Sunday 2 October 2022

Leader: Owen Cox

The trip programme had this day walk down for either Burn Hut or Makahika. The weather immediately before the trip was bad and the forecast was for drizzle so we flagged Burn Hut as being too wet. That left Makahika.

We met at the Gladstone Road end of the section of track in pretty good weather, but there was still low cloud over Dundas Ridge and the Mangahao. The first section of the track is across farmland and it then enters the Tararua Forest Park on the route of an old logging tramway. This follows up stream and then climbs over a low saddle. Once over the saddle the track drops a short distance to a creek and then climbs up onto the Makahika Ridge. We had lunch on the lookout at point 671 on the map (about 2 to 3 hours from the start).

Rather than going back the same way, we decided to head south to the named Makahika bump. Despite there being no track marked on the map we found plastic tape markers along the ridge and similar markers leading to the side spurs. The top of Makahika is open bush, with little view, but has survey markers and a large deer wallow (not used recently). From here we headed down the spur to the west (which swings to the north-west partway down). This gave open travel and was easy to follow as we had GPS and plastic tape to guide us. At the bottom we came to a tram route that quickly led us back to the main Makahika track and after a short wander, to the road end.

Those on the trip were:

Julie James, Mark Robertson, Owen Cox, Rob Dey, Sue Sparkes, Yingjun Shelton

Currently there is no photo album for this trip.