12 September 2007

Huia Ridge Track

page 2

And here is something that pisses me right off.

The sign is weathered, and I haven't seen a sign of possum control contractors all day. In fact, even if they had been around, this is the first notice I've seen all day. The occasional piece of pink ribbon is faded and tattered, and further up the track, the pink triangles that normally denote bait stations are faded too, and have been there long enough to be vandalised. "Now" is meaningless.

I want signs like this to say something like: Poison baits have been laid along this track on (date) and are dangerous to dogs for at least X months. Signs like the one in the pic are simply not credible or useful, like roadworks signs guarding nothing.

We hit the road and turn around. Alice reckons she rather likes the look of the main road and why can't we go back that way. There is a brief battle of wills, and common sense rules. Heel!!!

On the way back, I spot an interesting looking Coprosma. It's got to be a Coprosma, but it's in berry, and the only species of coprosma in berry right now that I know is C. grandifolia. This looks more like a karamu, and besides there are specimens of C. grandifolia all around looking just the way they normally do.

It might be C. macrocarpa, the large seeded coprosma, which I have never seen before, but Salmon's picture was taken at Warkworth in December, not September, and Poole and Adams refers to it as uncommon, mainly on the off-shore islands. Possibly C. lucida which is a somewhat variable shrub, with bigger berries than C. robusta. But that should be flowering now, not in berry. Hmmmm.

A little further along as I renegotiate the somewhat slippery path through the bush, I see something I missed on the way along her, a rather nice specimen of what I think is thread fern, Blechnum filiforme. There are smaller fronds on the ground and larger ones further up the tree, but no threads this time.

We head round the corner onto the "experience only" track.

On parts of the track, there's an unattractive scummy green which we shall become more familiar with along the way.

It's still pretty dark, but it's OK walking for a bit, and more or less dry, as we sidle gently up a ridge.

A small Quintinia catches a patch of light

I wonder exactly what this "experience required" stuff is about this time. On the Ian Wells track, it effectively meant the ability to clamber down a 750mm bank, wade a stream about 1.5m across and 30mm deep and clamber out the other side. On the Lower Kauri Track it meant steepish and often slippery patches of track with spaces to place your feet.

Question answered soon enough. On this track you need to be able to poke a stick in a muddy patch to see how deep it is, and keep on doing this, and be agile enough to climb and descend quite steep and slippery tracks for an extended period.

There's obviously a market for boggy tracks.

Ever felt like you were walking the plank?

Or maybe experience is remembering what it was like last time you visited and not going back again...

Alice reckons there's no such thing as a tough track. "What's keeping you?" she says, "And you wouldn't have a spare dried liver treat, would you."

One of the pluses with our big food drier is that when we are not using it for drying camping food or fruit leather, we get in packages of ox liver, slice them fine, and dry them. They keep for ever as long as the dog does not discover where they are hidden. These cost the earth if you buy them from the vet.