Sunday 3 July 2022

Leader: Tony Quayle

Back in March, when we last visited the giant rata tree, several members were disappointed it clashed with their being away on South Island tramping trips. The perfect excuse to do it again, and with significantly greater numbers: 21, up from 8 in March.

We took the standard route up the spur from the Little Akatarawa ford on Karapoti Road, into the saddle and down the old tramline into the gentle upper reaches of the Little Akatarawa, then up through the bush to the rata tree. Despite earlier grumbling about not wanting to get her feet wet, my almost 13 year old granddaughter Sophie loved the stream walking so much she grumbled about the mostly dry-feet return route. Jing and her Mum Xiufang, on the other hand, somehow managed to complete the stream section with dry feet.

Following lunch and many photographs at the tree, we circled around the head of the Little Akatarawa to the main north-south ridge that separates it from the West Akatarawa. Following this south, we eventually connected with a major tramline formation that presented us with the option of either turning left to re-join our inward route at the saddle (as we’d done on the March trip) or right to who-knows-where. We turned right.

Mark knew of a mountain bike trail in that general direction, but we didn’t join up with that until we were over halfway down to the West Akatarawa valley floor. Because the day was getting on, we decided not to explore further, so simply carried on down and endured the long road walk back to the carpark.

One thing about the Akatarawas is there’s always another track to explore!

Those on the trip were:

Chantal Heller, Chris Keating, David Williams, Glenda Robb, Jing Zhou, John Glover, John Peterson, Marian Cox, Owen Cox, Pam Glover, Rob Dey, Stephen Bowler, Sue Pate, Sue Sparkes, Tony Quayle, Wei Wu, Xiufang Sun, Yingjun Shelton, Mark Quayle, Sandy Quayle, Sophie Quayle