29 June

With the lousy cold, wet and windy forecast for Longview (which was correct, they had 15mm and we only had 3) we decided to head for Don Juan from Te Kowhai. Parking at the top of the hill because of the dubiously legal forestry gate, seven of us set of down the road, across the bridge and duly turned right down the correct forestry road and then ambled up the side of a small stream until we came to fork where the track takes of.

At this point it is unmarked and despite DOCs slash and destroy two metre wide highway tactics of a few years ago is quite overgrown, but it just goes straight up the spur. The track is very steep very muddy and very! slippery! I find it quite sad that some of the ladies in our club know , let alone use, some of the language ( such as, “gosh that was slippery” or “argh… crash !!!! ).

After a while the footing got easier with an occasional letup in the gradient. The bush was very pretty, although  a bit hammered by the deer, with all sorts of broadleaf plants gradually replacing the kanuka. One thing we did notice was that almost all of the hange hange, hundreds of big tall strong shrubs, have recently died.

Leaving  Glenda and Susan to have an early lunch and return to the van;  the rest of us soldiered on, higher and higher, until we got right up into the contorta, then down and up. We had lunch and it started raining and we thought stuff the trig, we wont get a view anyway, so we stumbled and slid our way back to the bottom. In places the track was remarkably hard to follow downhill ( it is easier to follow a spur up and a river down) there were very few markers and what few there were had mostly been popped of their trees by the growth of the trunks. The grind up the road to the van was a real exclamation mark, but we did get some nice views and had an interesting bit of exercise in great company and we only got moderately damp.                                                 
Party: Steve B, Susan L, Selina C, Janice L, Peter Mc, Peter B and Glenda H