Pureora to taumarunui
My kind brother-in-law delivered me back to Pureora Forest HQ on Thursday morning so I could begin the journey to Taumarunui on the Timber Trail. I don't know who carved this figure at the trailhead but the hard hat is hard case.
Te Araroa used to follow tracks on the eastern side of the Park, and I know them well from when I ran a deer control experiment there, so I was intrigued to see what the more western Timber Trail route is like. The Timber Trail is part of a national network of cycle trails, meaning the track will be wider and have lower gradients than tramping tracks. It also has a marker every kilometre, rather taking the guesswork out of walking!
In the areas near the HQ that escaped logging,the trees are magnificent, like these rimu
and this Hall's totara
Higher, near Bog Inn Hut where the trees are clothed in lichen, I found lots of Fuchsia excorticata, and flowers on the ground...
a sure sign the possum control is working.
The hut was built in 1960 for Forest Research Institute staff and did serve to keep me dry when it rained overnight.
The trail notes advise hikers to aim for Piropiro Camp on the second day so that is what I did. I encountered the first of eight suspension bridges
not far from the hut. Tree ferns and lancewoods grew in light gaps, giving a multi-tiered structure.
A couple of cyclists zoomed past but this one didn't!
He told me he went flying over the front when the frame failed but "all good".
I reached Piropiro Campsite too early to stop, so just kept going, blow the notes. A bit further on my eye was taken by pumice neatly arranged to one side of the track, and once I decoded it I realised, yes, I had just completed one-third of Te Araroa!
It took 34 days and one pair of trail shoes to do.
I ran out of puff after 39.6km so I stopped for the night at an old ganger's hut at "#11 Camp"
The forecast rain didn't arrive so I felt a bit of a fraud but I hate packing a wet tent.
This part of the trail uses the old Ellis and Burnand tramway, built to haul logs out to portable timber mills. There are dozens of ferny cuttings
and bridges over tributaries of the Waione
and dynamited ignimbrite faces
and flocks of kaka, and whiteheads (first time I've seen them in 20 years) and a nosy robin on the trunk of a tree fern.
On Mangatukutuku suspension bridge I found three puriri moths
and Clematis foetida was flowering greenly
Rain stayed away as I covered the 25km to Ongarue, where the Timber Trail ends. Within 10 minutes I had a ride to Taumarunui with the Timber Trail concessionaire, who educated me on e-bikes and the perils of pumice.
I found comfy digs and now the rain has arrived!
