Mt Maungatautari and a trip south

Eddie had a good week last week when he went to the South Island for work. He took a digger down and brought a crusher home again.

 He had good crossings on the ferry. It wasn't so nice on Friday, so he was glad he got back before then. He got home on Thursday afternoon, really tired. He went to bed at 7 30 to read a bit, but after 2 pages he gave up and went to sleep. He didn't wake up until 6 the next morning. He only had to unload the digger the next day, so he had a bit of a long weekend. He was a bit gob smacked to see people walking around in Balcutha in shorts, t shirts and jandals and it was only 3 degrees. They told him it was a dryer cold there and not as bad as in the Waikato. He said (wearing a lot of clothes) what a load of nonsense. But not as politely as that of course ha ha.

I went for a tramp up Mt Maungatautri on Sunday. Lots of bush and birds there, as it is all fenced off to keep the predators out. We decided to do one of the other peaks on the mountain, called Pukeatua Peak. We walked up the main path, which is nice and easy to walk on as it is made for the 4 wheel drive vehicles that maintain the fence. We came to the track up to the peak. Up the track we went and we found ourselves using tree roots and tree trunks to pull ourselves up. We thought we were climbing Pukeatua Peak,(signage wasn't quite what it should be) but it was actually Rocky Outcrop. There would have been a great view, but the clouds had come down, as we had gone up. Most annoying. Across the valley, in the clouds, we could see Pukeatua Peak. Down we went. Mostly on our back sides as it was quite rocky and tricky to walk on. I was quite pleased to be at the bottom, where the track up Pukeatua started. We started to go up and met a couple coming down, who said the path was pretty rugged and and there wasn't much of a view because the trees have grown. (No possums to eat them). As it was lunch time and we were over rugged tracks, we went back down and sat on a bench that was there to eat out lunch.

The picture is the path down off  Rocky Outcrop.