwai Hut. 3 bunks. You can read about this GWBN-Joe Gibbs We had out hut challenge photo and lunch before walking back the same way. The weather wasn’t too hot or too cold, so we decided to have a swim by the swing bridge. It was a very nice spot - once we survived the sandflies. We all felt so refreshed after our swim.

We met lots of trampers on the day both on the way in and out, including a guy who was on his first day of a 42 day tramping goal. We reached our car around 6pm after a 9½ hour long day trip. JP suggested we try his favourite Gerry’s Charcoal Chicken in Upper Hutt so we all had that as our dinner.

Thanks Rob for leading the trip, JP who was the driver and June who was the photographer.

Those on the trip were:

John Peterson, Maryann Bugg, Nisa Promchot, Rob Dey, Yingjun Shelton

Currently there is no photo album for this trip.