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Pureora Forest Park Sep 2008 |
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| Five thirty AM is an awfully early start time but we all made it and picked up a Napier contingent enroute to Pureora. The trip over was uneventful and we arrived at the Bog Inn carpark around 9 AM. We went in to Bog Inn Hut with the A Party getting there about 9:50, the track is aptly named with plenty of bog but the bush was nice even a few Prince of Wales Feather ferns. After a look around the A party left us and we followed shortly afterwards getting back to the truck around 11. We drove back down the road and then along Link Road to where the Titiraupunga – Pureora track crossed and parked up there and had lunch in the sunshine. After lunch we made our way up Mount Pureora and its hundreds of steps, getting to the summit around 1.30. Another sit in the sun was required, taking in the 360 degree views. | |
| Sign posts on the top indicated the track to Bog Inn to the south, the Toi Toi track to the east and the track we had ascended to the north-east. It was decided that the females would descend via the Toi Toi track whilst Peter would return to the truck and pick us up at the end of the Toi Toi Road. Well best laid plans of men and mouse …..We got to the road at the end of the Toi Toi Track and waited, then we walked down Toi Toi Road to Cabbage Tree Road and waited and waited, then we walked along Cabbage Tree Road and then finally along comes Peter and the truck – relief all round. The road signage on Link Road is almost non-existent and the map Peter had did not have the Toi Toi Track marked on it but had the old road which heads off to the North-West from the summit marked on it. So Peter had gone to that road end and had waited around there for a while until he decided that as we should have been there by then there must have been another track so drove up all the roads until he found us | |
| We were back on the road by 8 the next morning to drive to the carpark beside the Waihaha Stream adjacent to the Western Bay Road. Leaving from there just before 9 oclock we walked along the track towards Waihaha Hut. This is a very picturesque walk with a lovely clear river below and awesome rock formations on the opposite slopes. We were firstly in regenerating bush, the dense podocarp forest doesn’t start until Waihaha Hut, and then came out into a 3 km long frost flat, which like the one on the Rangiteiki plans, contains many dracophyllum species and is predominantly dark red coloured. Back into the bush at the end of the frost flats we met up with the A Party coming out from Waihaha so we all stopped for an early lunch and views of the Waihaha River with its scultured river bed . After lunch we all returned back to the truck and home, making Hastings around 6 PM. | |